It is what they don't tell you ...

As we watch the newspapers - and media generally - turn themselves into proxies for the Hamas publicity machine, the flood of stories from Gaza is driving out other news. As important, the focus specifically on one main aspect of the current conflict, to the exclusion of much else, is completely distorting perception of the crisis. It is this "distortion by exclusion" which is as damaging as anything else the media does.

The phenomenon, though, is hard to pin down, as the reader looking for objectivity is being asked, effectively, to "prove a negative". It is very difficult to judge the media by what it does not say when, in the ordinary course of events, one cannot know what is not being published.

However, in my current researches for the book on Iraq, I have been working on the period around August/September 2006, compiling a narrative of events and then comparing it with what the British media was saying about the conduct of the British operation in Basra. In short, the media coverage was sparce, to the point of being non-existent. The only events guaranteed to gain coverage were the deaths of British soldiers. In between those events, coverage evaporated.

The net effect of this "distortion by exclusion" was that the metric by which the media measured the progress of the operation became the death of British soldiers. When none were dying, it was deemed to be "calm". When soldiers died, the media woke up and began crying "crisis". What I thought useful, therefore, was to publish an edited version of the account I have so far written - from 1 August to 28 September 2006 - which illustrates this point precisely.

Up to 1 August, for many months - almost completely unrecorded by the media, British bases in Basra had been sustaining near-continuous rocket and mortar attacks. So the narrative begins:

With the continuous mortar and rocket attacks on British bases, it was only a matter of time before a soldier was killed. That day arrived on 1 August when Cpl. Matthew Cornish, 1st Battalion, The Light Infantry was fatally wounded by shrapnel from a mortar bomb which landed within the perimeter of the Old State Building. Over the seven months that the Light Infantry were stationed at the OSB, through the summer of 2006, more than 114 mortar and rocket rounds and 47 Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) hit the compound. There were also more than 38 recorded "contacts" involving sniper and small arms fire, and four IED attacks on patrol vehicles. It was a minor miracle that there had been no deaths before Cpl. Cornish had been killed.

Unsurprisingly, given the paucity of publicity, there was no awareness back in the UK as to how bad the situation was becoming and, indeed, how the attacks against British forces were intensifying. A week after Cpl. Cornish had died, insurgents launched no less than nine Katyushas at Basra Palace. Three Iraqis, including a policeman, were then wounded by an IED in the north of Basra. The device had been intended for a British patrol. The next day, the insurgents fired three heavy 120mm mortar rounds and four Katyusha rockets into the Palace compound, claiming "direct hits" which sent plumes of smoke rising into the sky.

As an illustration of just how far the situation had deteriorated, on 16 August Sadr supporters from the Bani Asad tribe laid siege to the Basra government offices, lobbing mortar shells at the building and barricading nearby bridges. They took over parts of the building, killing four policemen and wounding five. The militia used this opportunity to attack the Light Infantry's base, the Old State Building. Major Head's B Company fought simultaneous battles, firing over 3,100 rounds in one hour and accounting for up to fifteen militiamen.

The attack on the government building was the tribe's response to the murder of one of their Sheiks. They were accusing the Fadhila members – from the governor's party - of his murder. The tribesmen also cut Route 6, the main road between Basra and Baghdad and threatened to kill police who entered their tribal area in the northern suburbs. Into deserted streets, the Iraqi Army deployed in force with armoured vehicles to "preserve order". The populace apparently was not, thereby, reassured, noted local media. British troops had to intervene in support of the Iraqi security forces before the siege was lifted.

By any measure, this was a significant event. With the ongoing mortar attacks on British bases, it confounded any suggestion that Basra was under control. As significantly, it demolished the official line that the Iraqi security forces were in any way effective, or could be relied upon. But not only was it fighting prowess suspect, its deficiencies in logistics were extremely troubling. These came to the fore on 7 July when a platoon of British soldiers had returned to its base after a combined stop and search operation in a remote desert region of Maysan province.

The base was shared with a unit from the Iraqi Army which then had not had food or water for 36 hours. The soldiers were becoming somewhat anxious, especially as their officers had left them, apparently in a bid to arrange a re-supply. When their officers had not returned, a group of between 10-15 armed Iraqi soldiers then approached the British platoon. After a confrontation, shots were fired over the heads of the British soldiers, the ringleader then acquiring a sniper rifle and firing around British soldiers, deliberately aiming to miss. One junior NCO, Cpl. Martin Caines, had exposed himself to the gunman and faced him down, for which action he was awarded the George Medal.

Nothing of this found its way into the media until March 2007, when it rated a brief mention in the local press. As for the Basra siege, this was covered by US media, the New York Times suggesting that it "underscored the tenuous grip the Iraqi government maintains even in regions not under the sway of Sunni Arab insurgents."

Unreported, the mortaring and rocketing of British bases went on and on, as did the fighting. Basra airport suffered a Kayusha attack on 21 August, and again on the 28th. In the latter incident, the rockets fell outside the base perimeter and did no harm. That day, it was almost 2003 all over again, when there had been major riots in the city centre. On 23 August, throngs of Shi'a demonstrators, "fed up with corrupt puppet regime and its skyrocketing prices, no electricity, no running water," chanted support for Saddam Hussain. The day before, oil company employees had gone on strike, halting oil shipments over demands for higher pay and profit sharing. Three years on, all that seemed to have changed was that the violence had got worse.

Just to emphasise that, two Iraqi "military intelligence elements" were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the Basra central town of Tannoma. The corpses of security men were found dumped by a roadside and a motorcycle bomb ripped through market in the al-Hayaniyah area of western al-Basra, a Sadr stronghold. Nine people were killed and 13 wounded.

Another British patrol vehicle was attacked on 30 August – an IED which left one soldier wounded and the vehicle damaged. And Des Browne got a welcome package when he visited Basra airport. The insurgents laid on a Katyusha firing demonstration for him. Shatt al-Arab Hotel took seven mortar rounds the next day. Eyewitnesses claimed violent explosions could be heard coming from inside the facility after the attack. It was on the receiving end of no less than 11 bombs on 1 September.

Mortar shells were still pounding the base intermittently, and the British were unable to halt the barrage despite their helicopter patrols of the area searching for the insurgents. They returned the next day, this time with Katyushas, sending ten of them towards the base, only to have them fall outside the perimeter, seriously injuring an Iraqi woman. The 4th September then saw another mortar attack.

For Gunners Stephen Wright and Samuela Vanua, both of 12 Regiment Royal Artillery, this was a day that ended abruptly at about 1pm. It was also their last. In support of a Danish reconstruction team close to Ad Dayr, about nine miles north of Basra, both were killed in an ambush. Two more soldiers were injured - one seriously.

That day, a British soldier had also been killed in Afghanistan - and the media woke up. Patrick Cockburn, in The Independent explained how the "war on terror" had "fuelled resentment of the West and brought new levels of death and destruction." He also noted that, "It may be egocentric to write only of British dead. They are but a small percentage of the casualties in the multiple crises which are now cross-infecting each other in the Middle East."

In the main news section, its pages having been devoid of operational coverage of southern Iraq for many weeks, The Independent then remarked: "The latest deaths come after a period of relative calm for the British military …". There was the ultimate statement of ignorance. There had been "relative calm"? But that was the media's narrative, sustained only by the almost complete lack of reporting.

In that The Independent had no further comments on the following days, it is not untoward to aver that the "relative calm" resumed on 5 September. It was celebrated by the insurgents with the delivery - minus wrapping - of another six mortar bombs to Shatt al-Arab Hotel. Three missed their target, falling near an Iraqi police department. No damage was done.

In al Qurna on 6 September, about 50 miles north of Basra, Gunner Lee Darren Thornton – from the same Regiment as Gunners Wright and Vanua – experienced more of The Independent's "relative calm". He was fatally wounded by a gunshot when his unit came under fire near the building used to plan reconstruction.

Five Iraqi policemen shared some of that "relative calm" when they were wounded by an IED as they patrolled in their vehicle five miles west of Basra. British soldiers enjoyed even more of the "relative calm" when their base yet again came under attack from Katyusha rockets on 9 September. Ten days later, that "relative calm" extended to Basra airport, where three Katyusha rockets landed, and to central Basra, where a gunman was killed and a British soldier was wounded when a British vehicle patrol was involved in a firefight.

The "relative calm", in fact, was breaking out all over, embracing even the Iranian consulate - where two rockets struck the outer walls, damaging three police vehicles – and the British consulate at Basra Palace, which enjoyed a mortar barrage, adding to its growing collection of shrapnel and mortar damage. So calm was it there that a British spokesman would only admit that "this sort of attack happens from time to time, every four or five days."

As September wore on, still the "relative calm" - as far as the media was concerned - persisted. It spread on the 22nd to a translator working for the British, who was shot and killed after insurgents raided his home, and to Shaiba, which took five Katyusha rockets as opposed to the mere four that were fired at Shatt al Arab Hotel.

That day also an American contractor working for the US State Department was killed in Basra, in one of the rocket attacks. To maintain this "relative calm", the insurgents followed up the next day, with mortars on the market in Shiaba town, where British troops were occasionally allowed out to buy souvenirs, setting fire to four civilian cars and damaging a shop. The "relative calm" was reinforced with a Katyusha rocket fired on the town.

The next day, so intense had the "relative calm" become that only one bomb exploded next to a British patrol, on the main street in Basra running past the police headquarters, and only ten armoured vehicles had been despatched to the scene from Basra Palace.

That "relative calm" also applied to a sitation where routine patrols had been cancelled while British troops surrounded the main Sadr offices in Basra and searched several houses in the vicinity, confiscating some weapons. Also, in this "relative calm", a Danish serviceman was killed by an IED, a Lance Corporal in the Royal Danish Air Force. Eight others were injured, one severely. They had been in a three-car motorcade carrying nine members of a Danish Air Force unit assigned to protect diplomats from Denmark in southern Iraq. No diplomats had been travelling with the convoy.

Clearly, this must all have conformed with The Independent's definition of "relative calm" because neither it nor any other British media outlet bothered to report any of these events, even if the deaths of the Dane and the US contractor were carried by The New York Times and even the China Post. Never better illustrated was the metric by which the media measured the British occupation. In a period when a US contractor, an Iraqi translator working for the British and a Danish serviceman had been killed, the British media had no comment. The moment a British soldier was killed, the flood-gates opened.

That was a measure of the media. Its absence of reporting contributed massively to a totally distorted picture of what was going on - which had very significant political effects. But, it was not what they told us. It was what they didn't tell us.

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Wrong question

I was tempted to put this up without comment ... after all, it does speak for itself. Some might be offended by the joke, but humour is one of the ultimate definitions of humanity. How many animals make jokes?

Even in the darkest hours, and in the most hideous situations, people can make jokes ... gallows humour, or whatever. Sometimes it is a nervous reaction, other times it is simply to relieve the tension and, at other times, it is simply to entertain.

However, the Jewish culture is known for its rich vein of humour - one of my favourites is Abe calling on God to fix the lottery for him, only for his number not to come up in the next draw. When Abe complains about being forsaken, the Heavens open up and a thunderous voice intones, "Abe! Abe! You are going to have to help me out here! Buy a smegging ticket!"

A culture that can make fun of itself cannot be all bad!

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Even the "brothers" aren't buying it

The dhimmi media may be buying into Pallywood, but even the "brothers" are turning away. This is from a Bradford forum:

A sincere, active brother from Bradford has informed MPACUK (Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK) that the MP for Bradford, Gerry Sutcliffe, has had only 2 complaints about Israel! MPACUK asks - are the Muslims in Bradford asleep!? Bradford has the fourth highest proportion of Muslims in England. Over 100,000 Muslims, yet only 2 complaints against Israel! Absolutely disgraceful.

Gerry Sutcliffe is meeting the Foreign Office today. Ring him now before 2:30pm today on 01274 400 007 and ask him to condemn the Israeli invasion and attacks on Gaza. Start complaining now.

But even if you didn't do that its still not too late. Here are some of the things that the sincere, active brother from Bradford has suggested that Bradford Muslims can do. Bradford Muslims if you care about justice, please heed his words:

"There were 3000 people protesting in the Bradford March, yet how many have contacted their MP or MEPs?

This Saturday, 10th Jan, are the surgeries of Terry Rooney and Gerry Sutcliffe. The people of Bradford should go to the surgeries and express their opinions, if possible sign petitions and present them.

It is the job of MPs to represent their British constituents not the interests of Israel, many MPs are putting the views of Israel over and above the views of British people - is this democracy??

MPACUK should ask Muslims around the UK to do this in all cities, this should be happening across the country.

What is also interesting is that, unlike 2006, the UN resolution passed last night is having no political traction at all. This is possibly because the UN has abandoned all pretence at neutrality and is now so obviously partisan that even its tarnished credibility is being shot to pieces.

When it becomes the prime propagandist for the Hamas message, even though the media lap it up, the shadow of Qana looms large, with the spirit of "Green Helmet" all too evident.

But, it appears, you can play the "ghoul card" once to often. In its quest for "another Qana", Hamas tactics - even with the willing help of the UN - are all too transparent, leaving the MSM and the tranzies as the only apostles of their homicidal creed. Even leftoid readers of The Independent find "The 20 best players outside the Premier League" more interesting than the UN resolution (pictured).

As regards the UN, it would be a delicious irony if that organisation, supposedly dedicated to peace, but now joined in common cause with the murderous Hamas to destroy Israel, should itself be destroyed the cause it has taken up. Soon, we will have to insist that its own mercenaries should swap their blue helmets for green helmets. The final transition will then be complete.

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Bluff and double bluff

The Daily Express is on the case today, headlining a warning about the EU's attempts to grab control over our energy supplies.

The threat is real, albeit ill-defined and lies essentially in the UK government's propensity to roll over for its tummy to be tickled every time the EU says "boo!". In other times, it would have been called appeasement. Now it is still appeasement, although there is no opposition in our toy parliament which is prepared to call a spade a spade.

What is intriguing is that the EU is probably as much motivated by desperation as it is political ambition. The member states, having let themselves be sidetracked by their obsession with global warming (to call a spade a spade), have neglected energy security in the fond but entirely unrealistic hope that Russia would be there to bail them out and protect them from the consequences of their folly.

The nature of the EU's predicament is nicely spelt out in a recent edition of Newsweek. In an article headed, "Russia's Big Energy Secret," it tells us that, far from being the universal supplier of endless energy to the shivering Europeans, Russia itself is short of gas – having enough only to supply its own domestic market.

In order to export gas to the European, Russia is having to buy gas from central Asia, its wealth arising from the mark-up it is putting on the gas as it passes through its territory. Now, however, the Central Asian republics are seeking to do direct deals with their own customers – China in particular – cutting Russia out of the loop and leaving it short.

The current dispute between Russia and Ukraine, therefore, it not entirely the "bilateral" issue that Barroso would have us believe. There are undercurrents here which threaten the entire European energy strategy. And Barroso knows it. This is why he is bluffing his way into an urgent "European solution".

At the heart of that is the doctrine of "sharing the pain". If Europe is to go short of gas, we should all go short, rather than have some member states still burning while others freeze. The idea is, of course, cloaked in Euro-rhetoric, but that is what "solidarity" actually means - if one freezes, we all freeze.

Britain, nevertheless, has problems of its own. With its energy policy a shambles, electricity power cuts looming and an over-reliance on gas for electricity generation, it is in no position to help out the freezing Euro-weenies. Thus, Barroso either needs to be able to blag his way into convincing the UK to sacrifice itself pour les autres or he must wait until the constitutional Lisbon treaty is ratified.

The powers Barroso needs were in the original constitution and they are still there in Lisbon, with which he can finagle a deal using qualified majority voting that will strip away Britain's control over its own energy reserves.

The only good thing here is that our energy policy has been so mismanaged that, by the time the "colleagues" get their way, Britain will have very little to give. Thus, when we come to sit in the dark, freezing cold, with our generators idle, we will at least have the small comfort of knowing that much of Europe will be in a similar condition – except of course France, which can rely in its nukes.

That apart, one can almost see the merits of a "European solution", if it means exporting the consequences of our own mismanagement to the continent. Added to theirs, this should make for a formidable combination which, very rapidly, should ensure the downfall of the whole shooting match. If there are no atheists in the trenches, there is no apathy when the lights go out.

Horse-drawn tumbrels will, by then, look to be a very attractive proposition.

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That CNN video (cont.)

It seems that CNN has not only pulled the very questionable video purportedly shot in a hospital but has even taken down the empty video page. However, the text story remains with no reference to there having been a video or what happened to it. What do you call that? Oh yes, professional journalism. Not like us bloggers or Joe the Plumber who is going to Gaza on Pajamas Media TV's behalf.

Also, here is Richard Landes' column on the subject.

UPDATE: Just noticed on Little Green Footballs that the free-lance photographer, Ashraf Mashharawi, has an interesting business background (scroll down to the end of the posting). Well, well, who would have thunk it?

UPDATE: CNN has put the video back and is insisting it is genuine though there seems to be a great deal of doubt (to use a serious understatement) around. Instapundit brings together the arguments. Confederate Yankee's analysis of CNN's "evidence" is particularly amusing.

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Another crisis, another opportunity …

If it was not for the Gaza crisis, then number one item in the headlines would most certainly be the Russian gas crisis. As with Gaza, though, nothing is quite what is seems, the media is as always totally unreliable and there are numerous hidden (and some not so hidden) agendas.

With a tentative resolution on the cards, Russia and the European Union having clinched a deal on monitoring gas shipments through Ukraine, thus paving a way for the resumption of deliveries to EU countries, the EU's real agenda is the same as it has always been – more political integration.

To that effect, this current spot of bother with Russia provides yet another opportunity to invoke the mechanism that has been tried in the past – the beneficial crisis, a mechanism attempted in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.

It is ironic now, as then, that there was another Middle East Crisis going on, but this time the two crises are not directly related – except in the eyes of the EU commission president José Manuel Barroso.

In a private meeting with the group leaders of the EU parliament yesterday – the so-called "conference of presidents" – he told this "privileged forum for the exchange also of sensitive information and for frank discussions" that we "will need to assert our interests in managing these crises." The "interests", of course are those of the EU.

As to the gas crisis, Barroso is looking at it in the short, medium and long term. The obvious short-term priority is to get the gas flowing again, although the dispute between Russia and Ukraine is being treated as "bilateral" in which the EU is not prepared (openly) to get involved.

For the medium to long-term, however, Barroso sees the crisis as an opportunity to demonstrate that "current framework" on energy is insufficient. Security of gas supplies in the EU, he tells his "privileged forum" is regulated by Directive 2004/67/EC but the measures set out in the directive are "insufficient to cope with the crisis."

Ever-willing to resolve this, Barroso has convened the EU's "Gas Coordination Group" to "assist Member States" but it will also be looking at "medium- to long-term gas security solutions to be implemented in the future to achieve better preparedness."

To help this process along, an "extraordinary Energy Council meeting" has also been convened in Brussels for 12 January, when it is expected to agree that "the present mechanisms mainly in the hands of the individual states are clearly not sufficient to organise an efficient response at EU level." It will, therefore, call for "the development of a common approach to an EU external energy policy."

The core of this will be a "five-point EU Energy Security and Solidarity Action Plan" (ESSAP?), which will propose further EU control over infrastructure needs and the diversification of energy supplies; external energy relations; oil and gas stocks and crisis response mechanisms; energy efficiency; and "Making the best use of the EU's indigenous energy resources." - which will, of course, come under EU direction.

Bye, bye, what is left of Britain's North Sea oil and gas production.

All of this amounts to one huge power grab, and this time the "colleagues" may be just cowed enough by Russia's action. But, jusr in case they are not, Barroso is looking to the EU parliament to "convince the Member States of a truly coordinated approach and the need to create appropriate mechanisms to secure short, medium and long term energy supplies."

"This crisis," says Barroso, "demonstrates that there is even more urgency to make them than we thought some months ago."

Interestingly, as I have observed before, after the Suez Crisis of 1956 broke the impasse over the Common Market and brought to a head the negotiations which spawned the 1957 Treaty of Rome, it was only half-jokingly suggested that a statue should be erected to the man who had triggered the crisis, Gamel Abdel Nasser, "the federator of Europe".

If this current power grab comes off, the next suggestion may well be that such a statue is also erected in honour of President Vladimir Putin, for his role as another "federator of Europe".

COMMENT THREAD

End of the Tillack saga?

Media for Freedom reports that the accusations of bribery against the journalist Hans-Martin Tillack have been dismissed by a Belgian court for lack of evidence. Aparently the International Federation of Journalists is now calling on the EU "to tell the whole truth" about the complaints and why they were made. I guess it is a little difficult to work out why there should be ridiculous legal attempts to silence journalists who write about corruption about the European Union and its anti-corruption unit, OLAF.

Herr Tillack's supporters are calling for a formal apology from EU officials. We are calling for a full display of the Porcine Air Force in the skies above Brussels.

Daniel Hannan gives the full story in First Post, adding:

On Tuesday, the Belgian state was ordered to pay Tillack €10,000 in compensation and €30,000 costs. At least the poor fellow will get his hands on the moolah while there still is a Belgian state to pay him.

The first commenter wonders why he has not seen anything about this outrage in the British media. Well, perhaps, he should have been reading EUReferendum. We covered the subject exhaustively. But there's none so blind ...

I don't think they understand

On the whole I have great respect for UN Watch, an NGO that tries to show up the UN for the sort of pernicious organization it is, though, I suspect, that is not how they would put it themselves. Something about getting the UN to live up to its principles may be how UN Watch sees its role.

Having said that, I have to point out that they do not appear to understand anything about the European Union. Like many other people I received an e-mail from the organizaion, asking me to take action immediately to prevent a completely duplicitous UN resolution that calls for an immediate truce in Gaza and a withdrawal of Israeli troops, without once mentioning Hamas terrorism from being passed.

The idea is that we all send e-mails to Javier Solana and to Karel Scwarzeneger, the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs, asking them to stop the EU from voting for the resolution.

Please help us ensure the EU will live up to its principles tomorrow by voting No to this one-sided resolution.

I am not sure what principles UN Watch have in mind but it is the EU that has consistently aided and protected Hamas just as in the days of long ago, it revived the career of that late unlamented mass-murderer, Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Furthermore, the EU does not vote in the UN. It is individual countries that do and they seem to have come to an agreement already, if this piece on YNet is anything to go by.

Western and Arab foreign ministers on Thursday agreed on a compromise draft resolution calling for an immediate Gaza ceasefire and decided to put it to a UN Security Council vote, a Palestinian diplomat said.

Of course, Palestinian diplomats (an oxymoron, surely) have been known to be economical with the truth before. In any case, the devil will be in the details of the resolution.

As it happens, EU or no EU, we cannot exactly be proud of our own infantile looking Foreign Secretary.

In a key concession to the Arabs, a text circulated by the British delegation earlier Thursday "calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire" in Gaza and "for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza."

An earlier version merely "stressed the need" for an immediate ceasefire.

The latest British draft available also "condemns all acts of hostilities and terror directed against civilians" and for "the lifting of the Israeli blockade" of Gaza.

Does Mr Miliband even know what he is talking about? (That is a purely rhetorical question.)

Incidentally, for those who happen to be in London this coming Sunday, there will be a pro-Israeli and pro-Gazan people, as opposed to Hamas, rally in Trafalgar Square at 11 o'clock. If you want to attend, the organizers, the various Jewish organizers, supported by, among others, Anglican Friends of Israel, are asking everyone to turn up by 10.40 (yes, I know, horribly early) and not to bring any flags or placards - these will be available there.

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If we did this?

As it stands – and the numbers vary from hour to hour – there are 28,595 individual media stories posted on Google News covering the Gaza conflict. But how many of them are genuine, individual stories, based on accurate, reliable first-hand information?

That the media indulges in group-think and plagiarises each others' stories is hardly new, but it is a useful corrective to remind ourselves of how prevalent and blatant this practice really is.

Step away from Gaza for one moment, and look at a completely different issue – one we tackled yesterday, the great light-bulb story. Go to The Daily Mail and you will see a follow-up story by David Derbyshire headlined, "The low-energy bulbs that won’t fit your light sockets". It is datelined 11:03 PM on 07th January 2009.

The story is original, based on Derbyshire's own work (this, I know), and he writes: "Low-energy bulbs are incompatible with millions of lamps and sockets in homes, it has emerged … Lighting experts said many of the more bulky fluorescent lights were too large for table and standard lamps and didn't always fit older ceiling sockets." And so he goes on.

Now cut to The Daily Telegraph site and you will see a story with the by-line Lucy Cockcroft. It is datelined: 6:57AM GMT 08 Jan 2009 and headlined: "Low-energy bulbs do not fit in many standard light sockets." The strap tells us: "Low-energy light bulbs are so bulky that they do not fit in many standard lamps and light fittings, it has emerged." Cockcroft then writes: "The fluorescent lights, which will be the only type of bulb available by 2012, are also incompatible with older ceiling sockets."

And this story was written by Cockcroft? Or was it just a straight "lift" from The Daily Mail, with the words changed and the name of a new "author" substituted?

If we did this on our blog, presenting other peoples' work as our own, without sourcing or attribution, our readers would – quite rightly – crucify us. If you did this in academia – and got found out – you would be accused of plagiarism. But this is acceptable practice with the MSM, it seems.

Going back to the 28,595 Gaza stories, how many originals do you think there actually are? And going back to the source(s), how many are accurate, reliable and genuine?

(And yes, I've nicked the pic of the light bulb … from The Telegraph. It was the least I could do.)

COMMENT THREAD

Gosh, what a surprise!

It seems that Arab states and governments are secretly relieved that Israel is waging war against Hamas and may well destroy that group's ability. In some cases the opposition to Hamas and the support for Israel have not been all that secret. Well, colour me surprised. After all, anyone with half a brain would have realized some time ago that despite the rhetoric Arab states, rich or poor, give very little support to their Palestinian brethren and tend to urge them to ever greater suicidal missions.

Nor have the pictures of demonstrations in the Middle East shown enormous crowds; not if one compares numbers to demonstrations when something really important happens like the bread riots in Egypt last spring.

However, not all is lost. Hamas will still have the EU, the UN, various NGOs and other tranzis on their side. Somebody should do a psychopathological study on people who wander round the corridors of all these organizations.

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Apologies ...

... for the lack of an overnight posting. The internet system went down last night, for a prolonged period and it was impossible to make a connection. I kept trying until gone three this morning, and then gave up.

Last time that happened, from memory, was only a few months ago, when the whole of the North of England went down. This makes you wonder whether there are things happening that we should know about.

I'll put up a post shortly.

COMMENT THREAD

This reminds me

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame has an update on the ever more embarrassing Panetta saga.

Just to remind those of our readers who do not follow American politics obsessively: President-Elect Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, another Clinton retread, to be the next head of the CIA, an organization that is in deep trouble, mostly of its own doing. For some aspects of the troubles think back to the ridiculous Valerie Plame affair and the constant underhand briefings against President Bush.

The trouble is that Mr Panetta has no background in either intelligence work or administration. Like the President-Elect himself he has done various things but nothing that would justify a high-powered position like that. Needless to say, there has been an outcry among politicians, including Vice President-Elect Biden, Senator Diane Feinstein (who appears to be backtracking on her well-justified criticisms so one wonders what she has been promised), among intelligence officials (Obama had better be careful there or they will start briefing against him as well) and commentators.

Instapundit links to an article in the Washington Post, entitled "Obama is under fire over Panetta selection". It's a good read, coming as it does after a number of curious mis-steps by the President-Elect and his advisers.

Glenn Reynolds picks out one quote:

The Panetta uproar starts Obama off on the wrong foot with the committee and intelligence professionals and was the latest glitch in what has largely been an unusually smooth and carefully choreographed transition.

And asks:

How many "glitches" do you need before it's no longer "unusually smooth and carefully choreographed?"

Suddenly I was back in 1997 and the early months of the Blair government with the media conducting its obsessive honeymoon. As one scandal and unpleasant story after another broke we were told that this was the first glitch in an otherwise extraordinarily successful and charismatic leadership. Sooner or later, of course, they had to admit that there were far too many glitches and the media turned on Blair with a vengeance.

To be fair, those mis-steps occurred after Blair became Prime Minister. If this is anything to go by, Obama's presidency promises to be highly entertaining. Then again, who runs the CIA is of some importance to all of us.

Government by fiat

Booker has a piece in The Daily Mail on the "ban" on incandescent light bulbs … worth a read. You might also revisit our piece on light bulbs and eco-fascism.

What is particularly disturbing is that these light bulbs are being phased out from this week via a "voluntary" agreement with Britain's retailers. This is a shady deal between our own "high-and-mighty officials and politicians" in the government and the retailers, who will no longer sell them.

There is no law and the matter has gone nowhere near Parliament, which has been completely sidelined on this issue – emphasising yet again the impotence of this institution.

This is government by fiat and the clearest of all statements that the laws of this land are no longer made by Parliament, but by a government which is no longer in the remotest way accountable to its people.

Interestingly, the Mail story has 310 comments (at the time of writing), but a pretty mixed response. In the meantime, there is "panic buying" in the shops as people buy up what is left.

No doubt there will be any number of bootleggers now, who will sell you an incandescent bulb on the side, turning this ordinary household item into a symbol of rebellion. The real symbolism, however, may be missed. As these lights go missing from our shops, they mark the lights going out on what is left of our democracy.

COMMENT THREAD

Agents of influence and useful idiots

My colleague has already outlined in what way the propaganda news coverage of the present war in Gaza is different from that of the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is much prattling in the media about the Israelis learning military lessons from the earlier engagement. Maybe so, but what the Israelis have clearly learnt is the need to bypass the so-called main stream media and to put out as fast as possible their own story for the world to see.

In other respects we can safely say plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, not least in the selection of "experts" that the media indulges in. Our attention has been called by a number of people to the ubiquitous presence of a Norwegian doctor, Mads Gilbert and his colleague Erik Fosse.

They entered Gaza on December 31 and have, according to Dr Gilbert, been performing operations day and night on an ever larger number of casualties of whom an ever larger proportion are definitely innocent civilians. This miraculous behaviour does not appear to have prevented Dr Gilbert from appearing on every Western TV station with a frequency that makes one wonder when exactly he has time to do any operating.

Camera.org (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) has the story on the good doctor and his colleague. He is a long-standing member of the political Red (Rodt) party, a revolutionary socialist party in Norway and has expressed his view on numerous occasions that medicine cannot be separated from politics. He is a long-standing supporter of Hamas and, indeed, of any terrorist organization, who told the world in 2001 that the attacks on the United States were justified. This is the man the Norwegian government subsidizes and the world media listens to.

Not all is lost, however. Thanks to Power Line, which has a good posting on that UNWRA school, we also have the story of France2 (the TV station involved in the infamous Mohammed Al-Dura case) admitting that ... ahem ... they made a mistake in some photographs they displayed prominently.

It would appear that the dead civilians and Hamas operatives got to be that way because of a truck with explosives detonated in 2005 in a refugee camp and not because Israel bombed the place in 2009. I suppose, as we were told during the row over Qana, they are dead and that's what matters. How and why are luxuries.

Here is some more reading matter: a fascinating analysis of what might well be the Israeli strategy in the Jerusalem Post and another stonking article by Christopher Hitchens. The man specializes in giving no comfort to anybody. Even if one disagrees with much of his analysis, the article is well worth reading.

COMMENT THREAD

Different dogs, same trick

Unable to defeat Israel, and knowing that an all-out, unrestrained military operations would destroy them, first Hezbollah and now Hamas have been employing the same stratagem to enable them to pursue their terror campaigns yet avoid annihilation.

The stratagem was perhaps discovered by accident in April 1996 when a UN-supervised building in the centre of the village of Qana had been shelled during an Israeli operation code-named "Grapes of Wrath, aimed at clearing out Hezbollah from the region. This had resulted in over 100 civilian deaths, the resulting international pressure precipitating the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

On 30 July 2006, in the second Lebanon War, when the Israelis were attempting to complete the job they had started ten years before, Hezbollah was struggling against the might of Israel and desperately needed a cease-fire in order to regroup and re-build its forces and stocks of weapons. By what appeared to be convenient coincidence, in the small hours of that morning an IDF aircraft was claimed to have bombed a building in the hamlet of Khuraybah, close to Qana.

Hezbollah operatives were quickly asserting that that 60 or more people, many of them children, had been killed. With the complicity of the international media, the recovery of the bodies was stage managed, the figure of "Green Helmet" milking the event for maximum publicity value. The resultant photographs were then used to marshal the international community to press for a cease-fire, finally implemented on 14 August. Once again, Hezbollah had escaped the full consequences of its terrorism.

Now, having provoked Israel beyond endurance from its enclave in Gaza, Hamas, and under extreme pressure from Israeli military action, seems to be playing the same trick, going to the extent of engineering a "massacre" which will mobilise again the international community to push for a cease-fire.

Such is the obvious construction to be drawn from the incident yesterday when Israeli forces "bombed" – or otherwise attacked - "UN schools" being used as refugee centres, and are being accused of killing "more than 50 people," including, of course, many children.



Hamas terrorists, however, have been deliberately placing themselves in the grounds of at least one of these schools while attacking Israeli forces, in order to provoke an Israeli response. This goes beyond using women and children as "human shields". This is a deliberate attempt first to engineer their deaths and then to exploit those same deaths for strategic military gain.

That, in at least one of those same schools, many of the deaths may have resulted from secondary blast, indicates that ammunition or explosives may have been stored in the building, this maximising deaths arising from a provoked attack. One cannot even rule out the placing of explosives deliberately set be to detonated by a primary shock.

The choice of a UN supervised building – as in Qana 1996 - seems too much of a coincidence, thereby ensuring the active engagement of UN officials who have been quick to condemn this "rule of the gun."

Sensibly, however, the Israelis have excluded the international media from Gaza, an exclusion which has had Robert Fisk wailing and gnashing his teeth. The Israelis have also been quicker with their rebuttals, this time providing video evidence of Hamas using school buildings for mortar attacks.

Nevertheless, with Pallywood Productions Inc in high gear, carefully posed photographs (see above, top) are flooding out of Gaza, redolent of the Qana scenes - see right. But, even though the left-wing media is in full cry, the events do not seem to have gained the same political traction as the earlier episodes. Needless to say, the Tranzies are pushing hard for a cease-fire, playing into the hands of Hamas, determined to perpetuate the agony of the people of Gaza, but again there is not the same head of steam that we saw in 2006.

Still, the line is holding – that only a complete cessation of violence by Hamas will call off the IDF. Olmert is now "indicating" that he is open to international efforts to end hostilities if Israel can be sure that supplies of weapons to Hamas will be severed by international monitoring of Gaza's border with Egypt.

This requires the Tranzies to step up to the plate, and then rather neatly transfers to them any responsibility to ensure that violence does not recommence. Hamas must be hoping that pressure mounts for a cease-fire to fend off an outcome that would most definitely restrict their homicidal campaign.

However, with the "Green Helmet" manipulation of the second Qana still fresh in people's memories, the same trick by different dogs does not seem, so far, to be having the required effect.

COMMENT THREAD

Now it's our turn!

Front page of The Daily Express (pictured) has a banner proclaiming: "Global Warming: What planet are they on?"

This leads you to an inside-page story headed: "The big chill that is here to stay," telling us that Britain's Arctic start to 2009 "showed no sign of abating yesterday as much of the UK was gripped by a mini ice-age." It goes on to tell us that temperatures in some parts of the country were predicted to plunge to a bone-chilling -10C last night with the sub-zero temperatures set to last for much of the week.

We are then told that the winter of 1962-1963 was the coldest in England and Wales since 1740, but "forecasters already predict this January chill could rival that." Last night the Met Office warned temperatures would plummet to -10C in Scotland with the rest of Britain set to shiver through temperatures little warmer than that.

And then we come to the killer line: "The freezing weather," says the paper, "has called into question the notion of global warming."

This line brought our local BBC radio station into the fray, Radio Leeds, which invited me to do a two-hander slot with a rabid warmist from Leeds University (introduced at the last minute, so I didn't catch his name).

Tackling the subject now is really great fun, taunting the warmists. It's the adult equivalent of pulling the wings off flies and watching them desperately buzzing around. "It's weather, not climate," they splutter.

And, of course it is. But hey! Whenever it gets hot, the warmists are right there, preaching their creed of doom. Now it's our turn!

COMMENT THREAD

History repeats itself … sort of

It is inevitable that, with the Gaza conflict entering its latest and even more horrific stage, the global media is focusing its attention and its resources on covering the story. But, in the manner of things, the Jo Moore phenomenon is rampant. A huge amount of other news is getting buried.

One such area is the war in Afghanistan, aided and abetted by the MoD which has been reluctant to tell us that a major operation has been going on in Central Helmand, which began in mid-December, in atrocious weather. Presumably, it did not want to tell us that our soliders were fighting the Taleban in case the enemy … er … the Taleban, found out.

This is somewhat redolent of the battle of Musa Qala the December before last, when the military, in the name of "operational security", closed down its information system, leaving enterprising journalists to telephone the Taleban in the town to find out what was going on. It seems the MoD is incapable of learning even the simplest of lessons.

However, even that news which has leaked out has been given minimal coverage by the media and one is reminded of the 2006 Lebanon war, which started on 12 July and ran on through until the cease fire in 14 August, formally ending on 8 September. Equally then, the media – and this blog - was heavily focused on the events there. And, in an uncanny resemblance to the current situation, many important events went completely unreported.

This is coming through loud and clear in my researches for the book, where I find that there were major events occurring in southern Iraq under British occupation that completely escaped the attention of the media. Those events, as it turned out, were the turning point of the campaign, yet many of them remain obscure, even to this day.

So it may well be with Afghanistan, where the tempo of operations is producing a significant casualty rate. Yet, as with Iraq at the time, virtually the only information that was being published was on the steady trickle of soldiers getting killed.

Of special interest in yesterday's Telegraph, therefore, was a long feature by Thomas Harding, reflecting on precisely this issue. "The numbers of dead are harrowing," he writes, "but they do not tell the whole story." He then continues:

This is a counter-insurgency campaign, in which the measure of success is more likely to be determined by the miles of new roads built than the numbers of Taliban – or Britons – killed. And even though we have been in Helmand for four years now, almost as long as the First World War, military planners are preparing for a prolonged campaign.

"If we take more casualties this year, the world will not end," says one of the officers involved in plotting our strategy. "Britain will not leave with its tail between its legs. The thing that's keeping us going is that we understand this is a long-term thing, not something that's a quick fix. We have the mindset that this is a 15-year endeavour."

In fact, the main problem might not be in the fields of Helmand, but in the living rooms of Britain and America. The public must be convinced that the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting.

These observations are profound and well crafted. But, like the death rate, they do not tell the whole story. Much of the absence of media coverage of the events in southern Iraq during the British occupation was, I suspect, not only due to the obsessive secrecy of the MoD, but also because the media was not interested. Furthermore, it was probably not only the media. I strongly suspect that the general public wasn't either.

The mood, as I remember it was that most people simply wanted the Army out of Iraq and, I equally suspect, that the current mood is much the same in resepect of Afghanistan. Thus, Harding's view – which I share – that "the main problem might not be in the fields of Helmand, but in the living rooms of Britain and America," is probably correct, but not for quite the same reason as he postulates.

Hostility of the public to a war is one thing. That can be addressed, harnessed and even turned. But that is not really what is at issue. That, it seems to me, is indifference. Like so many things in life – not least the EU – we do not know, because we do not care one way or another what is happening. That, in the final analysis, is the bigger problem.

COMMENT THREAD

More on those dates

The entertainment continues on Conservative History Journal. Lots of suggestions and another posting but the final list is still in the making. Meanwhile another list has been started. This one for obsessives only: turning points in the Second World War. Let's roll.

In the money

Picked up by The Daily Mail is the staggering story that the bill for membership of the European Union will increase by nearly £4 billion, because the collapse of the pound's value against the euro.

According to figures contained in the smallprint of Alistair Darling's Pre-Budget Report last November, Britain's net contribution to the EU will be £4 billion in 2009-2010. In 2010-11, this will increase to £6.5billion. But the chancellor calculated the figures when £1 was worth 1.4 euros.

The same story was picked up earlier by The Independent which adds a small but vital detail. When determining the exchange rate at which we pay our EU bill, this is set for the forthcoming year at the end of the previous year. Thus, even if the pound recovers some of all of its value – which it most likely will – we are still lumbered with this additional cost.

This, of course, is real money. It has to be found by the UK taxpayer, if not now, through borrowing that will have to be paid-for sooner or later. And, if Mr Brown's government cannot raise the money, then something (or many things) will have to be cut to pay the bill.

The sum, incidentally, is about the same as we would eventually have to pay for our new carriers. Since these would be (and in fact already are) pencilled in to join the EU Navy, we might just as well cancel them and let the EU buy its own carriers.

COMMENT THREAD

Yet again I have to ask

What is the matter with our journalists? Con Coughlin is one of the most experienced and most knowledgeable foreign correspondents and analysts we have in the media. Yet he has come up with the most jejune piece on his blog (well, clog, as this is hardly a blog in the real sense of the word).

He expresses the wish that Obama move into the White House as soon as possible because the Bush administration is even more of a lame-duck than usual, having, according to Mr Coughlin, done nothing about the crisis in Gaza beyond supporting Israel.

Well, first things first. Someone should tell Mr Coughlin that the United States has a constitution (and a very fine document it is, too). Amendment 20, ratified in January 1933, states:

1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

In other words, unless President-Elect Obama wants to go against what the Constitution says - something he has not done so far, despite his eccentric behaviour in various ways - he cannot move into the White House until he has gone through the inauguration process on January 20. Got that, Mr Coughlin? It's not difficult.

Secondly, it is somewhat contradictory to say

Throughout the past week, while Israel has intensified its bombardment of Gaza, the Bush administration has hardly uttered a word, save to give its approval to the Israeli action. In other words, if that's what the Israelis want to do, that's fine by us.

Either President Bush is a lame duck and is doing nothing or he is supporting Israel not, as Mr Coughlin says, because he does not care and let Israel do what it wants but because he believes, as many of us, including the commenters on the clog, do that the hostilities were started by Hamas's rockets.

Mr Coughlin, and, it would appear, most of the Telegraph newspapers believe otherwise or they prefer to ignore Hamas aggression against Israel, against Fatah, against all its opponents, against many Palestinians in general. But that is hardly President Bush's fault. Nor is it an indication of drift.

Thirdly, there is little evidence that President-Elect Obama will do or say otherwise. On the whole, he has been very quiet on Gaza (unlike various other issues) and may well be preoccupied with problems in his own camp. But, as several commenters point out, the change may or may not happen on January 21 and, if it does, there is no guarantee that Mr Coughlin and his colleagues will like it.

The sooner Con Coughlin understands some or, preferably, all of this, the better for the Daily Telegraph and its readers (among whom I no longer count myself).

Two-faced Brits

Yesterday did not go quite as planned, with several posts on the stocks but none written. Not least, the book is taking its toll, now with 62,000 words written, and the shape of the "plot" crafted by Booker in his column.

Predictably, the comments on the online version were relatively few in number, but better quality than expected. Usually, when anything on Iraq is written, it drags in all the nutters, afflicted with Bush derangement syndrome and those accusing Blair (and Bush) of conducting an illegal war. There would have been more comments, but for the moderators' censorship – hotly denied but true nonetheless – and habit of closing down comment early.

One interesting comment from an American accused us Brits of being "two-faced." We complain "when YOUR troops are just sitting there when they are getting hit with rockets & mortars; but then you protest in the streets when Israel takes the VERY SAME action YOU demand that YOUR troops should have taken to halt the rockets and mortars."

Actually, "we" don't, but I was not allowed to make that point by the censorious Telegraph. But, as we pointed out in an earlier post, there are parallels between the situation in al Amarah in the first half of 2006 and the present situation in Gaza. In the former, the British turned tail and ran, in the latter, of course, we see a robust response, reflecting a determination and commitment than no longer seems to exist in this country.

The parallel continues in a sense, where we see the whimpish response of our government manifest itself again, with first Miliband and now Gordon Brown calling for a cease fire.

The only good thing to come out of this horrible episode, therefore, is to see the Israelis – in contrast to their disarray in Lebanon in 2006 – reject the bleatings of the appeasers who seem to think that it is possible to negotiate with Hamas on the same basis that you would expect with a normal government.

That rejection also extends to the increasingly pathetic EU which is so embarrassing that it seems to be admitting its own failures even to itself. The ghastly Javier Solana has conceded that there had been a "failure of diplomacy" in response to the Gaza crisis so far.

Much the same has applied to the other tranzie deadweight, the UN, with even Hamas dismissing its attempts at mediation as a "farce", after the security council failed to agree a statement in response to the crisis.

By contrast, the US is taking the only credible line, calling for a ceasefire "as soon as possible" but linking that to an absolute guarantee that Hamas ends its rocket fire. And there, Hamas could bring this trauma to an end right now. All it has to do is to stop firing rockets, surrender its arsenal and give that guarantee.

However, there is one final parallel with al Amarah. Although the British response to what is known as "indirect fire" was ineffective, that did not mean that it did nothing. It launched many raids into al Amarah, killing and wounding several hundred (or even more), Mahdi fighters, damaging and destroying hundreds of houses and killing many civilians. It also called in air strikes, many times.

These things it did in the exercise of its right to self defence, as an occupying power, under the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949, and the much older rules in the Hague Regulations of 1907. None of the precious "international community" so much as batted an eye when the UK exercised this right – much less called for a "cease fire" while the Mahdi Army was still rocketing the British base. Yet it seems that the UK, with its fellow travellers, would deny Israel exactly the same right.

Perhaps our commentator was right: us Brits are two-faced.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker

The column is up, part 1 here and part 2 here.

You will find part 1 rather familiar. We'll post comment on this and other matters later today.

COMMENT THREAD

Engrenage again

Although great events dominate the headlines, as always, the slow, insidious process of EU economic integration goes on, this – in the Monnet mould – being the precursor to and the mechanism for political integration.

In the spotlight (not) is the news carried by the Irish RTE network which announces that, as of Thursday (i.e., 1 January), "a new small claims procedure has been put in place for people across the European Union to deal with cross-border complaints."

Like the Irish Small Claims Court system, this piece tells us, the new procedure is for dealing with disputes concerning goods or services of €2000 or less. The new system will make it simpler for people to resolve complaints against traders based in another EU country. (Previously a court action had to be pursued.)

Generally the new procedure will cost a fee of just €15, and no layer (sic) is necessary. Claimants will file a standard claim form, the defendant is given the chance to reply, and then judgement is issued in 30 days. The judgement is enforced by the member state.

This, of course, will not work – different systems and different priorities will cause all sorts of hang-ups. But you can see the progression. First, you "open" the borders to the free flow of goods and create a borderless system of trading. Then, inevitably, the cross-border consumer cannot get redress over faulty goods, so you must then have an official cross-border system to deal with that.

Then, in the fullness of time, when this is shown not to work, you must then introduce a common system of enforcement. When that does not work, you must have a "European" supervisory agency to ensure that the common rules are applied … and so on and so on.

By such tiny, barely-reported steps, each separated by many years, does the process gradually ensnare us so that, decades later, we look up and ask "how the hell did we get into this mess?" By then it is too late.

That the process is politically driven is well evident by our lack of arrangements with the USA. There, UK online (i.e., cross-border) trading volume is much higher, but it works on the basis of trust – and the old principle of caveat emptor. There is no official intervention, and no common small claims system. You take your chances and, by and large, the system works to the satisfaction of all.

The genius of engrenage, though, is that nobody notices. Each step can be justified, in isolation, on apparently good grounds – as long as no one understands that it is a process, and the end point is economic and then political integration. By such means are we thus enslaved.

COMMENT THREAD

Broken China

This blog has been pretty consistent in maintaining that the Chinese "economic miracle" is not all that it has seemed and that the country, economically and politically, has been on the brink for some time.

Despite some pundits suggesting that China would weather the global downturn, evidence now coming in suggests that China's vast manufacturing sector is on the brink of technical recession. Order books have emptied and once humming factories are falling silent.

This "bleak snapshot" comes via the manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI), a survey produced by CLSA, the Hong Kong brokerage. Over the past 12 weeks, says The Times which carries details of the survey, "it has painted a far more rapidly worsening picture than anyone predicted." China, it adds, has proved its "unexpectedly high vulnerability to the global financial crisis."

Unexpected by some – but not by this blog. And the signs are indeed bleak. Output has contracted at a record pace, employment fell for the fifth month and work in hand has declined. Five back-to-back PMIs are signalling contraction. The manufacturing sector, which accounts for 43 percent of the Chinese economy, is close to technical recession.

The political implications are also bleak. The Communist Party's political legitimacy depends heavily on its ability to maintain improving economic conditions and is, in a sense, hostage to its huge populations which, prone to rioting, could tear the government apart.

Even then, we do not have the first idea of what is happening in the agricultural sector, or the outlying provincial towns, but it takes little imagination to work out that, if the major industrial centres are having hard times, there must be knock-on effects right through the country.

The bad weather last year did not help, when heavy snow and rain - the worst in five decades - hit southern China in January and February 2008, resulting in deaths, structural collapses, blackouts, accidents, transport problems and livestock and crop losses in 19 provinces.

Already bad weather had come to southern China and a repeat of the winter conditions experienced last year could add further stress to the political and economic systems.

Where this will all lead is anyone's guess. China is now part of the wider global economy but no one can predict how its government will react if its seriously threatened by internal dissent and unrest. The country is, in a sense, the wild card in a pack that already has too many jokers.

COMMENT THREAD

Cherry picking

One of the problems about writing intelligently about any subject is that situations which emerge as the hystérie du jour are invariably far more complex than the drive-by media allow for. In many instances, what appear to be the primary issues identified are of less importance and, very often, miss the point entirely.

So it is with the current "gas crisis" over the Russians "turning off the taps" to Ukraine, once again holding Europe to ransom, with the possible knock-on effect of acute supply shortages in the UK. In fact, the chance of the UK experiencing gas shortages by the end of the winter is relatively high, but this has little if anything to do with the Russian action. We take only four percent of our gas imports from Europe, which have very little impact on our supply situation.

For an intelligent (and inevitably long) discourse on the issues, you could do no better than read this, which provides a useful and well-illustrated backgrounder.

The immediate cause of any problem is the continued decline in gas production from the UK continental shelf, but the underlying problem is that UK natural gas consumption has been increasing, primarily because of its use for electricity generation. For the months January through September 2008, consumption increased by 3.9 percent compared to the same period of 2007.

To expand upon this issue, we have, rather fortuitously, a letter from Tony Lodge, which identifies the nub of the problem.

He tells us that, since 1997 the Government has approved over 30 gigawatts of electricity generation from gas-fired power stations. Gas now generates over 43 percent of our electricity. No other conventional power plants, such as clean coal or nuclear, have been approved in this period to boost energy diversity and get prices down.

Further, at present, 90 percent of current and proposed power station construction in Britain is gas-fired. By 2020, 60 percent or more of our electricity will come from gas, 80 percent of which will be imported by pipeline or LNG ship. Gas prices are tied to oil prices and, though low now, will rise again and remain volatile. Thus, observes Lodge, all our energy eggs are in one basket.

The answer, of course, is to widen our generation mix, to which effect Lodge points to the vital need to approve the proposed new supercritical coal plant at Kingsnorth.

The drive-by media, of course, is not interested in such broader analysis, and goes for the easy pickings of the shortage of gas storage. Typical of this is The Mail, which then translates this simplistic analysis into a partisan political knockabout, citing "Tory energy spokesman Greg Clark".

He is thus recruited to say: "As a result of ten years of government inaction, Britain is one of the most vulnerable countries in Europe to turbulence in gas supply. Germany has 99 days of gas storage capacity, France has 122 days, while Britain has just 15 days. As a result, British consumers pay the price because we are more exposed to volatile gas prices than our neighbours."

Then we get the supposedly "killer punch": "The Government has known for years that dwindling North Sea reserves would leave us dependent on imported gas yet has done nothing to make sure we have enough gas storage to protect us from brinkmanship by Russia."

In the manner of things, this is then converted by the drive-by blosphere into "Labour incompetence", and the narrative is now defined. Build up the gas storage and all our problems are over – and it is all Labour's fault for not seeing this.

There is, needless to say, a good deal of truth in any assertion that Labour has been horribly incompetent in the management of our energy supplies, but – as Lodge and others suggest – this does go far beyond the simple issue of gas storage. Furthermore, it is a multi-faceted problem which goes back many years.

Crucially though, another part of the problem is the run-down of our nuclear industry. Another is the run-down of our coal industry. Another is the obsession with "global warming", which has completely distorted energy policy.

These issues must be factored into the equation. But, not only do they go back to before 1997, they currently transcend the party political divide. Not least of our problems is the Conservative support for the "global warming" mantra, its espousal of renewable energy – and in particular, wind power – and its lukewarm approach to renewing our nuclear estate.

How much simpler it is, though, to cherry-pick one aspect of a complex problem, turn that into a political point-scoring exercise and then retire from the field, marking up the points on the scoreboard. But, while this may keep the chattering classes entertained, it does nothing to help the understanding of the problem, or create the political leverage which will get the underlying problem solved.

More than anything else, we must reduce our reliance on natural gas for electricity production, and rapidly expand our coal and nuclear generation capacity. And which politicians are going to be brave enough to say that?

COMMENT THREAD

A defence of defence?

Liam Fox, Conservative shadow defence secretary, writes in The Daily Telegraph arguing that "Gordon Brown is misleading the nation by claiming that the EU does not affect defence policy."

You can read it if you wish but this is no great attack on the EU and its ambitions for a European Army. Instead, Fox confines himself to an attack on the "safe" subject of the Lisbon Treaty. His substantive (if you can call it that) argument, therefore, is that "Gordon Brown was wrong when he told the House of Commons recently that it 'in no way affects our defence policy'".

Fox is also playing silly games, claiming that, through the Lisbon Treaty, "the EU will get a foothold in our defence policy for the first time." It actually gained that through the Maastricht Treaty which, if memory serves me right, was approved by a … er … Conservative government. Once again, we see the Conservative opposition to the EU starting and finishing with the Lisbon Treaty. Everything else is off-limits.

Thus, what is far more interesting is a comment on the piece from "Jose M. Barroso", in the following terms:

Not really interested Liam.

The time to stop this happening was fifteen years ago under the collective heading 'Maastricht' and the anti-democratic detritus parasitically attached to it - a test of strength and trustworthiness your party comprehensively, miserably failed, with the honourable exception of a small number of MP's in your party.

You want us to trust the Tories on defence - in particular after Clarke's axe fell on them in the 90's? Here's a test for you - make a new year's resolution, insist that the effete child currently 'opposing' Alistair Darling mentions the words 'Aircraft Carriers' and 'funding' in the same sentence as early as possible in 2009. The absence of such commitments thus far merely underlines the lack of credibility your Party holds with regard to National Defence. It was your party surrendered Britain to this EU. Don't try to lecture us on its manifest and inbuilt inadequacies now.

Too late, old chum.

Far, far too late.

You can see why the Tories have a problem. We pointed that out in February 2007, so we need to go further than just stopping this one treaty. To have any effect, we need to go right back to the Maastricht Treaty – something, of course, that Liam does not mention.

Nor does Liam particularly want to be reminded that, when British membership of the European Defence Agency (about which Liam Fox now rails) was put up to the House of Commons, the Tories joined with the government in nodding it through.

It's all very well Liam thus telling us that the Conservatives want the EU to work in partnership with Nato. The EU doesn't want to work in partnership with Nato – it wants to destroy it. And the Conservatives support the EU.

What do you think is going to happen?

COMMENT THREAD

Windmills are not for turning

Mr Peter Mosley of Croachy, Inverness has a letter published today noting that he got into his car at 9am on Tuesday and the display said that the temperature outside was -13°C. On his journey he went past a windfarm and observed that the turbines were not turning. They had been the same for the previous few cold days.

Does this mean, he asks, that the 132,000 homes this installation claims to supply are without power, or do they manage to get electricity somehow from elsewhere? He thus concludes that, "Wind power does not appear to be a very good solution to the country's energy problem."

Mr Mosely is, of course, dead right. In the last three days, the coldest so far this winter and colder than we have experienced from some considerable time, we are effectively becalmed. As can be seen from the real-time wind map, barring the tip of Cornwall, where the wind speed is rated at 20 mph, the UK is effectively in the state of no wind generation. Here, the highest point in this part of Yorkshire, Emley Moor, the windspeed is officially recorded as zero.


We noted this same phenomenon last May, which was bad enough, but today in bitter winter conditions, the National Grid is under pressure. The demand for electricity will be high. Had we reached the mythical 35 percent – or whatever – wind generation target, we would now be in serious trouble.

Even then, this is but one consequence of the "weather". The Guardian has another. It headlines, "UK on cold weather health alert as temperatures tumble," telling us: "Fears that below-freezing temperatures could threaten vulnerable groups". Mortality is set to soar as the thermometer plunges. Our local paper also tells us that one in four pensioners, unable to afford their heating bills (inflated by the "greenie" levies), are spending their days in bed in order to keep warm.

Bizarrely, while The Daily Telegraph is telling us that, "New Year return to work could be hit by snow flurries," in the print edition there is a picture of the freezing conditions, alongside the statutory "warming story".

This is from an old favourite, the curator of Kew Gardens, who is telling us that, "Oak tree deaths herald new pest threat to traditional plants." Traditional British plants from the oak tree to the garden cabbage, he bleats, "are under threat because of the effects of climate change."

Well, Mr Curator, currently, "people deaths" are a much bigger problem. And unless the politicians get their act together and recognise that we have a crisis in the making if cooling sets in and becomes a trend, there will be many more – completely avoidable - "people deaths". But then, the chances of that are about as good as a windmill producing electricity on a day like this.

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And that goes for me, too

As the clock strikes midnight: Happy New Year to all our readers. It's 2009 and may it bring us all some cheer.

Happy New Year

If there ever was a time for "bah humbug" it is perhaps this particular day – freezing cold, light snow on the ground with heavy falls forecast – and the economic situation just as bleak. And with the Met Office forecasting a hot summer, you can be assured that we will be in for a damp, dismal and cold year.

That apart, we have a government that is clearly incapable of running any sort of celebration in a brewery, even if tap water was the drink of choice, while all the pundits tell us that, if 2008 was bad, you ain't seen nuffink yet.

For all that, there is as good a reason for being happy as any, for a few hours at least – simply being miserable is highly unproductive and terribly boring. So, for those few hours, running into tomorrow, we might just as well pull down the booze and make the most of it – it ain't going to last.

Happy New Year!

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