A study in irrelevancy

With the UK domestic media obsessed with election fever, which is dominating the national headlines, it would be very easy to forget that the UK livestock industry is approaching meltdown – as this site will readily attest.

It is a fair bet that, if a similar crisis was affecting French farmers, president Nicolas Sarkozy would not be basking in applause at his Party's annual conference, but would be holding urgent meetings with EU officials to bring aid to his beleaguered farmers.

As it stands, it is doubtful whether there is even a debate on agriculture at the Labour Party Conference with week and, while Brown is playing cat-and-mouse with the Tories over an election date, our real government – the European Union - is getting down to work elsewhere, making decisions which will far transcend anyhting Mr Brown is capable of doing.

That "elsewhere" is New York where, according to the IHT, dozens of "world leaders" are meeting today at the United Nations for a full agenda of talks on how to fight global warming.

President Bush, we are told, is skipping all the day's events except the dinner. Less well reported is the fact that Gordon Brown will not be there at all – but then he is an irrelevance. Britain will simply fall into line with the EU agenda, which still includes a commitment to an entirely unattainable 20 percent cut in emissions by 2020.

Bush, who plans to hold his own meetings later in the week, is very much under fire (as always) for advocating voluntary agreements to deliver emission cuts, with the president's chief environmental adviser, James Connaughton, stating firmly that, "It's our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be."

Such robust independence does not, of course, go down well with the Tranzie community, hence with about 150 countries present at the UN conference, Bush will be the demon figure.

But, at least this demonstrates that Bush is master in his own house. Before even the applause fades in Bournemouth, where Brown will be speaking to his faithful, Britain's impotence on the world stage will once again have been adequately demonstrated by his absence at the councils that really matter.

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What is wrong with the Observer?

Actually, that is a rhetorical question. Trying to answer it does not seem to me to be a particularly fruitful way of spending Sunday evening.

Every now and then I cannot help asking the question, though. Take the article today about Gordon Brown refusing to attend the EU-Africa Summit if Robert Mugabe is invited.

As far as most people are concerned and that must include even readers of the Observer, that is possibly the only statement Gordon Brown has made, with which one can agree wholeheartedly (give or take the fact that many of us think an EU-Africa Summit is a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money).

Furthermore, by refusing to countenance Mugabe’s presence in Lisbon, Gordon Brown shows himself to be the only leader of an EU Member Country to stick to the letter and content of the Common Position on Zimbabwe. Did all those Member States not agree as part of the common foreign policy to refuse to admit Mugabe as well as his friends and relations to European soil? Is that not one of the great advantages, as we were told by the Independent some time ago, of having the EU – that there can be a common position of this kind and it can be enforced?

None of which matters. What is of importance (well, apart from the fact that Gordon Brown shows himself to be an imperialist by his disapproval of one of the bloodiest kleptocrats in Africa) is that it will all be so embarrassing.

No one wants a repeat of 2000 when Tony Blair boycotted a conference over Mugabe's presence, or of 2003 when a summit in Lisbon was abandoned over the same issue - EU sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe in 2002 included a travel ban on the dictator. And this year, the Portuguese hosts say, the potential rewards of closer ties between the two continents outweigh antagonism between the leaders of Britain and Zimbabwe.

Whitehall sources insist Brown's decision to boycott is not meant as a rebuke to Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, who will host the meeting. 'In the coverage it has been about the Prime Minister and Mugabe,' the source said. 'That is not how he sees it. The assumption is that Mugabe is going. If he is there, the Prime Minister doesn't want to attend. But he is not saying he should not go. He is not dictating who should attend. He is just saying he will not go.'

Then there will be the embarrassment of other African leaders not turning up because Mugabe is not invited.

Other nations have weighed in - Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa has stepped up to say if Mugabe doesn't go, then he won't either, and two empty African chairs would cause considerable embarrassment to fledgling African unity.

Well, diddums. What all these people should be embarrassed by is the fact that for all their high-falutin’ chatter they do not care what happens to Africa or Africans. That goes for all the aid merchants as well.

As we suspected, if Brown holds firm he may well find the Scandinavian countries on his side and the Summit will be so embarrassing that it will not happen. Well, one can dream, can’t one.

Will anything useful come out of the Summit? Doubtful. Does anyone even have any useful ideas to discuss? It doesn’t look like it. Will we continue to pour aid into that benighted Continent for it all to be stolen by the tyrannical kleptocracy? You bet. Will we ever understand that the best thing we can do is get out, trade with the African countries and let private enterprise develop? Not in the foreseeable future.

So why have the Summit? Oh well, you know, it is good to talk and useful things can come out of it and, anyway, the Chinese are establishing their hegemony in Africa. And that is our problem because …. Oh wait, it is not our problem.

The Chinese will establish their hegemony by buying and selling. They need energy and other resources and they are ready to sell arms for it. Nothing to be done about that unless we can somehow put pressure on China. Summits with African countries will not help.

As for aid – that stupid the Chinese are not. They give when they want something in return and they make sure that they get that something. They don’t even bother to set up Communist or quasi-Communist parties the way the Soviets used to do. On the whole it might be quite a useful way of handling the African problem. Certainly no less useful than Summit Blather and large amounts of moolah handed over to the nasties, which seems to be our chosen method.

COMMENT THREAD

An interesting analysis

Honestly, I have read Ayn Rand. And agree with most of her ideas. It's just there aren't all that many of them. You read one essay and you agree; you read another one and you still agree; on the third and fourth you find yourself saying: "hey, I've read that and agreed with it already". And that, I am afraid, is that.

Still, there is a good piece on The Atlas Society, called "Atlas Mugged" (geddit?) about the gradual ossification of the main-stream media and the irruption into it of the blogosphere. It concentrates on the United States, mentioning only 18 Doughty Street in a country called England (do they know something we don't?) but the general outline is correct.

There is, of course, the additional problem in Britain and, presumably, that is a sign of different attitudes, of the MSM trying to take over the blogosphere through "clogging", that is, journalist supposedly blogging on their media site.

Of course, they cannot take over but they can and do undermine us by pretending to be bloggers and being treated as such. In other words, this is a blatant attempt to enclose blogging inside the big tent of the MSM. I suspect it will fail.

This is very sad

The passing of a great man has to be marked and Marcel Marceau, the great French mime, whose death has just been announced, was a very great man and a very great artist, who managed to present an extraordinarily wide range of emotions and characters without once uttering a word.

Well, not on stage, anyhow. He did speak once in a film, Mel Brooks's "Silent Movie". Marceau had the only speaking part, famously pronouncing the word "Non". Perhaps, he was thinking of General de Gaulle.

The obituary tells us something about Marceau's background and early life as a French Jew:

Marceau was born Marcel Mangel on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, France. His father Charles, a butcher who sang baritone, introduced his son to the world of music and theater at an early age. The boy adored the silent film stars of the era: Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx brothers.

When the Germans marched into eastern France, he and his family were given just hours to pack their bags. He fled to southwest France and changed his last name to Marceau to hide his Jewish origins.

With his brother Alain, Marceau became active in the French Resistance. Marceau altered children's identity cards, changing their birth dates to trick the Germans into thinking they were too young to be deported. Because he spoke English, he was recruited to be a liaison officer with Gen. George S. Patton's army.

In 1944, Marceau's father was sent to Auschwitz, where he died.

Some explanation there for this astonishing performer's art.

Nice work if you can get it

It was only Thursday when we were joining in the throng, sympathising with the local constabularies about the costs they were having to bear dealing with immigrants on their patches.

But now, it appears that the leader of the pack, Cambridgeshire Constabulary (Creating a safer Cambridgeshire) is somewhat less cash-strapped than Chief Constable Julie Spence would have us believe.

Although she pleads eloquently on the force website for "more coppers for coppers", according to the Sunday Times she has also been able to "invest" in a fleet of 21 luxury Volvo XC70 estates for her senior officers, spending £500,000 from the police budget.

The cars are supplied to all the force's superintendents and chief superintendents, partly as a perk to attract new recruits. The officers are allowed to use the cars for holidays, shopping trips and other "social and domestic pleasure" purposes as well as when they are on duty – where, no doubt, they spend most of the time in the car parks.

Costing a mere £33,500 each (with discounts for quantity), the Sunday Times notes that, in the words of Volvo's marketing literature, these upmarket vehicles "aim to spoil".

They can hardly spoil the now tarnished relationship between ordinary people and the police though – who cannot seem to afford real policemen to rescue drowning boys, but it does reinforce the "us and them" culture which seems to characterise so-called "public service".

As Booker remarks in his column today, "it seems, when the political class that now rules our lives chooses to exercise its power, the police see their role as not to hold the ring but merely to act rather too enthusiastically in its support." It is only fitting, I suppose, that their bosses should be rewarded with luxury cars for their troubles.

COMMENT THREAD

Jackpot!

After the idiotic letter from Paddy Keenan last week in The Sunday Telegraph (still no link) – claiming that a Tucano with a bomb load "would not get much further than the end of the runway", we have no less than four letters in the print edition of the paper today – occupying the lead slot (no link).

Posted on Defence of the Realm.

A "lose-lose" situation

On the eve of the Labour Party conference, the political talk is of nothing else but the prospect of a snap general election – the favoured date being 25 October – when Gordon Brown’s Labour Party would be expected to romp home to a landslide victory.

The likelihood was boosted by a poll in the Telegraph yesterday, which showed that Brown's popularity has remained unaffected by the Northern Rock crisis.

Similar polls today, say the same thing, leaving Tory Diary clutching at straws, while the Mail on Sunday is retailing that "Senior Tories fear defeat".

Even the left-wing Guardian is waxing lyrical about Brown’s prospects, telling us that, "Carried forward on calm seas and gentle currents, Gordon Brown will sail into Bournemouth this weekend in the most benign of circumstances….", happily predicting, along with the rest, a staggering Brown victory.

Bizarrely though, via the Sunday Times we learn that Brown "will fight the general election on the issue that he says will be his key priority in office – the future of the National Health Service," the very issue on which Tory leader David Cameron has staked his – and his Party's – reputation.

The bizarre element comes with another article in the same paper which reports, "GPs' generous pay deal costs £1.8bn more than ministers bargained for," an account of the catastrophic miscalculation of the family doctor contracts, leaving people with a poorer service at a staggeringly higher cost.

But what really takes the biscuit is the front page of the Independent on Sunday (pictured) which sets out yet another disastrous outcome of Labour's management of the health service, setting out the details of "Britain's maternity crisis", with too few trained staff, a massive shortage of midwives, and poor resources. This has meant that hundreds of babies are dying needlessly each year and that death rates in childbirth are showing no signs of declining, despite medical advances.

Now, if against that record of dire management, Brown can actually contemplate leading a general election campaign on the Health Service – and still be confident of winning – it would seem that he will be able to take dissatisfaction over the constitutional reform treaty in his stride.

Although, in political terms, the epithet "teflon" is now rather over-worked, it must apply to Brown in spades. And if health issues dominate any election, the EU won't even get a look in. Furthermore, when and if Brown does romp home despite his Party's dire management of the service, he would be forgiven for believing he can walk on water. Under those circumstances, any residual demands for a referendum will be contemptuously brushed aside.

Sadly, therefore, this only confirms our earlier prediction that we that we cannot rely on an election to force the EU referendum issue – but for an entirely different reason. Then, we were suggesting that we would not get an election – on the basis that the EU referendum could become an issue. But, in the present climate, even the traditional aversion to fighting elections with the EU a live issue, this would not be enough to make a difference.

This, it would seem, is a classic, "lose-lose" situation.

COMMENT THREAD

A delicious conflict

One of the longest-running and most entertaining conflicts in the EU (from our point of view) is the battle between the commission and the Council over the approval of GM crops.

With Austria in the forefront and Poland not far behind, France too has had it moments.

But now, according to Le Monde, France is upping the ante – leaping into first place amongst the GM refuseniks - by planning a complete freeze on the sale of GM seeds. The actual ban, we are told, will be announced next month a national conference on the environment, involving farmers, business and advocacy groups.

This has provoked an immediate protest from the commission, which has sternly reminded France that such a ban is prohibited by EU rules. "A general ban is not possible" for an EU state or region, says Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas.

Behind the pressure for a ban in France is anti-globalisation campaigner José Bové (pictured), who still exerts a powerful influence on French politics and is not one who Sarkozy will cross willingly.

But the ultimate irony of all this is that the commission, despite having bribed groups like Friends of the Earth, it is finding that the Greenies are causing no end of embarrassment. Having recently opposed industrial-scale biofuels, they are also opposing the very thing which some experts say is the only option for increasing production of crops to meet the demand for food and renewable fuel sources.

Although it has paraded itself as the champion of the environment, it seems the commission has yet entirely to convince the greens.

COMMENT THREAD

A Letter from Limburg

End of Round 1

Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende announced today that the Dutch cabinet, acting on advice from the Privy Council that the new treaty does not contain anything that affects the Dutch constitution, has decided that a second referendum is not necessary. Instead, the treaty will be submitted to the House of Commons for approval in the normal way.

What Parliament will decide is still very much in the air. The main opposition parties, led by the Socialist Party, are clearly in favour of a referendum but it all hangs on whether they can scrape together a majority, and for that we must wait for the Labour Party (PvdA) and the Liberal Democrats (VVD). Despite some plain talking from Frits Bolkestein, honorary VVD member of the Upper House , the VVD is continuing to play coy. Rather than make a commitment, they want to hold out until they have seen the final treaty text.

Meantime the PvdA, who hold the key to a majority, seem to be having trouble making up their minds. The accusations of trading their agreement for concessions on a planned employment law change, whether true or not, have been rapidly acquiring the status of an urban legend and leading members of the party – perhaps so as not to rock the coalition government boat and to appease their coalition partner the CDA – have been slowly trying to distance themselves from previous commitments to a referendum, while trying not to upset the grassroots party members who are said to be very much in favour of a referendum. Internal party meetings planned for Tuesday will hopefully allow them to decide one way or the other.

The uncertainty over the referendum has not cooled the determination of the Europhiles though. The latest scaremongering comes from in the form of a statement from Minister of Education Ronald Plasterk that the only alternative to agreeing to the treaty is for the Netherlands to leave the EU. Now there's a thought ...

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Spot the difference

By way of a demonstration of our new facility, we have posted on Umbrella Blog about the young boy who drowned, while two community support officers (CSOs) who were summoned to help merely called for a trained police officer.

The new facility gives us the opportunity to post the occasional story completely unrelated to the EU Referendum theme, thus enabling us to reserve this blog for its specialist subjects.

More importantly, it enables us to offer readers - who do not wish to run their own blogs - an additional opportunity to publish their views on the internet. We are thus happy to consider submissions (on any subject) up to about 400 words. Use the "contact us" button on the sidebar if you have any material you wish to be considered.

We have also posted a thread on the forum (link below). This will be a temporary home, while we develop a dedicated forum for the new blog. Further posts of this nature will be notified only on the Umbrella Blog main page.

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A Nato run by France?

We saw the news a while back that France was considering rejoining Nato as a full member. This was a development hinted at by Nicolas Sarkozy who said he wanted France to resume "its full place" in the organisation, insisting Nato was no rival to France's ambition of a robust European defence capability.

Posted on Defence of the Realm.

Breaking news (sort of)

Undoubtedly we shall have a more detailed report from Our Man in Amsterdam (a.k.a Simon North) but, meantime, it seems that the Dutch cabinet has ruled out the idea of a referendum. Even the BBC has blithely assumed that the reason was not protection of representative democracy but a fear that the Dutch people will vote against the treaty.

Then again, the decision not to hold a referendum will have to be upheld by parliament so we might see a reversal. Over to Our Special Correspondent.

Constitutional debate in Turkey

It is good to know that there are open debates about constitutional changes somewhere almost in Europe. Of course, the debates are in Turkey, a country that is unlikely ever to become part of the European Union, which is probably just as well. They might be shocked by the way matters are swept under the carpet here.

Chinaview reports that the AKP working group that has been discussing a reform to the constitution, which is not the original one set up by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, but one that was brought in during a military coup in 1980, has failed to reach agreement on a number of issues.

The lawmakers and academicians of the AKP working group have agreed on maintaining the first articles of existing constitution covering the form of the state and characteristics of the republic, integrity of the state, official language, flag, national anthem, and capital as well as irrevocable provisions.

But they failed to reach a consensus on a formula, showing disputes for the amendment of the constitution, with the headscarf issue became the main obstacle, according to media reports.

In fact, both formulations abolish the ban on headscarves in higher education but there is an interesting difference in the wording.

The first formula holds that nobody can be banned from her right to high education due to her dress, while the second one says there will be no dress code in the universities.

According to the current dress code, headscarf is not allowed in state offices and universities.

In this light, AKP prominent names are searching for a formula which will open the doors of universities to students wearing headscarf, while preventing robe, turban and black chuddar with the new constitution.

The Prime Minister insists that the constitution will not be reformed without extensive debates in the parliament, where the AKP has a majority. With an AKP President, the chances of the new constitutional provisions being stopped are slim.

Worries are already being expressed, as Al-Jazeera reports:

University rectors and the head of Turkey's court of appeals both warned on Wednesday against any change in this regulation.

The head of Turkey's Higher Education Board - a well-known secularist law scholar - condemned Erdogan's move to lift the headscarf ban.

Erdogan Tezic said: "It is our mission to remind the public that any constitutional regulation that would abolish restrictions on clothing is illegal."

Ayse Ayata, a professor at Ankara's Middle East Technical University, said: "The lifting of the ban could lead to increased community pressure on uncovered women to cover up."

Arguments are being made that the new constitution will give the government and parliament too much power and upset the balance between institutions. Furthermore, the main opposition party is unhappy “that the government inform the EU about constitutional amendment before it is discussed at home in Turkey”. [sic] Well, they had better get used to it.

COMMENT THREAD

The Macedonia problem

It has long been a truism in academic circles that at any conference to do with Balkans and Eastern Europe, all one had to do is say: “So, what do you think about Macedonia?” for the fur to start flying. People come to blows on the subject of what Macedonia is in the modern, mediaeval or ancient world; where it should be located; which country it is closest to; who its people are; and many other questions of that sort.

Of all the claimants to Macedonia, the Greeks have always been the most self-righteous, on the grounds that Alexander the Great and his father Philip of Macedonia were …. um, well, not exactly Greek … but near enough. Well, anyway, they conquered the Greek states first before Alexander went on to other places, like Persia and India.

The problem is that as centuries have gone by and various historic forces have played themselves out, the territory of the Kingdom of Macedon became (largely) Macedonia, until about twelve years ago, part of what was then Yugoslavia. Sad but true and the cause of many a row.

As Yugoslavia went through its painful dissolution that lasted around a decade Macedonia, too, declared its desire to be an independent state around 1994. Up with this Greece would not put, announcing that it was the height of insolence for some Slavs to claim descent from Alexander’s people. Alexander, they said huffily, did not speak a Slavonic language. Indeed not but then he did not speak anything like modern Greek either.

The EU, as ever, fell into line and the new country became known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or FYROM. Of course, most people ignored that and Macedonia was known as Macedonia, especially by the Bulgarians, who have also laid claim to the entity. (Don’t ask, I can never remember. Like the Greeks with anything Ancient, the Bulgarians tend to lay claim to anything that might conceivably have anything to do with Old Slavonic or Thracian.)

So it went on until now, when Canada, of all countries, formally recognized the country known as FYROM under the name it prefers, Macedonia. This looks like the making of a major international incident and as Greece is part of the EU and the EU needs to have a common position on all such matters, we shall soon be drawn into the squabble.

Greece has already expressed its displeasure while Macedonia, needless to say, has welcomed the decision.

Bulgaria (also now in the EU, in case any of our readers have forgotten this important fact) has taken the opportunity to remind the world that she had recognized the country by its preferred name of Macedonia some time ago and found herself in dispute not just with Greece but with most international organizations, such the UN, the EU and the IOC.

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Break-through in the al-Dura case

Why do we keep writing about the case of Mohammed al-Dura? Because, in our opinion, it is turning into the trial of the century, despite the deliberate lack of attention paid to it in the MSM. Just as with the original “trial of the century”, the Kravchenko case, briefly described in the posting, so with the war we are fighting now: it is a war of ideas as well as of bullets. In fact, the war of ideas and of propaganda may well turn out to be more important now as it did in the Cold War.

That being so, it is worth recalling that our media is not necessarily on our side; it has an agenda of its own and that agenda needs to be perceived quite clearly. In this war we have a certain advantage – the internet. The MSM, as we have pointed out ad nauseam, no longer has everything going its way. In other words, this may not be the World War II situation as far as the media is concerned but neither is it the Vietnam situation. Too many journalists find that hard to understand.

The Mohammed al-Dura and France2 case is absolutely crucial in this battle. As we have said before, the picture of the little boy crouching behind his father and the story that the wicked Israelis kept shooting at the two until the boy was dead and the father severely wounded have done wonders for the Palestinian cause (or did wonders until Fatah and Hamas fell out among each other).

It put the Israelis badly in the wrong, led to violent anti-Israeli and, often, anti-Jewish demonstrations and attacks in the West, and once again took attention away from the terrorist activities of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa.

The pictures and the story were distrusted from the very beginning but, somehow, France2 managed to get away with not releasing the rushes, despite more or less admitting that 90 per cent of the supposed 27 minutes was staged. Or maybe not, as they sometimes said.

Anyway, as we wrote under a fortnight ago, the case is back in the public eye, though you would never know it from the media or, for that matter, much of the blogosphere. Thankfully, Nidra Poller attended the trial and posted reports of it.

The first important report came two days ago when she wrote that

For the first time the court has ordered France 2 to produce the original tapes that could prove the whole enterprise a fake.

Obviously, that is not how the judge phrased the request, which is near enough a demand, but it seems to have been taken very badly by France2 and their lawyer. In her second report Nidra Poller describes the events in court, slightly breathlessly but very amusingly.

Maître Bénédicte Amblard, representing Charles Enderlin and France 2 in their libel suit against Philippe Karsenty (Media Ratings) dropped her pencil and lost her composure when presiding judge Laurence Trébucq, overriding the opinion of the Avocat Général, firmly demanded handover of the 27-minute unedited film shot by Talal Abu Rahmeh at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000. The Maginot Line of France 2 collapsed then and there. From here on in, anything is ossible.

It will be interesting to see what happens next. According to Nidra Poller:

If the footage is not turned over voluntarily by the 3rd of October, the court will issue a formal request. The next hearing is scheduled for November 14th … to view the said footage. A relay hearing is scheduled for January 16, and the case will be heard in full on the 27th of February.

At present, the footage is held by the legal team of France2 but seemed to be unavailable when Maître Amblard tried to find it. Could it be, as one person on the forum suggested, at the bottom of the Seine? If it is not, will France2 finally produce it for all to see? Another interesting development might be President Sarkozy’s possible involvement. As France2 is a state-owned TV station, he has the right to order it to comply with the court’s request. After all, “a letter of praise for Charles Enderlin from then president Jacques Chirac weighed heavily in the case against Karsenty” and what is sauce for the goose …..

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Umbrella blog

Readers will have noticed a few changes of late. We have recently launched Defence of the Realm so that we can avoid "polluting the purity of EU Referendum" (as North Jnr so charmingly puts it) and we have undergone some essential housekeeping.

EU Referendum has gone from strength to strength but we have not done it alone and we still have a long way to go. With that in mind we have in conjunction with our friends and allies conspired to pool our resources.

We feel that our small corner of the blogosphere is under-represented and underexposed. This is where we come in.

We know how much work it takes to make a blog run. Every increment in hits has been an exhausting and sometimes boring drudge and there have been times where we have seriously wondered if it's worth it. To keep a blog on the radar you can never rest and it is often too much for one person to keep up with.

This is why we intend to capitalise on the modest successes of EU Referendum to launch the Umbrella Blog.

It is early days and we are still in the development phase but we tell you this now because we need you. If you run a blog we want to hear from you. Umbrella Blog hopes to bring together the best of the blogsphere on one blog, in a form that is both stylish and user-friendly.

It aims to provide easily accessible reference to a "family" of blogs, allowing the reader to see at a glance what has been posted, and to give enough information about each post to enable readers to decide whether they want to read more.

That way, Umbrella Blog is a convenient time-saver and a quick source of information, removing the need to trawl through a large number of blogs yet enabling readers to pick up information they might otherwise have missed.

As the "family" of bloggers expands, we aim through them to cover a wide range of subjects, providing a complementary overview of the issues of the day, with analysis and insights that the MSM rarely offers.

For individual bloggers, the great advantage of Umbrella Blog is that they are released from the tyranny of daily posts - the need to keep the blog "alive" in order to encourage a regular flow of readers. As soon as they post, the details are shown on the blog, providing a "notice board" for those who might not otherwise have visited their sites.

We know there is under-exposed talent out there and we would like you to join our family of blogs. There will be conditions which we will negotiate on an individual basis until the concept matures but we can only hope to do it if we have you on board.

We've been ripped off by the MSM far too many times in many different senses. It's time we all had our slice of the pie.

COMMENT THREAD

A Letter from Limburg

The fat lady ain’t singing yet

In the early hours of this morning, the Volkskrant published a report that the ‘opposition’ parties SP, GroenLinks and D66 had decided to jump the gun on the Raad van Staat’s official decision and are going to submit an “initiative law” calling for a referendum on the new EU treaty (the process takes about 2 weeks).

If the PvdA support it, they will have a majority in the Dutch House of Commons and the government (lead by the CDA who are fundamentally opposed to referenda on the grounds that the Netherlands has what they call a ‘representative democracy’ and not a ‘direct democracy’) cannot stop it being sent to the Upper House for approval. Sources are quoted as saying that the PvdA will support the motion, and one wonders if there is any connection between the fact that the PvdA has not been able to budge the government an inch in its plans to change the employment law to may it easier to sack people (until now, any proposed sacking had to be referred to the Employment Office for approval before it could be effected). It had been muted (amidst accusations of ‘cattle trading’) that the PvdA was willing to withdraw its support if the proposed legislation change was scrapped.

Meawhile, Pechtold (D66) called on the government to do the logical thing; if there was a referendum on the constitution, there had to be a referendum on the treaty as A follows B, and you couldn’t now “tell the populace to shut up”. Halsema (GroenLinks) went a step further and claimed that it was a “motion of no confidence in the population” not to hold a referendum. However, the best was yet to come, and from a quite unexpected corner.

In time for the breakfast commute, Frits Bolkestein (who at 74 still holds a position as “honorary member” of the Upper House for the VVD) published an almost inflammatory article calling on the government to stop treating the electorate like little children who are unable to weigh the pros and cons for themselves, and agree to a referendum. It has been assumed up until now that the VVD would block the ‘initiative law’ in the Upper House, making a referendum impossible. Now it’s not so certain; the fat lady ain’t singing yet.

(I can't resist sharing rest of Bolkestein's article. If I were Sarkozy my ears would be burning like miniature Olympic torches! Watch this space.)

Bolkestein speaks!

With a first degree in economics from the University of London, a Masters in Law from Leiden, and membership of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Frits Bolkenstein is certainly no lightweight. He had a long career in industry - for 4 years he was head of Shell Chemicals in Paris, and then in 1978 he seemed to have appeared almost from nowhere on the Dutch political scene in 1978, followed by an almost meteoric rise to Minister for Foreign Trade, and at one point it looked like he was being groomed for premiership. Well informed, outspoken and not afraid to tackle the ‘thorny issues’ face on, he had a public charisma that made him almost as many friends as enemies. You either liked him or hated him, but you had to respect him for being prepared to “call a spade a bloody shovel”.

From 1999 to 2004 he was a member of the European Commission, and since then has been involved in an Amsterdam think tank. He continues to hover around the sidelines of Dutch politics as “honorary member” for the VVD in the Dutch Upper House and his opinion still appears to carry a lot of weight with both politicians and the general public.

True to form, in a quite outspoken article, Balk summarily dismisses the threats of balkanisation should the Netherlands say ‘no’ as absolute nonsense, going on to reprimand the Europhiles for not knowing better and lacking commonsense for even considering saying such nonsense.

With a side-swipe at what he calls the “miserable” United Nations anti-racism conference in Durban 2001 which, he claims was only hailed as a success because a declaration was signed by the EU, the European Parliament is next in the line of fire for hailing Sarkozy as a saviour while giving Balkenende the cold shoulder … while it was Sarkozy that should have been treated with suspicion.

Time for Sarkozy to get both barrels for wanting to remove the independence of European Central bank. “French politicians cannot stand it when there is something outside the field of political control, such as the ECB.” But the bank cannot serve two masters, he continues; if Sarkozy succeeds, it will be the end of the European Monetary Union.

Warming to his task, Bolkenstein accuses Sarkozy of economic patriotism, where French companies are given preference over non-French companies, in direct conflict with European treaties, but annoyingly suported by the Kaczynski brothers in Poland and by the Hungarian opposition leader Viktor Orban. No-one seems to care about free and undistorted competition and the words are missing from the new treaty displaying a “disconcerting lack of insight into the nature of the economic process”. Protectionist ideas, he claims, that will set the EU back twenty years. France, however, is a big country and the Netherlands a small one, so France can get away with a ‘no’ vote while the Netherlands gets threatened with doom and gloom. The Netherlands has an interest in a truly open market for goods and services, but the French are obstructing it.

The modifications of the treaty are minor and of subordinate importance, he claims. Liberals are not in favour of referenda, but if the changes are small it is only logical to hold one. If the government refuses, people will accuse the politicians of sneaking the constitution through the back door after they failed to get it through at the front. That will, he concludes, only increase eurocynicism.

It ain't over until the fat lady sings ...

COMMENT THREAD

Confusion reigns

From viewing the video of yesterday's House of Commons Treasury Committee hearing, there can be absolutely no doubt about what the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, wanted to say.

Only eleven minutes into the two-hour hearing, he was telling members, "The main point I wish to make to you this morning…" and when he was interrupted by committee chairman John McFall, he immediately resumed with the words, "The most important point I want to make…".

The point, directed at why the Northern Rock "panic" happened, was that, "the interaction between four apparently unconnected pieces of legislation prevented us from carrying out the operation we wanted to do".

King invited the committee to consider how the bank would have handled the crisis in the '90s. One option would have been to arrange a speedy take over by a "safer bank" over the weekend. That was not possible because the "takeover code" would not permit such a rapid transfer of ownership.

The second – and King's preferred option – was to mount covert support operation, as lender of last resort, without publishing that fact. But this was not permitted by the EU's Market Abuse Directive of 2005. Said King, "We were unable to carry out a covert operation in the way we would have done in the 1990s."

Of the two other options, one it seems, was not on the cards but King included it for completeness. The Bank could not put Northern Rock into liquidation since that course of action would have frozen the bank's deposits and stopped savers gaining access to their money.

But, once the investors became aware of the problems, the final factor magnified the crisis. This was the limitations of the depositor insurance scheme. It repays only up to £2,000 in full, and after that just 90 per cent up to £33,000 – leaving the bigger investors dangerously exposed.

As to the genesis of the crisis, therefore, the key to King's difficulties boiled down to EU Market Abuse Directive 2003/6/EC (not 2005, as King claimed), which stopped the Bank mounting a rescue operation. The dead hand of the EU, it seemed, was at the heart of the Northern Rock crisis.

However, things are not all they might seem. As the BBC was quick to report, EU experts countered that the Market Abuse Directive has specific provisions that would have allowed the Bank of England to support Northern Rock and delay making this intervention public, to which effect, the BBC cited a source at the European Commission saying: "There is no obligation for central banks to disclose its activity under the market abuse directive."

Those points were mirrored by the Bloomberg agency, which had a spokesman for the EU financial services commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, say didn't think the banking directive would constrain the UK in the way King described.

"We believe that the market abuse directive would have given enough flexibility to delay information by the issuer," said Oliver Drewes, who is also a spokesman for the European Commission. "There is also no obligation for central banks to disclose their activities under the market abuse directive."

Looking at the directive, however – a law King admitted was "ambiguous", the situation is not quite as clear-cut as either King or the Commission make out. For sure, the directive requires immediate disclosure, which would have prevented King's covert operation, but there are exemptions to the rules.

The trouble is that these are not set out in the Directive, but in a separate Commission Regulation, EC No 2273/2003 and, to our reading, Article 9.3 would apply to the Northern Rock situation. This permits information to be withheld while a "stabilisation" operation is in progress, with the proviso that the details are released, "Within one week of the end of the stabilisation period…".

Right or wrong, the one thing can be said for certain is that the Governor of the Bank of England thought – or says he thought – that he was prevented from taking the optimal course of action by EU law. The Commission, on the other hand, says there was no bar to such action.

That is what we have come down to – the highest authority in the land is now so confused by the law that now applies to it that, when crucial action was necessary – it failed to take the most appropriate course of action.

This, as they say, is no way to run a railroad – much less a central bank.

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Can anyone help?

That is the plaintive cry on the site This is Zimbabwe, the opening paragraph reading:

As we enter our seventh year of political turmoil, most Zimbabweans are desperate, despondent, and disempowered. In the face of a total onslaught by their own government, they feel helpless, and many have been made homeless. The economy is stuttering to a halt as social breakdown escalates. Government actions are erratic and oppressive and incapable of solving the chaos they have created. It is hardly surprising that the popular mood has shifted during the past ten months from a guarded expectation of change to a numbing hopelessness.

Such is the desperation that the site talks openly about a desire for external military intervention and, it was only a couple of months ago that Zimbabwe's leading cleric, Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo has called on Britain to invade the country and topple President Robert Mugabe. Then, he was warning that millions were facing death from famine, unable to survive amid inflation believed to have soared to 15,000 percent.

Since then, if anything, the situation has got worse but, such has been the decline in resolve of the British government and its peoples that the call has gone unheeded. As with the French in the Ivory Coast, you can bet that, if French interests were involved, there would be troops from the Foreign Legion already there and Mugabe would be looking for an offshore retirement home.

It comes to a pretty pass, therefore, when – despite the fact that Zimbabwean leaders are subject to a travel ban, as part of a sanctions package agreed by the EU – Mugabe is on the list to be invited to the African Union and European Union summit in Lisbon this December.

But the humiliation is complete when all Gordon Brown is able to do is threaten to boycott the summit in protest, if Mugabe is invited. And such is the "influence" that the UK holds in the EU as a result of its membership that the Lisbon presidency, instead of declaring robustly that Mugabe will be excluded, is offering the wet as dishwater comment that, "no decision has been made on whether to invite the leader of the former British colony."

What is particularly outrageous about all this is that the UK has surrendered the right to take independent action over Zimbabwe in return for an agreed "common position" under the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy. That is also supposed to bind Britain's "partners", to which extent Gordon Brown has every right to expect solidarity from the likes of Portugal. In its absence, no wonder Mugabe is cock of the roost and his people are crying, "Can anyone help?".

Not the EU and not Britain, it would seem.

COMMENT THREAD

The reckoning

Gordon Brown, in his previous incarnation, was a lucky chancellor, the beneficiary of four powerful influences on which he built his reputation for good stewardship of the economy.

Firstly, the growing industrial development of China led to the massive influx of a wide range of consumer goods at frankly ludicrous prices, buoying the profits of the distribution and retail enterprises, which could add margins that would have been intolerable had they been added to higher-priced domestically produced goods. They also had a powerful influence on keeping inflation down.

Secondly, the chancellor enjoyed a long period when basic commodity prices were at a historic low, including and especially food commodities, which added to the "China effect" in keeping retail prices low and dampening inflation.

Thirdly, there has been the easy access to consumer credit – fuelled in part by galloping house price inflation (which, conveniently, does not appear on the government's official inflation index) – driving the retail economy and ensuring a steady flow of tax funds into the Treasury.

Finally, there was immigration. The influx of cheap labour, from the EU – and especially central and eastern Europe – and "third countries" has had a strong effect on keeping down wage inflation and the price of services, in sectors ranging from catering to house maintenance.

Now it is coming to a halt. One effect of the "toy safety crisis" – about which the media seems to have lost interest – is the realisation that the safety regime applied by the EU is a hollow charade. Now, behind the scenes, there are pressures to make them work which means that Chinese manufacturers can no longer so blatantly cut corners. Add to that the rising prosperity in China and the competition for labour and other resources, and prices must rise – which they are already doing and will continue to do. The "China boom", if not over, is on its way out.

Then, for a variety of reasons, world commodity prices are on the increase. These are not just marginal increases – the price of wheat has doubled since April and is set to continue unchecked, with no obvious end-point in sight.

As to the credit boom, recent event have provided all too adequate a testament of how fragile are the financial markets and it is only a matter of time before the instability in the sub-prime market spills out into the consumer credit sector and limits the ready availability of money.

Then there is immigration. Not only does the influx appear to be stabilising – again through a variety of factors – but the (claimed) unalloyed economic advantages are beginning to look less attractive and some of the costs are beginning to become apparent.

This much is evident from yesterday's queue of chief constables who were rushing to the media to point out that policing high levels of foreign workers on their patches had significant costs, which were not currently being met by their budgets.

The same can be said of health care, education, social housing and a host of other public services. They are groaning under the burden of additional numbers and the extra time needed to deal with people who cannot speak English and who are unfamiliar with our systems and customs – and who impose greater demands on the public purse.

Pressure on ministers is such, so we are told, that extra "resources" – i.e., money – will have to be provided to cover the mounting social costs caused by increased immigration, all at a time when an economic slowdown is on the cards and tax revenues are almost certainly set to fall. Even without the prospect of "external shocks" battering the UK economy, therefore, it looks like we are in for a rough time economically.

As we ruminated in our previous piece though, no one can predict where this will take us or, when the crunch will come – if it does at all. Nevertheless, the pointers are there, all of which contribute to a growing sense of unease and a feeling that we are enjoying – if that is the right word – the calm before the storm, whence the reckoning will be upon us.

COMMENT THREAD

Us and them

The BBC and others are reporting on a speech yesterday by shadow foreign secretary William Hague, on the familiar theme of "trust" in politics.

Gordon Brown, says young William, "is eroding trust in the political system by rejecting calls for a referendum on the EU treaty". His decision not to hold a poll is a "nakedly cynical" calculation that he can "bulldoze" the treaty into law.

The speech was delivered at the Centre for Policy Studies in London, with Hague declaring that, since becoming prime minister Brown had made it clear he wanted to revive trust in the political process and to involve people in the development of policy. Following his refusal to call a referendum, said Hague, "no-one can have any sensible grounds for believing a political promise from Gordon Brown".

Continuing on this theme, Hague then drew an obvious parallel, stating that, "As Northern Rock has lately shown in a textbook example, every system of human interaction is ultimately based on trust. If that trust goes, the system will break down. The way Gordon Brown has disregarded his promise of a referendum is a dangerous thing for politics as a whole."

However, there is a something of a formulaic ring to Hague's pronouncements. The "trust" theme having been aired last month and again since, it bears the hallmark of an over-rehearsed mantra.

Nor is "trust" actually the issue. No one sensible would trust either politicians or governments and to expect promises to be kept is naïve in the extreme.

What seems to be going on is something different and very much more profound. It is not so much that Brown has not kept his government's promise – it is the contemptuous indifference he is displaying in so blatantly disregarding the promise. There is neither regret nor any attempt to disguise the fact that the people are of no consequence. Mr Brown knows he has the power, and he intends to use it.

The prime minister's attitude is very much "of the moment". Increasingly, we see examples of it in public life – the police picking up drivers for the most minor of infractions, yet evading speeding charges – and worse – when they get caught out.

We see a government enmeshed in the latest foot and mouth crisis, indifferent to the very real economic stress caused by one of its own institutions, and the failure of its own regulatory system. Nothing by way of offers of compensation have been forthcoming and it is unlikely that the many thousands who have suffered real losses will see any recompense.

Whether it be the health service, costing more and delivering less, the education system – ditto – the road system, public transport, pensions, immigration, prisons, crime, taxation … everywhere one gets a sense of decay and inefficiency, yet there is no balancing sense that the "government" or any of the political classes have a grip on any of the issues, or even really care.

That it is not a matter of "trust" would seem to be borne out by the lacklustre performance of the Conservatives in the polls and, more interestingly, the apparent increase in the "don't knows" and those who declare an intention not to vote or refuse to support any of the established parties.

It is not disillusionment either – we are past that. I sense that, more than ever, we look upon the political classes as alien beings, a species apart that exists on this planet but has nothing to do with the affairs of ordinary people. In other words, the government is no longer "our" government, for better or worse. It is populated by "them" and we are "us".

How that will translate into action - if at all - is anyone's guess, but there is a mood in the nation which is not altogether wholesome. We are not a nation at ease with ourselves – and our rulers. Tectonic plates are moving under the surface and, sooner or later, something has to give.

It could well be, therefore, that Brown's contemptuous dismissal of the referendum call is the last straw, although I doubt it. But it is an indicator of how great is the divide. And, in the final analysis, there are more of "us" than there are of "them". Some time soon, we are going to have to remind them of that important fact – and it is going to take more than a few barriers and fluorescent yellow jackets to stop us.

COMMENT THREAD

Focused lethality

Such is the language of war: a new term has entered the vocabulary, brutal in its technical bluntness but one which, on the face of it, represents an enlightened concept. It is one that could have far-reaching implications on counter-insurgency operations, but it also has some disturbing implication.

Posted on Defence of the Realm.

Still reading those runes

The new Prime Minister of Russia, Viktor Zubkov, met President Putin today in Sochi, a Black Sea resort. According to his statement later to reporters he handed a list of potential ministers over to the President. The cabinet, he added, will be put together within the required time framework.

One person will not be in that list: the acting Defence Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov (pictured), promoted by Putin in February from his then rather lowly position of tax police chief, has asked to be relieved of his duties.

As usual with Russia, one spends a great deal of time trying to read those runes. Is this significant. After all, the one thing Serdyukov seems to have achieved is to dismiss many of the senior military who had served under his predecessor, Sergei Ivanov, now Deputy Prime Minister (so far).

The reason given is that Serdyukov is Prime Minister Zubkov’s son-in-law and, therefore, it would appear, does not consider it right that he should stay in the cabinet. Well, that’s always possible but I can’t help remembering the wonderful Greek Archbishop in Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant if somewhat underestimated novel of the Phony War, “Put Out More Flags”.

The Archbishop in question would wander round the Ministry where the anti-hero Basil Seale found a billet, explaining to all and sundry that he was “expulsed” as a result of some political manoeuvring because the reason given could not have been true: “They don’t expulse for fornication”.

The cracks are appearing

The full-blown "greenery" of the European Union (backed by all three major UK political parties) came under serious challenge today at the largely unreported Green Party conference in Liverpool.

There, delegates delivered a near unanimous resolution calling for a halt in the use of large scale biofuels – or "agrofuels", as they prefer to call them.

The strength of the vote, say the Greens, reflects "a growing concern by the general public in the last six months that agrofuels are causing significantly more harm than good."

On top of the destruction of ecosystems, they say, agrofuels are precipitating a human rights problem of epic proportions as speculators are seizing arable land as well as evicting indigenous peoples from their forest homes. Food prices are escalating, putting basic staples outside of the reach of families living close to the bread line - even in European countries, as evidenced by Italy's "pasta strike" last week and rising UK bread prices.

The Green Party is also showing a touching concern for its fellow man, talking about "competition between food and energy for agricultural resources", which is set to decrease the amount of land given over to food production as energy prices rise. This, they say, will cause global food shortages exactly when we should be boosting food production to maintain stable prices.

This latter statement is exactly the sentiment of this blog - a reflection of the increasingly unreal world where factions from across the political divide – for their own reasons - are united in rejecting elements of the mainstream political consensus.

COMMENT THREAD

Reduced to impotency

Nicely timed to coincide with an announcement from Jacques "Wheel" Barrot that the commission is to go ahead with public funding for its Galileo satellite positioning system, the UK government has sent all British MEPs a briefing re-iterating its own stance that the system should be financed only through a PFI agreement.

Ignoring the British government completely, our real government, therefore, is proposing to raid the EU budget for €2.4 billion, after the private partnership plan fell apart when the commercial partners concluded that the commercial model was irretrievably flawed.

Reuters is reporting that the immediate financing will come from the EU agricultural budget. This is in fact made possible by soaring grain prices arising for commodity shortages, which means that cash set-aside for intervention payments will not be needed. Other funds, we are told, will come from the EU's research budget, to the tune of €300 million.

The proposal must still be approved by the Council of Ministers and the transfer of funds from other budgets may be of dubious legality, which means that the proposal could fall apart – but for one thing which commentators seem to be missing.

In the new "reform" treaty – lifted straight out of the EU constitution draft – is the inclusion of a space policy as a new commission competence. This will permit the commission formally to allocate a budget to the Galileo programme. Further, budgetary decisions will come under the qualified majority voting provisions and Britain – with only eight percent of the vote – will be powerless to block it.

Despite disapproving of the current arrangements to ensure that the EU's ultimate "vanity project" takes to the skies, our own provincial government is reduced to the status of a powerless bystander while the "colleagues" indulge their fantasy with taxpayers' money.

Short of an injection of the political equivalent of Viagra, therefore, our government has been reduced to impotency.

COMMENT THREAD

Thank EU very much!

Confidence is a delicate thing. And, if the savers are no longer queuing at the doors of Northern Rock, it is only because there is enough residual trust left in the government to believe, for the time being, Darling's promise that the taxpayer will underwrite the finances of the bank.

The last thing in the world we – or the Northern Rock savers – need, therefore, is the cack-handed intervention of our real government, outlined by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in today’s Telegraph (Business section).

Under the title, "Northern Rock bail-out may breach EU laws", Ambrose tells us that the EU commission "has requested information from the British authorities" over the government bail-out of Northern Rock, concerned that it could violate EU state aid laws if support leads to distortion of the banking market.

A spokesman for Neelie Kroes, the competition commissioner, said the ban on government subsidies to banks "could be waived" in exceptional circumstances of "systemic risk", but not on a long-term basis. He adds:

Where there is support, it normally has to be limited to six months' duration and made available on commercial terms. If the duration is more than six months, then it has to be considered as restructuring aid, so restructuring has to take place.

So far, it seems, the commission (i.e., our real government) appears satisfied that London "had acted within reasonable bounds" but one thing our Chancellor did not make clear was that his guarantee to Northern Rock savers is (perforce) conditional – and time-limited.

The "conditionality" is that any guarantee made is valid only insofar that it conforms with EU requirements, for the time period in which it is allowable.

For the rest, this is technical detail. If Northern Rock savers come to the conclusion that, at any time, the EU can pull the rug from under our own (provincial) government, then we may see queues re-forming outside the bank offices – and this time there will be nothing that can be said which will turn them away.

Sentiment is not helped by Charlie McCreevy, the single market commissioner, who is saying, according to Ambrose, that the issue "must be tackled urgently", at the same time cautioning against "easy bail-outs". This could be taken to mean that commission action could be imminent (and unpredictable).

If I had any money in Northern Rock (or any money at all), I would be very worried.

COMMENT THREAD

Something of a myth-match

With a copy of the Barroso speech to the Lib-Dims now available, we see some curious omissions from media reports, most notably from The Daily Telegraph.

Opening his speech, the commission president made great play of how "Europe" was still seen as "remote, bureaucratic and undemocratic". And, he complained, "Intentional fabrication of stories like the notion of removing the Queen from UK passports, or claims that the UK will lose its UN seat do not help".

Turning then to happier thoughts, he added:

Occasionally, a flash of reality slips through. Apparently someone in the press just last week discovered that we in the Commission are no longer a threat to the pound, the inch or even the mile. But we need to take the next step, beyond putting the Euro-myths to rest.

Very much as predicted, we are going to hear a great deal about the "Queen and passport", and the UN seat, myths which have been assiduously peddled by the right-wing press and, indeed, the Tory party.

But, bizarrely, on the metric issue, Barroso is peddling his own myth. Far from ceasing to present a threat to the "the pound and the inch …", the local government coordination body Lacors has felt impelled to write to trading standards enforcement officers, reminding them that:

Local Authorities must continue to demonstrate their commitment to consistent, proportionate action to ensure that those remaining traders who continue to trade in imperial units through ignorance of the law or misleading media coverage, do convert to selling in metric units, and to ensure that cohesive action is taken over any remaining high profile traders who refuse as a point of principle to comply.

But, so completely have certain sections of the media bought into the Commission's myth that, despite the corrective by Booker last Sunday, Neil Herron has found few takers for the story of trading standards seizing Colin Hunt's scales (pictured).

Thus, we have two Euro-myths from the right and one from the commission itself, the only common factor being that, in all three cases, the media have swallowed them whole. Something, one might say, of a myth-match. If it weren't so serious, it would be hilarious.

COMMENT THREAD

A Letter from Limburg

Don't ask the Dutch

It came as real shock to our lords and masters in "The Hague" when we voted "No" to the referendum in 2005. In many ways it was a punishment vote, rubbing our politicians' faces in the fact that, like in so many other countries, there is a yawning chasm between the people and those in power. There was no referendum over the euro, and yet there we were being asked to vote on a European constitution. I don't think many of us really understood the issues, much less cared; but the general feeling of alienation and distrust was not helped by a really aggressive 'yes' campaign that warned us we would become "the Switzerland of Europe" if we didn't vote 'yes'.

We've done the rounds again this time, with Timmermans (Secretary of State for European Affairs) warned us in May this year that if we said 'no' again none of the other 26 EU countries would ever listen to our objections again. This wasn't a forewarning of a referendum, as he quickly pointed out in a qualifying statement a few days later that it didn't matter who decided, Parliament or the people; either way a 'no' would be tantamount to exile to Siberia.

During the last elections, the Socialist Party (SP) and the Labour Party (PvdA) took a stand and made it a manifesto issue that they would insist on another referendum when the constitution came back for a second time. The PvdA subsequently backed off, and in return for being included in the coalition government (pushing out the SP, who had stormed into popularity) agreed that a referendum would only be called if there were "constitutional elements" in the new constitution.

Timmermans and his European colleagues went back to drawing board to produce, in the words of Timmermans, 'a treaty that must be significantly different from the old Constitutional Treaty, not just in form, but also in its content'. The new (not constitutional) treaty duly arrived, and we were assured by Timmermans that the new treaty had 'no constitutional pretensions' and contained no constitutional aspects, so no referendum would be needed. When challenged by Open Forum that the new treaty is 95% the same as the old treaty, the response was scathing ... apparently, Timmerman's DNA is 99% the same as the gorilla Bokito that recently escaped from its cage in Rotterdam zoo and mauled a spectator, but that 1% difference makes him very happy. I assume we are supposed to be even happier about the 5% difference in the treaty ...

The cabinet passed the new treaty to the Raad van Staat (our version of the Privy Council, staffed by non-elected lawyers, academics and industrialists whose task is to advise the government on constitutional issues) who, surprisingly, have seemingly (the judgement is secret until the government has made its decision) decided that all the constitutional elements have been removed and there is therefore no need for the government to call a referendum. That will no doubt make the government very happy as the leading CDA party have been always been opposed to referenda. After all, in a country where something like 90% of those in power are not elected, why ask the people?

The Raad van Staat judgement will not make any difference though, we all realise that the government was never going to allow a referendum. Our eyes instead were looking to Parliament to submit a so-called "initiative law" calling for a referendum (which is how the first referendum was forced through). The PvdA, SP, PVV, GroenLinks and D66 parties together have a clear majority, so there was every hope; every hope that was until it was pointed out that an initiative law has to make it through the upper house, where the CDA, ChristenUnie and VVD senators are almost certain to block it.

Budget Day

Today was Budget Day; 6 million euro extra for 'animal welfare', 2.5 million for 'homo emancipation', 20 million extra for 'global human rights', an increase in the EU contribution to 7 billion euro, and a nice 4% pay increase for the Queen (she will now get 26 times the average Dutch pre-tax income). Put that against more tax on beer, cigarettes, diesel fuel, LPG fuel, an environment tax on air tickets, an increase in VAT to 20%, and a lot of other measures aimed at reducing the national debt and "preparing us for the additional financial burden of the aging population". This will certainly not have helped to close the gap between government and 'electorate', so when the government announces its decision on a referendum (mooted for Friday), it will come as no surprise that there won't be one; the last thing the government wants is another punishment "no" vote.

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