Shocked!

In December 2004, The Daily Telegraph was portentously carrying a story headed: "Snowdon 'to lose its snowcap by 2020', says study". "It may be one of the last white Christmases on Mount Snowdon, the highest mountain in England and Wales. Scientists have reported that snow is disappearing from the peak as the snowline retreats due to global warming", the story ran.

Fast forward to November 2007 and the North Wales Daily Post was recounting how Welsh environment minister Jane Davidson had been "shocked" by photographs taken ten years apart, one showing Snowdon covered in snow and the other more recent picture, without its white peaks.

The photographs were part of an exhibition by the National Trust entitled: "Exposed – Climate Change in Britain's Backyard". By demonstrating the effect of global warming on Trust property, we were told, "the event aims to persuade people to adopt more environmentally friendly lifestyles."

Ms Davidson said: "I was shocked when I saw these two photographs. It has been suggested Snowdon may have to be renamed but like other parts of the world it stands as a reminder of what is happening to our planet." She went on to tell the launch: "We must act now to reduce the emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change and respond to the impacts of the changes already underway as a result of previous emissions."

And now … The two photographs published here show Snowdonia as it was earlier this week. This winter the snow has been so persistent that construction work on the summit restaurant has been delayed for several weeks.

Should we act now to increase emissions?

COMMENT THREAD

A novel way of creating set-aside

Feeling rather grumpy this morning, as I always do when I read too many comments by eurosceptics, I looked at a press release by OLAF (the Anti-Fraud Office). Always good for a laugh and they did not disappoint.

A scheme involving the claim of EC agricultural subsidies for over 900,000 tons of non-existing raw tobacco has been discovered by the Italian Carabinieri police force with the support of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). There are currently 80 individuals under investigation by the Italian judicial authorities in the context of this operation named “Ghost Tobacco”. The illegally claimed Community funds are to be recovered and administrative fines of around 20 million Euros have been imposed.

Let us look at the bright side: the non-existing raw tobacco will not be causing the sort of problems that the real raw tobacco grown in Italy, Greece and Spain does, given that it is of such poor quality that it cannot be sold in the EU itself.

So, one could argue that this is a way of ensuring that the EU does not subsidize really unhealthy products. After all, it is better to have virtual tobacco than virtual olives, which are useful and pleasant to eat.

The inevitable question has to be asked. Precisely, why are we subsidizing the growing of tobacco, particularly when it is of very poor quality while we also subsidize endless campaigns to ban smoking in various parts of the EU?

They are not taking this seriously

"At a time when the world's top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming," writes the New York Times, Italy's major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant from oil to coal, "generally the dirtiest fuel on earth".

Furthermore, the paper tells us, over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

Not only that, Italy is not alone in its return to coal. "Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy," we are told, "European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades."

By contrast, in Great Satan's domain, the United States, fewer new coal plants are likely to begin operations, in part because it is becoming harder to get regulatory permits and in part because nuclear power remains an alternative. Of 151 proposals in early 2007, more than 60 had been dropped by the year’s end, many blocked by state governments. Dozens of other are stuck in court challenges.

As the NYT seems happy to acknowledge, all this is freaking out the eco-zealots in Europe, who are now (and have been for some time) convinced we are on the road to perdition. "They are aghast", the NYT observes, "at the renaissance of coal, a fuel more commonly associated with the sooty factories of Dickens novels, and one that was on its way out just a decade ago."

The paper points to protests in Civitavecchia, Italy, at a new coal plant in Germany, and at one in the Czech Republic, as well as at the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, which is slated to become Britain's first new coal-fired plant in more than a decade.

The huge joke is that the future operators of these plants are claiming that they will make them "as clean as possible", although they are relying on carbon capture and storage technology to achieve this. Yet the technology is not commercially available and no one knows if it is feasible on a large, cost-effective scale.

In the front line of the objectors is warmist guru James E. Hansen, he of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "Building new coal-fired power plants is ill conceived," he says. "Given our knowledge about what needs to be done to stabilize climate, this plan is like barging into a war without having a plan for how it should be conducted, even though information is available." He has only one prescription: "We need a moratorium on coal now …with phase-out of existing plants over the next two decades."

The problem for Hansen, though, is that money speaks louder that Gia. Says the NYTEnel and many other electricity companies say they have little choice but to build coal plants to replace agering infrastructure, particularly in countries like Italy and Germany that have banned the building of nuclear power plants. Fuel costs have risen 151 percent since 1996, and Italians pay the highest electricity costs in Europe – and coal is relatively cheap compared with oil and natural gas.

Hilariously, the economic advantages are even defeating the EU's emissions trading scheme, which are aimed at skewing the economics of high emission plants, to encourage the use of "green technology", but, such is the price of oil that, even if the cost of carbon dioxide permits are factored in, coal still comes out on top.

Ultimately, though, all this goes to show that, whatever the "green" rhetoric, when it comes to making cold, hard decisions about keeping the lights on at affordable prices, for some countries at least, economics rule and the Greenies can go suck.

COMMENT THREAD

Another one down

Portugal, home of the incumbent Commission president, has almost ratified the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty. Well, its parliament has approved it and the president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, will, we assume, append his signature.

Needless to say, ComPres Barroso popped up to congratulate them. This must be number nine, unless my arithmetic is sadly awry.

Three meals from a revolution?

In what could be either a temporary market distortion, or a harbinger of a greater crisis, The Times reports today that food rationing has been introduced in the US giant Wal-Mart and in British stores, in bid to protect rice supplies.

With supplies dwindling and customers hoarding stocks, says The Times, multiple outlets are starting to restrict sales. Wal-Mart has said that its wholesale business had limited each customer to four bags of long-grain white rice per visit because of a shortage in supplies.

We are told that the move by the world's biggest retailer, which owns Asda, "constitutes the first time that food rationing has been introduced in the US". While Americans suffered some rationing during the Second World War for items such as petrol, light bulbs and stockings, they have never had to limit consumption of a key food item.

In Britain rice is being rationed by shopkeepers in Asian neighbourhoods to prevent hoarding. Tilda, the biggest importer of basmati rice, said that its buyers - who sell to the curry and Chinese restaurant trade as well as to families - were restricting customers to two bags per person. "It is happening in the cash-and-carries," said Jonathan Calland, a company executive. "I heard from our sales force that one lady went into a cash-and-carry and tried to buy eight 20kg bags."

Of course, local restrictions do not a shortage make. Panic-buying and hoarding by retail customers can drive any product off the shelves, even when there is a plentiful supply. But these events do coincide with a doubling of global rice prices and bans on the exports of rice by India, China, Vietnam and Egypt.

This has put increased pressure in the United States, as a major producer of rice, leaving Costco Wholesale, the largest warehouse operator in America, said this week that demand for rice and flour had risen, with customers panicking about shortages and hoarded produce.

The Times offers an interesting comment from Tim Johnson, of the California Rice Commission, who says: "This is unprecedented. Americans - particularly in states such as California - have on occasion walked into a supermarket after a natural disaster and seen that the shelves are less full than usual, but we have never experienced this."

Panic buttons we do not need yet but, as science fiction authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote in their 1977 cult book, Lucifer's Hammer, civilisation is "only three meals removed from savagery".

This has morphed into the phrase: "no government is more than three meals from a revolution", which is variously attributed to Mao, Marx and sundry others – without any reliable source. But the message conveyed is clear enough.

If, as many argue, the global food market is undergoing structural change, with in-built production deficits, then many of the current political preoccupations will fade into insignificance as the struggle for survival – of peoples and governments – begins to dominate.

In a year's time – or maybe not – politics could look very different from what we see now.

COMMENT THREAD

The scariest photo

Courtesy of the Doug Ross blog, we come to Phil Chapman's piece in The Australian where he publishes the "scariest photo I have seen on the internet".

This is from spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity. What is scary about the picture, writes Chapman, is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Phil Chapman, in case you didn't know, is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

Warming (if you will forgive that word) to his theme, he tells us that, "disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously."

This we have recorded on this blog (for instance, here and here and Chapman tells us that all four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that the global temperature cooled by about 0.7C in 2007.

This, he reminds us, "is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over." He adds:

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

We could also add that Arctic ice cover this winter is over a million square kilometres more than it was last year, with Greenland ice between Canada and southwest Greenland having reached its greatest extent in 15 years. Yet still we get ill-informed propaganda puffs from the WWF in the likes of today's Daily Telegraph telling us that dwindling Arctic sea ice may have reached a "tipping point" – relying on data from September 2005.

Rightly, Chapman cautions that it is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year. He would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years. But this is where SOHO comes in. We are thus informed:

The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No 24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No 24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

Echoing precisely the point we made in our previous piece, Chapman says there is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do.

There are many more people now, he writes, and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

In fact, Chapman posits a remote but much more serious scenario of "severe glaciation" which can occur quickly – as fast as 20 years. "The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years," he reassures us. "On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027."

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

Thus, he concludes, "All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead." Inevitably, Chapman warns, "It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake."

With a fine sense of history, he then chooses his closing words from Oliver Cromwell, with a message for warmists: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

The admission of error, however, is not within the gift of the warmists. If Mother Nature is playing a cruel joke on them, then we have a way to go before the full horror of their obsession becomes apparent – but not very long.

COMMENT THREAD

Looking in the wrong direction (again)

We debated whether to have a go at the RUSI report, as puffed by yesterday by Charles Clover, environment editor of The Daily Telegraph and a few others.

This is the one that says that climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two World Wars which will last for centuries unless it (climate change) is controlled. Thus does the Royal United Services Institute say that a tenfold increase in research spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space programme, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures.

However, other bloggers, like Tim Worstall had done it, and there was not – at first sight – much to add. However, it cannot pass without saying that if this RUSI report represents the height of UK strategic thinking on defence, then we are really in trouble.

The author, Nick Mabey, a former senior member of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, is now chief executive of the environmental group E3G and, like many of his ilk, is obsessed with the prospect of global warming – and its effects some time in the distant future.

What is disturbing is that if you accept, like American Thinker, that a period of global cooling is a distinct possibility which, on current data, cannot be ruled out, then there are much more immediate threats.

Basically, there is no dispute that moderate global warming (such as we have been experiencing up to 1998) is broadly beneficial, especially in terms of agricultural production.

Without acknowledging it, the world has been enjoying a "global warming dividend" which is worth perhaps as much as a 10-15 percent increase in crop yield. If we are to suffer a period of cooling, we lose that dividend, just at a time when the global agricultural system is being stretched to meet the various demands of increased prosperity, larger populations, and the need for biofuel production.

One only has to recall recent events in Egypt (pictured), Haiti, Thailand, Indonesia and Bangladesh (and well as China and possibly Tibet), where there has been instability arising from local food shortages and price increases, to appreciate that a run of bad winters causing a downturn in global food production could have very serious consequences.

That is not to posit an Armageddon scenario – a market-driven economy can cope over the medium to long-term by increasing yields, and production is already being dragged upwards by the promise of sustained high prices. But that does leave room for local and regional crises which could have effects far more devastating than the notional adverse effects of global warming.

Any strategic appreciation which completely ignores this possibility, and focuses entirely on global warming, has to be seriously flawed. The whole point of "blue sky thinking" of the type which RUSI claims to offer is that you take into account all the realistically possible scenarios.

With Mr Mabey and his ilk quite possibly looking in completely the wrong direction, there is a danger that, for want of planning and appreciation, manageable situations will spiral out of control and become far more dangerous than they should.

That, in the final analysis, may be the real danger of "global warming" – that it has blinded our thinkers (and politicians) to the more immediate dangers as they hare off after their fantasies of an overheating world.

COMMENT THREAD

A conflict of reports

It is relatively rare for the MoD, first on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and then on its own website directly – or even indirectly – to contradict media reports on operations in southern Iraq. However, it was precisely that exercise which the MoD undertook yesterday, its website piece headed ...

Continued on Defence of the Realm

A bureaucracy that will kill us by the millions

With food shortages, inflation and the dire effect of the biofuels policy very much in the news, the EU is in the process of taking another massive step which will, over time, exacerbate the food shortages which are plaguing the global economy.

This is the framework directive on the sustainable use of pesticides, replacing and adding to the existing pesticide law, Directive 91/414/EEC, to which we have not given anything like enough attention (or any).

The regulatory onslaught about to hit European (and other) nations as a result of this new law will have a devastating effect on food production, and magnify the enormous losses already sustained from pest damage, plant disease and weeds.

What brings this into sharp focus is a report from Reuters today which has a "group of European Union scientists" warning against a planned reduction in the number of pesticides allowed in the EU – which is the necessary and intended consequence of the new law.

They are claiming this could increase resistance of pests and make crop cultivation uncompetitive. "The scientists from seven countries fear that reducing the available range of pesticides could lower their efficiency as it is likely that it will increase resistance," they said in a statement sent to Reuters and to Slovenia's Agriculture Minister Iztok Jarc, holder of the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.

They say the increased risk of developing resistance to the few remaining substances could make cultivation of many crops, including grapes, wheat, barley, cotton, fruit, potatoes and vegetables in Europe, uncompetitive.

"In order to safeguard the production of food at affordable prices, it is essential to provide farmers with access to sufficient diversity of crop protection solutions," the scientists' spokesman Ian Denholm from the UK's Rothamsted Research institute, said in the statement. "This is essential to prevent or delay the development of resistant pests, and to maintain the efficacy of remaining crop protection products," he added.

The point is that, under the earlier directive promulgated in 1991, something like half of all the then existing active substances had been withdrawn from the market in 2003. Many niche substances had disappeared and many more – some extremely safe and intended to replace hazardous products – never reached the market because of the enormous costs of gaining official approval – or "market authorisation" as it is called.

Yet, after the EU commission started the process of revising its pesticide laws in 2006, and the EU parliament added still further restrictions, it was anticipated that between 70 - 85 percent of the remaining 250 pesticides could be lost – with further and continued difficulties in bringing new products to the market.

For sure, there is no argument that pesticides and related products do need regulation, although the current regulatory model adopted by the EU is more than a little suspect. But, while the EU concentrates entirely on the harm done to humans, flora, fauna and the environment, there is another side to the coin.

Few people actually realise the extent to which the economy - and our survival - is dependent on modern agri-chemicals. Already, at a conservative estimate global annual pre-harvest losses of all crops as a result of inspect pests, plant diseases and weeds run to 34.9 percent of potential production.

Another estimate puts the loss at 42 percent, with an additional 10 percent post-harvest loss, bringing the total to 52 percent – more than half the world's food supply. Without the already widespread use of agri-chemicals, the losses would be that much greater, all in the context where, currently, even a few percentage shortfall in existing production is causing a global crisis.

This is actually the measure of the dire, claustrophobic and safety-obsessed approach of the EU regulatory machine, which cannot see the bigger picture and cares little for the unintentional consequences of its actions.

Those action, despite the European focus of the legislation, are likely to be global. On the one hand, without the European market to sustain production, many otherwise valuable pesticides will no longer be available. On the other, through export controls and other mechanisms, the imperial EU tends to impose its law on other countries, particularly in the developing world.

This we saw with the wholly irrational DDT ban, where the effects have been devastating and persistent. In this new directive, we are getting more of the same, and – on current form – we are looking to a situation where our EU bureaucracy will become the most important and direct cause of global hunger (with a little help from our American friends and their EPA).

Back in Washington last week, we achieved a great measure of agreement with members of many of the leading US think-tanks that one of the defining – if largely unacknowledged - issues of this century was the need to devise a means of controlling and limiting our bureaucracies, before the destroyed the societies on which they have become parasitic.

This is an example of where the battle lines must be drawn for, with this and the many other measures pouring out of Brussels, the bureaucrats will eventually kill us by the millions and drive the survivors into poverty and starvation.

COMMENT THREAD

The elephant in the floods

Much preening is going on in that esteemed and thoroughly worthy organisation, the Taxpayers Alliance, over its coup in The Daily Telegraph, now repeated on their website.

The Alliance claims that our provincial government made a profit of almost half a billion pounds from the floods that devastated parts of Britain last year, extracted from taxpayers’ wallets through VAT charged on home repairs.

The Treasury, it appears, made £ 525 million from work carried out to rebuild property damaged by the flooding in the summer while only contributing £86 million to a relief fund, giving it a "profit" of £ 439 million.

So far, so good, but the Taxpayers Alliance is now getting together with the Federation of Master Builders and other groups, has launched a coalition called "Cut the VAT" to get the tax streamlined down to five percent from its current 17.5 percent rate.

And why five percent, and not total abolition? Well, that might have something to do with the fact that VAT is an EU tax system and, under the VAT 6th Directive, that is the minimum rate that can be charged. But, of the EU, there is no mention.

Furthermore, as we might have observed before, in order to drop the current rate to five percent, Mr Brown must get the permission of the other 26 member states in the Union – something Mr Chirac found to his cost, as indeed did Mr Brown when in 1997 he promised to cut VAT on fuel.

In the EU arena, VAT cuts are extremely fraught, and to overcome resistance to cuts – even if he was minded to seek them - Brown would have to invest huge political capital, for which there would be a major price to pay.

More to the point, the 26 member states would have to be "softened up" before they would even begin to think of such a drastic change. No only do they themselves rely on tax revenue from housing repairs, many actually charge VAT on new-build, which is exempt in the UK – a source of resentment with some of the "colleagues".

So fraught is this issue that, when it came to the relatively uncontentious issue of reducing VAT on church repairs, Mr Brown – then in his role of chancellor – chose to opt for a refund scheme rather than beard the "colleagues" for a full-blown exemption.

The Taxpayers Alliance, therefore, is looking in the wrong direction, blaming the wrong government. Our provincial government, in soaking (again) the flood victims, is merely obeying the law set by our masters in Brussels.

The elephant in the floods lives!

COMMENT THREAD

Unintentionally?!

One of the favourite themes of my co-editor is to ask of the MSM: "are they listening to themselves"?

Straight into that category soars a report from CNN which blandly tells us: "Those battling global warming by promoting biofuels may unintentionally be adding to skyrocketing world food prices …".

Er … to meet the ten percent biofuels quota for the UK would require, according to our estimate, 14 million tons of wheat, against a total production of 11 million, all but one of which is used for food production.

And, as we pointed out last year, the conversion of European grain lands to growing wheat for petrol is going to raise its cost of food.

Multiply that world-wide and you have, in broad terms, the best part of 130 percent of global grain production devoted to producing ten percent of the global demand for automotive fuel. And these people didn't realise that it would raise food prices?

Did these people actually think you could siphon off the greater part of global agricultural production and it would have no effect on food prices? These people promoted such a policy without realising it would have that effect? What did they think … that they could just go to the supermarket and buy some more food to make up for the shortage?

What do these people do for brains? Do they keep them in glass jars in their bathrooms, for occasional use – like when they have to confront the results of their insane policies? Or do they just keep them as ornaments, that being a far more productive use than actually plugging them in?

"Calm down, North!", I can almost hear my co-editor say. Yeah! Right! Unintentionally? I think I would feel happier if they had calculated this "side-effect" intentionally. At least that would have demonstrated some spark of sentience, of human (or inhuman) intelligence. But to condemn the world to mass starvation unintentionally …?

Lost for words, that I am.

COMMENT THREAD

An important new discovery

See the OpenMarket blog.

COMMENT THREAD

A meeting of minds (not)

"Right wing" baby-killer North meets "liberal" Thom Hartmann on his US radio show. About ten minutes – enjoy!

COMMENT THREAD

An MP for UKIP

Quite rightly, Conservative Home gives some prominence to the decision by Bob Spink MP, formerly of the Conservative Party, to join UKIP, giving that Party its very first MP. The comments also are worth reading.

This was mooted at the time of his resignation and while there is a good argument for MPs who relinquish their Party whip standing for re-election, the fact is that, under the current system, there is no obligation for them so to do.

Spink is thus completely within his rights to join another Party and, on balance, this is a good thing for democracy, giving UKIP a voice in parliament which it sorely needs.

Furthermore – as Ann Winterton has amply demonstrated – a single MP working alone can achieve a great deal. By use of the parliamentary written question system, by holding adjournment and Westminster Hall debates, by writing to (and meeting) ministers, they can probe, harry and influence in a variety of small but important ways.

Whether UKIP is capable of fully exploiting the bonus of its very own MP remains to be seen, but we are always prepared to be amazed.

COMMENT THREAD

Great new slogan

On this blog we are always ready to acknowledge good ideas in other places. So, I am grateful to American Thinker for this new slogan: "No Starvation for Fuel". Could it become as catchy as "No Blood for Oil"?

Perhaps, some of our talented readers could devise a logo or a flag?

A heroic, if doomed exercise?

On the face of it, says The Daily Telegraph leader, he is "engaging in a doomed, if heroic, exercise".

This is millionaire Tory donor, Stuart Wheeler, who is at the High Court today to seek a judicial review of the government's refusal to hold an EU referendum.

According to the BBC website, he is confident of winning the case and believes his legal challenge could delay the ratification of the constitutional Lisbon treaty by months, on the basis that the treaty could not be ratified while a review was pending.

As an aside, Wheeler is relying on the fact that the judicial review process comes in two parts. Firstly, there is an application for leave to appeal which, if granted, then results in a full hearing, which can be as long as a year after the initial hearing.

That, however, is not always the case. I recall seeking leave on a high profile case which we successfully obtained on the Thursday, only to be told that the full hearing would be on the following Monday – which we lost. Wheeler may find himself in the same situation.

Anyhow, as to this case, Wheeler is insisting that he is "not trying to interfere with Parliament". "Our complaint," he says, "is against the prime minister and the foreign secretary for refusing to hold a referendum, which they could well have done, without interfering with Parliament in any way at all." He adds that, "This is going to be argued at a high level by excellent barristers and I believe we shall get the permission we need."

In its leader, The Telegraph takes up the story, observing that, "it may appear futile to attempt to hold a government legally liable for not keeping its word." But on closer examination, it says, "Mr Wheeler's case seems far more substantial on points of law than might have been expected."

The action, we are told, cites the numerous documented cases of statements from ministers (including the previous prime minister), both within the House of Commons and outside it, reiterating their undertaking to consult the people on the fundamental changes to parliamentary sovereignty proposed by the original constitution.

It also offers the testimony of both the House of Commons European scrutiny committee and the foreign affairs committee, to the effect that there are no substantive differences between that constitution and the Lisbon Treaty.

The action does not attempt to cause the courts to over-rule Parliament's ratification of the treaty: it is taken against the executive, not the legislature, and is based on the established legal doctrine of "legitimate expectation", which has successful precedents.

In a previous case, says the paper, the principle was explained as "a requirement of good administration, by which public bodies ought to deal straightforwardly and consistently with the public".

Thus does The Telegraph conclude, "Let Mr Wheeler's action stand as a test of whether any government should be permitted to flout the most basic standards of honest dealing with the nation."

On that basis, we can only wish him well.

COMMENT THREAD

Reduced to the status of spectators

Fading into distant memory now, I can recall a time when genetically modified crops were big news in this country, with a vibrant debate about their use being played out in parliament and in the broadcast and print media.

As of now, however, the debate in the UK is effectively dead. In another example of how crucial issues have been stripped out of British politics, marginalising our parliament, it has moved to Europe. The EU commission is occupying centre stage, taking on recalcitrant member states in a bid to force them to permit the import of GM maize strains that have already been approved by the system.

We have followed the twists and turns of this debate, most recently here, a notable feature of which has been the almost total absence of that UK input. Big players have been Austria and France as well as Poland. Romania has also joined the growing band of member states refusing to allow imports.

Procedurally, through the comitology process, the commission could over-ride the member states but, within the commission itself, there is considerable division over the way forward. Individual commissioners are supporting the positions of their member states – something which is not supposed to happen.

Unfortunately for the commission, outside pressures are crowding in. One such is a current WTO case filed against it by Argentina, Canada and the United States, seeking to overturn bans, from 1997 and 1999, on two specific GM maize varieties. Another is a lawsuit which has been filed against the commission and one more is threatened - these over delays in processing applications for approving two new strains of GM maize.

The deadline for a decision on the WTO case was last November but every procedural tactic has been employed to delay the final reckoning. A commission discussion was imminent but yesterday, still trying to stretch the timescale to the limit, the commission has finally conceded that it must debate its biotech policy and has finally set 7 May for the event.

Cultivation of GM crops is expected to be at the top of the agenda but the discussion is not going to be simple. Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas – whose portfolio includes GM issues – is one of the leading GM refuseniks. He has hatched what he hopes will be an acceptable deal which has been called the "Dimas package".

He aims to broker an agreement with Austria – which is the only country specifically named in the WTO suit - to lift its ban on import and processing of GM products, but allowing it to keep its ban on cultivation. He then expects the commission "college" to support him in rejecting two company applications for growing GM crops.

This strategy, of somewhat dubious legality – even under EU law – will not end the debate, but it might buy the commission a little more time. As recently as March, the commission approved the import of yet another GM maize, but in an uncommon display of impotence, is unable to make its decision stick while so many member states continue to block imports.

Altogether, this is a fascinating study of the interplay between the commission and the member states, with an overlay of global politics, illustrating the limits of the commission's power. If they are so minded, member states collectively can still frustrate the provisions of the Treaties and EU law.

Much is at stake here. If the claims for GM crops stand up, EU member states are at a serious commercial disadvantage in rejecting these products, with 114 million hectares under GM cultivation elsewhere in the world. If, on the other hand, some of the fears – as expressed by member states – are justified, then the delays and obstruction are well founded.

Either way, this is a matter for debate at the highest political level because the issues cannot go unresolved. But, as we observed at the beginning of this piece, however vigorous that debate becomes, it is not happening here. On this, as with so many other issues, we are reduced to the status of spectators.

COMMENT THREAD

The contradictions of environmentalism

It was Karl Marx who claimed that the contradictions inherent in capitalism would eventually bring it down – a prediction which has yet to materialise. By contrast, it seems that the contradictions inherent in rampant environmentalism are having such an effect.

No more so is this apparent than in today's decision of the self-styled Scottish government to refuse planning permission to build the largest land-based wind farm in Europe on protected moorland at Barvas Moor in the Isle of Lewis.

Ironically, despite wind farms being a central element of the EU's renewable energy strategy, the main reason cited as to why the plans to build the £500 million 176-turbine farm were thrown out was that they were incompatible with EU law. Barvas Moor is designated as a Special Protection Area under the EU Bird and Habitats Directives.

Said energy minister Jim Mather, "European legislation requires a specific procedure to be followed when proposals which could potentially affect Special Protection Areas come forward." He had "…considered all the relevant issues and concluded it would not be possible to approve this application." "The Lewis Wind Farm would have significant adverse impacts on the Lewis Peatlands Special Protection Area, which is designated due to its high value for rare and endangered birds."

This puts the Scottish government in some difficulties, albeit of its own making. It has turned its back on nuclear energy and, as recently as November last year, increased its renewable target from 40 to 50 percent by 2020, with an interim target of 31 per cent by 2011. That latter target equates to 5,000 Megawatts in installed capacity.

At the time, the government confidently asserted that the absence of new nuclear power stations would not cause an energy gap in a Scotland as it had the natural resources and ingenuity "to become a non-nuclear energy exporter".

With the Lewis decision, however, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce is exhibiting some nervousness. Criticising the decision to reject the wind farm, chief executive Liz Cameron said: "We cannot afford for the Scottish Government to play fast and loose with the security and reliability of our future electricity supplies and run the risk of the lights going out in Scotland."

Mather nevertheless continues to exude confidence in the Scottish Government's commitment to developing renewable energy. Already, 13 applications have been approved, including the second and third largest wind farms in the country. But, with EU environmental law constraining his freedom of action, it remains to be seen whether Scotland can get anywhere near reaching its new renewables targets.

Instead, it may become the first "environmentally sound" region to enjoy prolonged blackouts, bringing it closer to the Greenie dream of forcing us back into the Stone Age.

COMMENT THREAD

What's in a name?

Lorne Gunter, of the Canadian National Post notes that Edmonton's Earth Day 2008 - which began yesterday – was not particularly well attended. This, he speculates, might have had something to do with the fact that it was 25 degrees below normal for this time of year, with the city still deep in snow.

He also notes that "climate change" has replaced "global warming" in green rhetoric, suggesting that this is in part because there is less and less proof that much warming is occurring. Another reason, he advances, is so that whenever there is a climate catastrophe - too much cold or too much heat, too much rain or too little, more hurricanes or fewer, longer summers or early frosts - all of it could be blamed on humans.

I think this lady man has the measure of the Greenies.

COMMENT THREAD

An inability to comprehend

Trapped in its own little provincial bubble, The Times is back reporting on "ministers" plans to lower the limit to 50 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, from the existing limit of 80mg.

The latest development is that our provincial government is "proposing" that drink drivers would no longer automatically lose their licences when found over the lower proposed limit. Instead, those caught driving over the new limit would be subject to a "two strikes and you're out" rule under which they would receive six penalty points for the first offence and only be disqualified from driving if they reoffended within five years.

The point here, of course, is that this idea does not originate from Whitehall. It is part of the same EU initiative, promulgated in 2003, that brought us the prospect of a lower limit and random breath testing. The removal of an automatic ban – which has been a central feature of British drink-driving laws – is entirely driven by the EU commission's plans to harmonise traffic law penalties throughout the member states.

Predictably, the plan has brought protests from road safety groups, who fear that abolishing the automatic ban will send a confusing message to motorists. They argue that it might encourage some to risk drinking and driving because the consequences of being caught would be less serious than they are now.

What they do not appreciate, though – and have not been informed by the media – is that, because this is an EU initiative, it is a done deal. Debate and discussion is an irrelevance. The announcement of "plans" by ministers is in fact a softening-up exercise which is but a precursor to rolling over and accepting the diktats from Brussels.

Interestingly, The Times retails concerns from the "influential Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety" which says it is undecided about whether to support the ending of the automatic ban. Rob Gifford, the council's director, is cited as saying: "If it resulted in double the number of people losing their licences for breaching the lower limit, it could clog up the courts and create more of a problem because people would just drive while disqualified."

What the paper fails to say is that the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety is no longer influential. Its views – which were once shared by our provincial government - are no longer of any significance, as long as the agenda is driven by Brussels.

Furthermore, this is an area where there are a wide range of views about the best way to tackle what is acknowledged to be a problem. There is a valid argument as to whether measures should be targeted at specific groups of drivers known to be at greater risk – and to cause more problems – or whether broad-brush measures should be adopted.

Some sense of this debate comes in papers here, here, and here, making this a valid issue for public debate, preferably led by our legislators in parliament.

In the greater scheme of things, it could well be that the outcome of such a debate would be that we adopted measures similar to those demanded by Brussels. But, there again, it could be that a different approach was deemed to be more appropriate.

The effect of Brussels intervention, therefore, is to close down the debate – marginalising parliament in the process - ending up with the UK having measures imposed on it, rather than allowing for adoption after widespread discussion and the emergence of a broad consensus. That is the measure of the malign effect of rule by EU legislation. Law is increasingly imposed on us, rather than agreed by us, the very antithesis of democracy.

We might have ended up with the same law (but might not have), but the way that law is made has changed dramatically. Not only is that a bad thing, even worse is the fact that our media are displaying a total inability to comprehend what is happening.

COMMENT THREAD

A visit to the real world

In a specialist Manchester business magazine comes a whiff of the real world – the one that is being steadily destroyed by the regulatory avalanche from Brussels.

The story concerns a small chemical manufacturer which produces a common and garden chemical called ADBAC (Benzalkonium Chloride, for short) – technically a quaternary ammonium compound (QAC) with biocidal properties. It is very widely used – and has been for nearly a century – as an active ingredient for baby wipes, skin disinfectants, such as Savlon, for sanitisers in the food industry and for veterinary use.

As it happens, I know the product extremely well, having once worked with a company producing a compound based on it, for use as a disinfectant skin wipe and even for such sensitive uses as disinfecting respirator masks. We actually took the product through the US EPA registration process, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds – and it passed with flying colours, allowing us to market it as "non-toxic and non-irritant", completely safe for skin contact.

Yet, despite long evidence of safety, this is not good enough for the EU. The company involved, QuatChem Ltd, has fallen foul of the EU's Biocidal Product Directive, which comes into force in 2010. In order to continue marketing its product, it must produce lengthy and costly dossiers on their chemicals, including expensive testing to comply with new safety standards.

A perverse feature of the directive – in common with much EU legislation – is that the cost of compliance is the same for all firms, irrespective of the size or turnover of the company. And, although QuatChem's nearest competitor has a turnover 60,000 times greater than its own, it is still having to find a roughly equivalent sum on registration. So far, it has spent £100,000 and is facing a potential total bill of between £4.3m and £6.5m by the 2010 deadline.

The Oldham-based company, however, only has a turnover of £2m, and is being forced to divert two of its own scientists to the task and is paying consultants for additional work. Plans to create ten jobs and move to bigger premises have been put on hold because of the costs.

Bizarrely, although the base chemical is produced by many different companies – with identical properties – each producer has to go through the process of publishing the same dossiers and duplicating research in order to generate the data for it.

Dr Rubinah Chowdhary, QuatCchem director and part owner, says: "It is a very severe problem. I do not know how a directive like this could have been designed. SMEs have not been factored into this. It is astounding. We have two PhD scientists working on it. They were originally employed to grow the business. The effect on us has been tremendous. This directive seems particularly wrong and unfair."

Welcome to the real world Dr Chowdhary. You join the ranks of fishermen, small slaughterhouse owners, egg producers, dairymen, animal feed merchants, electronics designers and even financial advisors, all of whom have been caught up in the mad regulatory machine that is the EU. It cares not one whit as to whether its regulations or directives are "wrong and unfair".

Your job is to comply or go out of business – preferably the latter.

COMMENT THREAD

The universal solution

Even if agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel is behind the curve, France has been quick to talk up reversing the CAP reforms as a means of increasing production.

Now, building on that momentum comes Germany, its agriculture minister, Horst Seehofer, calling for a drastic rise in European agricultural production. To that effect, he also wants to reverse the round of CAP reforms, in a bid to counter rising world food prices and shortages.

This is in an interview to the mass-circulation Bild newspaper, where Seehofer proclaims that, "We need a farming renaissance, and an increase in agricultural production in Germany, in the whole of the European Union and, more especially, in the developing countries."

The German agriculture minister also notes that the EU had induced farmers to stop using 3.8 million hectares (9.4 million acres) of arable land in recent years to counter surpluses in dairy, produce, wine and meat and declares that this land should be brought into production once more. He adds: "We have to produce more foodstuffs worldwide in order to prevent further price jumps."

Here, we have an interesting conflict building as, according to Der Spiegel the German finance ministry is looking to reduce agricultural subsidies in view of the surging food costs, but Seehofer insists that farming in Europe still has to be protected. Agricultural subsidies, worth €50 billion in 2006, "should not be questioned at all, the way it's happening now," he says.

As before, though, we seem to have a problem in EU ministers believing their own propaganda, labouring under the false impression that CAP subsidies were designed to promote production, rather than manage the effects of over-production arising from national subsidies and the world-wide boost in agricultural productivity that occurred after World War II.

In this context, the finance ministry is right. Agriculture, specifically the arable sector, does not need subsidies as long as world prices are buoyant. The current record price levels are already driving increased production and the market, left to itself, is well capable of ensuring that supply matches demand.

By and large, the limiting factor in the arable sector is the huge raft of regulatory constraints – many of them in the name of environmental protection – which prevent farmers bringing land into use, or from adopting more efficient cropping patterns. Yet these are unlikely to be affected by the subsidy system.

More to the point, the particular sectors which have been hardest hit, such as pigs and poultry (including egg production), are those which are not supported by the subsidy regime, while wine and – to an extent – sugar production, which continue to over-produce, are still major beneficiaries of public money.

In short, not only is the CAP focused on the wrong things, the "reforms" fail in any way to address the market distortions that have been built into the system as a result of decades of state support. Since these have a greater drag on production capabilities, reversing these "reforms" and throwing more (or even the same amount of) money at agriculture is likely to have little immediate (or any) effect on production.

Where, as we have stated before, state intervention could help is in providing a temporary buffer for livestock producers, to even-out the wild swings in grain prices and allow producers to cope with their increased input costs.

However, such a scheme is not on the agenda which means that the French and now the German agriculture ministry are simply lobbying for more EU support of farming, to no effect whatsoever.

But then, that is the CAP for you. Primarily intended as a conduit to pour money into French agriculture - with provisions to allow the German government to continue subsidising its own politically important farmers – the Franco-German motor is being predictably quick in exploiting the emerging food shortage to continue an agenda that has existed for decades.

For them, whatever the problem, be it over-production or food shortages, the solution is the same – more of our money. This is the universal solution.

COMMENT THREAD

Stop the scare

Building on our visit to Washington, Booker launches a broadside against the global warming hype in his column today.

The highlight of our visit (one of them) was dinner with Dr Fred Singer, a distinguished US scientist, formerly professor at two universities, and founder of the US satellite weather service (pictured – Booker and Singer). He, writes Booker, has done more than anyone in the scientific counter-attack against the ruthless promotion of global warming orthodoxy by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Dr Singer played a key part in last month's scientific conference in New York organised by the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), and gave me an advance copy of its new report (which is now available online - see here).

The report - Nature Not Human Activity Rules the Climate - presents a devastating analysis of the IPCC's case. Intended for a lay audience and signed by scientists from 15 countries, it takes all the key points of the IPCC's "consensus" case and tears them expertly apart, showing how the Intergovernmental Panel has either exaggerated, distorted or suppressed the evidence available to it, or has imputed much greater certainty to its findings than is justified by the data.

One of the central flaws in the IPCC's case is its reliance on computer models, based only on those parts of the evidence which suit its chosen "narrative", omitting or downplaying hugely important factors which might produce a very different picture. These range from the role played by water vapour, by far the most important of the greenhouse gases, to the influence of solar activity on cloud cover.

The report's most startling passage, however, is one that examines the "fingerprint" of warming at different levels of the atmosphere which the computer models come up with as proof that the warming is man-made (see graphs, left). The pattern actually shown by balloon and satellite records is so dramatically different that, even on the IPCC's own evidence, the report concludes, "anthropogenic greenhouse gases can contribute only in a minor way to the current warming, which is mainly of natural origin".

The significance of this can scarcely be overestimated. At just the moment when, thanks to the overwhelming pressure generated by the IPCC, the world's politicians, led by the EU, are committing us to spending untold trillions of pounds, dollars and euros on measures to "mitigate" the claimed effects of man-made warming, here is a galaxy of experts producing hard evidence that - if the problem exists at all - the official explanation for it is oriented in wholly the wrong direction.

Furthermore the consequences of that warming and of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have, on balance, been wholly beneficial, by increasing plant growth.

The real danger, the report warns, is not a continued warming but that temperatures and agricultural production might drop as the world faces its worst food shortage in decades (now being made worse by the crazed rush to give over farmland to biofuels). And if that is the way the evidence lies, Booker concludes, how much are any of our politicians doing to prepare for a crisis already upon us?

That, of course, is very much the point. While the politicians are indulging themselves in their global warming fantasies, the best avaiable evidence is that - at the very least - we are entering a period of static if not declining temperatures. Meanwhile, the global economy has become reliant on the "global warming dividend" of increased agricultural productivity. If this now disappears, it will leave real shortages of food and unsustainable price increases, precipitating far more damage and misery than ever the notional effects of global warming could ever do.

But, with the politicians looking in the wrong direction, economic policies are set to make a difficult situation unmanageable, involving massive unnecessary costs and hampering our capability to deal flexibly with the real rather than imagined situation.

Never, it is possible to say, has the global political community got it so wrong, with such a potentially devastating effect. And, as is always the case, while the politicians play, we pay.

COMMENT THREAD

Prescient – or what?

I had not seen the poll – honest! But, courtesy of Tom Nelson's blog, we get the latest ABC News poll (click to enlarge), listing those issues of importance to voters in the US presidential elections in November.

Asked to nominate "the single most important issue in your choice for president?", easily the greatest concern offered by respondents was the category "economy/jobs" at 41 percent. Iraq came a poor second at 18 percent.

As for global warming, you can readily see how important this is to the ordinary voter. It scores a very big, fat zero. For the American public, the issue is not on the political radar – it is a non-issue.

As for us, only a few hours ago, we were writing of jobs and the economy: "make no mistake, this is going to be the defining political issue for the elections on both sides of the pond". Of global warming, we noted, "public sentiment is very much against the hype".

Let no one say that our political antennae are not finely tuned.

COMMENT THREAD

A different world

On the constant adrenaline rush of an overseas visit, with the added complication of the (self-imposed) discipline of keeping up the blog, the torrent of information and events seemed at times almost overwhelming.

This was no more so than yesterday, arriving at dawn at Dulles International Airport (pictured above), where even the departure lounge has wall-to-wall TV screens, churning out non-stop news bulletins, where every corner (it seems) is occupied by some intense person tapping away at a wireless enabled laptop, and where the news stands are groaning with media, packed with tales from across the world, events big and small, all shrieking for attention.

Time, inevitably, is rationed, and one of the things that had to go was the monitoring of British political blogs, which in any event took on an aura of distance and remoteness from the far-flung shores of the United States. But, with all that was going on, one had to smile when, finally catching up, one sneaked a view of Iain Dale's blog for Friday, telling us, "Well there's not much else going on today…". Bless!

Nevertheless, we are very happy with Conservative Home which ran a piece on its best political book of the year, which had Scared to Death as one of two worthy books shortlisted for its award. Thank you CH.

Anyhow, interestingly, front page news in the New York Times yesterday was a long story (carried over on the inside pages) on how the economy was scaling down, driving into recession.

The particular thrust of the story though was how businesses, grappling with declining fortunes, were cutting hours for those on their payrolls. Self-employed people were suffering a drop in demand for their services, like music lessons, catering and management consulting. Growing numbers of people were settling for part-time work out of a failure to secure a full-time position.

As a result, says the NYT, with people bringing home paychecks that do not go as far, "…are forced to economize, eliminating demand for goods and services that once captured their dollars, spreading pain to providers like auto dealers and lawn care providers. They, too, must trim their outlays on pay, shrinking working hours more and furthering the slowdown".

The paper shows Kim Baker (pictured with his daughter Bailey and wife, Debbie), who works at a roof tile factory with declining business. "We don't just hop in the car and go shopping or get something to eat," he says.

What has special resonance is that this story, published yesterday, is almost a mirror image of today's story in The Daily Telegraph, headlined: "Financial crisis forces Britons into austerity".

Uncannily, the emphasis of the story is exactly the same, as we are told that, with the cost of living going up by £1,800 a year for the average home, families are changing their spending habits to cope with the economic squeeze. "Middle-class customers are turning to budget supermarkets, discount stores, low-price hotels and car rental firms, all of which have had booming sales in recent months…".

For us, if course, we can only say to the MSM, what took you so long? We were writing about this in February, when it was already apparent, but it is fascinating how the media on both sides of the Atlantic are now taking up the cause.

Whatever the political classes may now choose to prattle about, make no mistake, this is going to be the defining political issue for the elections on both sides of the pond. People are hurting, and they want answers from politicians, on how they are going to get to grips with the twin evils of declining incomes and rampant inflation.

As for Global Warming – the issue which took us to Washington - from the reaction of the people we spoke to throughout the US, including more than a dozen talk-show hosts, by whom we were interviewed, the impression is that the tide is on the turn. As in the UK, public sentiment is very much against the hype, and the recent winter has raised the public profile of the sceptics.

In Washington, we sat basking in glorious spring sunshine, with temperatures in the high seventies (and not a single Celcius temperature offered – bliss!) but, flying back, even now we could see the residue of the great snows. Most of the free water in Maine is still ice-bound (pictured, above left) and TV weather forecasts in some States are even now issuing snow warnings.

Back now in cold, grey Yorkshire, it is a different world – but, as the NYT and The Daily Telegraph unwittingly confirm, we have so much in common.

COMMENT THREAD

North is back - the last open thread

All our readers will be delighted to know that my wandering colleague has reappeared on these shores. He sounds reasonably coherent and will, undoubtedly, blog later. So, this is my last open thread on the forum. After this I shall disappear back into les coulisses continuing with the blogging but not taking part in the forum.

Some of the readers who joined in the last week might have been surprised at the slightly abrasive tone in which the forum was run. Well, worry no longer. The good cop is back.

In the meantime, here is the last open thread. One of the themes we have pursued on our blog and, I note, it has been picked up by the Society for Individual Freedom, is that coming out of the European Union is not enought. In fact, that would not even be the end of the beginning, merely the beginning.

As it happens, I do not think we shall actually leave the European Union. It will gently but inexorably collapse around us, as our political class, not only voted in by us but supported by us in the shape of BBC licence, newspaper buying etc, continues to discuss futilely possibilities of reform.

What happens after that? Here is the theme for this open thread. Is there any point in being outside the EU if the country is run by the same people in the same way as before?

For the last time, forum, let's roll.

COMMENT THREAD

Interesting musings

As we have mentioned before, Charles Crawford’s blog is always worth reading. Would that it were true about other British political blogs that seem to descend into dull gossip at the drop of a hat.

Mr Crawford is that unusual personality, a career diplomat, now retired from the FCO, who has thought very carefully about certain issues. As a consequence, he used to upset his superiors on a regular basis and is now managing to make some very interesting points.

All his postings are worth reading, including Tuesday’s elegant dismemberment of Polly Toynbee’s article and entirely justified attack on the pink girliness of some toys. I, too, banned, Barbies, Sindys, Care-Bears (or yuk-bears), My Little Ponies (or my little pukies) from our house and I, too, was somewhat astonished when a ball with a ghastly little pony appeared as a present from a friend who never stopped proclaiming her feminist ideology. The ball did not last long, I am glad to say.

However, that is a digression. The posting I was really interested in is Charles Crawford’s latest on the BAE and Saudi Arabia saga, in which he muses on different diplomatic behaviour and why it is that Britain seems to be so unsuccessful these days. Well, he ought to know.

To start with he looks at American and Russian ways of doing things and why they are successful:

“Part of getting what you want is projecting a sense of Power and Purpose, so that when a negotiation starts others feel cowed by your self-confidence. You establish up-front a psychological initiative. You evince inexorable success.

It helps to be Powerful to start off with. US diplomats enter a room armed with self-belief, to the point sometimes of sheer obnoxiousness. But there is only one USA. The rest of us have to make do with more modest means.

The Russians too are outstanding negotiators, but in a different sense. They are taught negotiating technique in a way which is quite foreign to British and European methods.

Russian diplomats' First Rule of Negotiating is simple and profound: "Never move position, even when you agree with someone, without trying to extract something first."

This attitude gives them all sorts of advantages. Above all they usually convey the impression (a) that they are tough, and (b) that they move only on their terms. Plus they come over as (c) ready to take considerable pain in defending their principles, while (d) being ready, nay keen, to hit you harder (and if possible below the belt) than you hit them.

Which is why Russian diplomats are rarely kidnapped or humiliated. Even the dimmest terrorist out there knows that if he does something bad to the Russians, they will not hesitate to something Very Bad, and preferably very personal, to him - and his family.

This makes a mockery of the whole concept of diplomacy. Mr Crawford is cheerfully telling us that the only way you can get your way is by having the maxim gun while they do not or a gunboat hovering in the background. Nothing else will work. Actually, in other postings he makes it clear that toughness at the negotiating table, without a gunboat might work as well but we need to be prepared to inflict pain.

This may be true but I am not sure he is right about Russia. The truth is that under Putin the Russians may have roared their terrible roar and gnashed their terrible teeth but got nothing except through outright bribery or very direct threats to cut off the gas supply. Even that works only with Germany.

As it happens there were Russian diplomats kidnapped and murdered in Iraq early in June 2006. It was rather a gruesome affair and the Russian government was rightly outraged.

On June 28, 2006 President Putin “ordered” his secret services to find the killers of the Russian diplomats and liquidate them. The problem was that Iraq is not Chechnya and even in the latter those famous orders to hunt down every last terrorist have not been exactly fulfilled. In another country these matters become very difficult.

In October of the same year Strategy Page reported that “nothing has been heard of any Russian retribution over the last four months” though, given the close links between the Russian and Iraqi security services in the days of Saddam the task should not have been too difficult.

On July 8, 2006 a new law [in Russian but that should not present too many problems] was passed by the Duma, which went through the Federal Council on the 14th and became law on the 27th. This was the Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity”, which threatened to curtail the reporting of any terrorist action and punish those who “slander” officials. It specifically empowered the secret services to pursue extremists and terrorists beyond the border of the Russian Republic.

There is an obvious problem here. The Russian government can empower all it wants but those agents’ activity may not be welcomed by other countries.

So far as it can be ascertained the kidnappers and murderers of Russian diplomats have not been hunted down by the FSB or any other Russian organization, though, obviously, they might have been killed for other reasons. What did happen was the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in November of that year.

Altogether a somewhat muddled story.

Mr Crawford's analysis of why the British manage to gain anything through diplomatic negotiations is pithy and, to an outsider, completely accurate:

Our British problem is that we (maybe especially in the FCO?) in a baffling post-modern way are increasingly uncomfortable if not embarrassed with any talk of 'power' (theirs or ours). We seem to be drifting into a hazy miasma of collective ineffectualness. Psychological and practical 'safety' is all. Confrontation necessarily is aggressive (and therefore bad). Winning is undesirable if it means someone loses.

Would it be any different if they had a gunboat or two? On the other hand when was the last time a British diplomat was humilated by a kidnapper? By their allies, yes, but not by the enemy.