More than a footnote

This will win me no plaudits, but with the airwaves saturated with wailing Irish politicians, and a quota of lurid accounts from diverse media sources, we are really none the wiser, as to what is really going on.

In a way, this is classic Irish politics: "if you think you know what is going on, you haven't been listening". But a good place to start is with Ambrose, who might be close to identifying the real agenda, or part of it.

The European Central Bank, he says, has issued a clear warning that it will press ahead with plans to raise interest rates and withdraw lending support for banks despite the eurozone debt crisis, even if this risks pushing Ireland, Portugal and Spain into deeper trouble.

This is a short, newsy piece, though, lacking the detailed discussion that we usually get from Ambrose, so it looks more like work in progress. That apart, there are too many "actors" with agendas, there is too much theatre and too little hard information to work out what is really going on. But, when history comes to be written, the story of this week will, I suspect, be more than a footnote.

One thing though, the photo is rather funny: a Dublin beggar holds out a cup to Ajai Chopra, left, Deputy Director of the European Department of the IMF as he makes his way to talks with the Irish government in Dublin. I wonder who put him up to it.

COMMENT THREAD

Winter Weather Awareness Week

In an almost perfect parody of themselves, the warmists are seriously telling us that colder winters could be a sign of global warming. This is just as well because the Scots are being warned that this winter could be worse than last year's record-breaking cold snap.

Temperatures are expected to fall as low as -10C north of the Border this weekend and heavy snowfalls are predicted to leave large parts of the country bathed in white. Now experts have forecast the early onset of freezing weather in mid-November could be the start of a long, cold winter at least as severe as last year's.

Fortunately, the warmists are so closeted in their towers of unreality that they have not the first idea quite how stupid they look, or how their pronouncements are treated by ordinary mortals – mostly with derision. Still, it is Winter Weather Awareness Week in Alabama, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency offering tips on getting ready for winter weather. Perhaps Dr Mann and his cohorts ought to attend.

COMMENT THREAD

Put them out to grass

In judging the merits of any press article, you have to look at who wrote it and the newspaper in which it appears. Thus judged, the MoD story currently being circulated has two handicaps – it is written by James Kirkup and is published by The Daily Telegraph. The latter is increasingly a very major handicap, but the former is almost invariably fatal. Trusting to that lightweight fool – a fool amongst fools, so to speak – is not the best of counsels.

Nevertheless, the lightweight Kirkup has clearly got hold of something, the importance of which he cannot entirely disguise, even if one would not expect him to understand its precise nature.

With that in mind, in the MoD memo on the strategic review that has come his way, we see that the MoD and the military was even less prepared and less well equipped for the process than even we suspected. Even if our military is now increasingly unable to fight successfully the wars with which it is changed with prosecuting, one might at least expect their Whitehall Warriors to possess some skills when it comes to beating up the politicians, especially when they are led by the baleful 13th Century Fox.

However, from what we can read of the memo, it would appear that the military are just as incompetent in fighting their corner in Whitehall as they are in fighting real wars, and have suffered a grievous defeat as a result. Despite having had several years warning that there was to be a strategic review, we learn that a consultation was carried out but responses were received "only as decisions were being taken and collated only as they were being confirmed".  As if they could not have pre-empted the review and got their responses in earlier?

Crucially, so little had been done about force structures and equipment that another "six to nine months" was needed to develop "high-level military judgements", in order to decide which forces, weapons and equipment would be needed - even though it had been quite obvious for years that these matters were going to be at the centre of the review.

This perhaps is the most amazing finding of all as, despite all the warnings that they had had, the military was still no further forward in defining the kit it needed than it was during the Labour regime. One suspects that even "six to nine months", would not have been enough.  It is pretty evident that the military now has lost the ability even to decide what it needs.

It is then becomes almost laughable to find that the MoD as a whole "did not fully understand – or accept" the scale of the cuts it was facing, and that the review should have started with "a more hard-nosed description of the financial challenges".

Actually, this is utterly bizarre. One can only think that the MoD and the military in general fell for the Tory rhetoric that Brown was the destroyer of the military and that they would be in good hands after the election. Too late have they remembered that all-important rule of politics: "never trust a Tory".  I bet the little chaps and chapesses are now having second thoughts about voting for Dave.

But one thing which does not surprise me in the least is the observation that the Armed Forces had no "meaningful internal thinking" on how to deliver major cuts and effectively blocked "radical" options like restructuring the Army. As long as I have had any dealings with the MoD and the Armed Forces, I have been aware that these institutions have had no "meaningful internal thinking" on just about anything.

None of them ever "do" thinking in any meaningful way, or have any capacity so to do.  This is why they are in the mess they're in and why, when push comes to shove, we need to think very hard about giving them anything serious like weapons, in case they hurt themselves - or anybody else.

I suppose there is just about enough intellect there to be able to plan and mount a ceremonial guard for wee willie's wedding, and organise a fly-past. They might even pass muster for an EU parade, if they can buy enough white wellies and gloves (to say nothing of the flags) but on current form, the sooner they are all put out to grass the better. If we are going to save money, we might as well do a proper job of it.

COMMENT THREAD

A modern miracle

With the economy in the hands of the pampered child Osborne, we see that Britain has slumped into the red by another £10.3 billion last month "despite a leap in business tax and VAT revenues". So says The Press Association, which tells us that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) records that public sector net borrowing in October set a record high for the month and marked an increase on the £10.1 billion seen a year earlier.

Given the increase in the tax take for the month, it looks as if those good ol' "Tory cuts" are really having an effect - another modern miracle at work.

COMMENT THREAD

A stampede of groundhogs

North Sea fishermen are throwing away up to half of all the fish they catch every year in what campaigners say is a chronic waste of food, says The Independent.

It tells us that almost a million dead and dying fish are discarded at sea each year, according to a campaign calling for Europe's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to be comprehensively reformed. Most are tossed overboard because they are too small, of the wrong species or will take fishing boats over their quotas, making it illegal to land them.

And hey! Guess what! Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the food campaigner and celebrity chef, was so appalled at learning of the level of discards, describing it as an "insane waste", that he has launched a campaign to get the practice banned.

Well, well, well. Welcome to the world, Mr Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Next thing you know, he'll be talking to that nice Mr Cameron, and pointing him to a useful little report on the Tory website. There again, he might save his breath. Let someone else come back in other five year's time, and The Independent can write yet another balls-aching story about reforming the CFP.

COMMENT THREAD

Crisis on hold

With a history of being a cheerleader for Britain joining the euro, and with consistent euroslimic tendencies, The Independent has also been to the fore in supporting the EU line over Ireland. And now it continues by telling us: "Economic crash to drive 100,000 out of Ireland."

There is, of course, no "crash" in Ireland – although no one would deny that the country is in difficulties. But the euroslime are not in the game of telling it how it is. They have an agenda to run.

Other accounts make it very clear that we cannot afford Ireland to go down the pan, as British bank exposure to Irish debt exceeds £140bn. This is not a local affair. The British taxpayer, who will have to pick up the final tab, is potentially at risk, with a huge degree of exposure.

This is not a time, therefore, when we can afford the media to go AWOL, although that is largely what it is doing. For the main, though, we are in waiting mode.

As Yusuf Heusen, senior sales trader at IG Index, put it, courtesy of The Guardian blog: "Today's general lack of direction is likely to be a result of cautious investors waiting to see how the Irish debt situation plays out before making any significant moves."

It looks like the situation is limbo until later this morning, when the IMF officials fly into Dublin, and the next round of rather dubious discussions begin. There is no chance, just yet, that we wake up to see the euro crash and burn. But, as always, the odds are shortening and our confidence increases.

COMMENT THREAD

Why not?

"Perhaps now Dr Richard North can do a screen grab of your header to this article, so he can show you congratulating him on congratulating you. And then you can do a screen grab of the resulting EUReferendum page, and so on, ad infinitum, until you both dissolve in a miasma of self-congratulatory cross-references..." says one of Cranmer's commenters.

Why not? It's only what the MSM does every day! Over to you, your Grace. It's like one of those mirror tricks.

COMMENT THREAD

Totally at odds with reality

The media have conveyed an image "totally at odds" with Ireland's reality writes Marc Coleman, tucked into an obscure corner of the BBC website. This is no great credit to the BBC – as a volume consumer of news and comment, it is bound occasionally to get things right, if only by accident which it hastily remedies with its usual diet of received wisdom.

Coleman, however, seems to tell it like it is, saying that the situation is by no means as bad in Ireland as is being made out. This is something Jim Greenhalf picked up recently when he went to Dublin – which suggests that the "colleagues" have nefarious reasons of their own for hyping a scare, none of them in the interests of the Irish.

And undoubtedly they have. Would one even begin to take van Rompuy at face value? If he shook your hand, you would be best advised to count your fingers afterwards.

So it is that the Irish are rightly suspecting a stitch-up, under pressure to accept a series of measures so damaging and so blatantly discriminatory that even Euroslime Cowan is having difficulty accepting them, much less selling them to his countrymen.

That, actually makes Ambrose more right than wrong. It isn't Ireland that is in big trouble so much as the euro and its institutions. But with Rompuy trying to dump on the Irish, one can only suspect the colleagues' motives and intentions.

This is very much the vase with the EU's growing budget crisis which has largely been submerged by the froth about William and his bride to be.

As an incidental note, railing against the disproportionate coverage on this pair is not simply, or at all, being grouchy. There are important things happening in the world, of great importance to us, which need reporting. If we left it to the children on the editorial staff of The Daily Telegraph, we'd have spent the whole day cooing about little willie.

The point about the EU budget, of course, is that it is pointing up a tension between the Council and the Commission which we have seen building since the Lisbon Treaty, and which is far too subtle and complex for most media reporters to understand – those who mainly insist on calling the European Council a "summit".

There is really no limit to how thick these people are, which is why they need the protection of full-time jobs in newspapers. They would not survive five minutes out on their own, without their pals looking after them.

The British papers will, of course, try to "put a union jack on it", in the belief that their readers are largely as thick as they are (and, of course, many are), and in so doing will try to project Euroslime Dave as having more than a walk-on part.

But there is a lot more to this than meets the eye, with tensions and dynamics that are being missed in the welter of crap and "bread and circuses" tosh that passes for our modern media. Some of what is happening will gradually emerge, but at the moment so many people are running interference that it is difficult to ascertain the direction of travel.

There is a general theme, of course – the one that says that, as always, we are going to get stuffed, but the way things are moving, I do sense that the colleagues are losing control. All we can do is seek to help them on their way, and then stab them as they fall.

COMMENT THREAD

Cranmer is right

His Grace takes to task that unmitigated buffoon Benedict Brogan who heaps praise on the granddaddy of the euroslimes, John Major, for keeping us out of the euro.

For sure, Major secured the opt-out at Maastricht, but this was no great heroic feat – merely one a grotesque little man needed to do to ensure his survival. His treachery in forcing the treaty through effectively destroyed the Conservative Party, and had he forced through the euro at the same time it would have destroyed him and his government. As it was, it was a close-run thing.

Thus, as Cranmer reminds us, it was not that unpleasant little tyke who did it. The political classes would have been only too keen to join, but Sir James Goldsmith, in setting up the Referendum party in 1996, forced both the Conservatives and Tony Blair's Noo Labour into agreeing a referendum before committing us to the single currency. That stopped us from joining.

Of course, Sir James would have got nowhere without the thousands of volunteer helpers – like myself – who put months of work and thousands of pounds of their own money into the campaign. When I opened up shop in Swadlincote as a candidate for Derbyshire South against Edwina Currie, within days I had a team of twenty of so around me. And, of all the elections I have ever fought, never have I had such a dedicated, professional and hard-working team as that.

Needless to say, standing up for our principles brought us all kinds of shit from the bien pensants of the likes of Ben Brogan, the same sort who are now wisely remarking how "lucky" we are that we never joined the euro. And, as we now retain our long-held convictions that the EU is the spawn of the Devil and we need to get out, we still take all kinds of shit, the same kind of shit from bien pensants like Ben Brogan – the bed-blocker extraordinaire of political journalism.

The difference between then and now, though, is that now I have a blog – which, as you would expect, the likes of Ben Brogan and his little claque of cloggers studiously ignore because it says nasty things about them.

Interestingly, Blogger now offers page statistics to its bloggers (whether you ask for them or not) and it insists that EU Ref is getting 350,000 (or better) page views a month. Without Brogan and his vapid little mates in the clogosphere linking to us, therefore, we are doing about four million page impressions a year, access which "they" can't and don't control.

Add the more restrained and mellifluous voices such as Cranmer and we have a considerable reach, all the more influential because – unlike that idiot Brogan – we actually know what we're talking about (still more reason for them to ignore us).

At times of deep depression, which is increasingly common, we need to remind ourselves that we are having an impact. The moronic tendency is not having it all its own way. As long as there are Cranmers in this world to correct fools like Brogan (did I say the man's an idiot?) then things aren't all bad. We still have to suffer the fools, but we no longer have to suffer them in silence.

COMMENT THREAD

The league of thick

You know, we really have missed a trick on this, taking the warmists seriously instead of exposing them for what they are – not Plane Stupid but just plain stupid ... thick as two short planks.

The latest evidence of stupidity comes from crap newspaper The Guardian and a dim little bird called Suzanne Rosier. In breathless style, she tells us: "Evidence that the global climate is changing is now unequivocal ... ".

WOW! GOSH! I'M STUNNED.

In all of time, the one constant thing about the climate is that it is always changing. And these stupid people have not only just discovered that but think it is important enough to put it in a newspaper as news. The climate is a-changing! Doh!

In the league of "thick", that will take some beating – not that they will have any great trouble beating it, because they are really that thick. But why we take them at all seriously is one of those modern-day puzzles.

COMMENT THREAD

A lack of proportion

One expected front-page headline and some inside stories – but the first 12-pages devoted to this single issue out of 16 pages in all tells you precisely what is wrong with The Daily Telegraph.

Not only do the editorial staff have a distorted world view, they are so isolated from the real world that they believe theirs is the only view, and thus are completely untroubled by the idea that they should impose it on us, their readers.

As a result – and as so often – we end up with tomorrow's garbage today, consigned to the bin largely unread, while we turn to the internet for news on what is actually going on.

There is only so much we take of this. And while for some it is an easy decision, ceasing to buy a daily newspaper is to break a habit of a lifetime. That does not come easy. Also, to an extent, one is – or used to be – in part defined by the newspaper one reads.

Time though is fast approaching for a parting of the ways. We managed to junk The Sunday Times as a newspaper not worth reading and, despite my forebodings, have not missed it one little bit. The Daily Telegraph looks to be following in its wake.

COMMENT THREAD

A crisis a day

Instinct tells me that, whatever is going to happen next, it's going to be nothing like any of the pundits predict. Having been bitten more than once, one tends to steer clear of the pundits and the experts – especially the experts who are usually the last to know what is going on and invariably get it wrong.

The trouble is that there is an awful lot of grandstanding going on, an amount of deliberate disinformation, some game playing and a great deal of idle speculation, all on the back of incomplete information.

We are too used to the death-defying scenarios where, as in the great adventure serials of old like Dick Barton, we see the heroes facing certain death, only for the script-writers to inject the immortal phrase: "with one bound, they were free".

Needless to say, a "don't know" doesn't sell newspapers, and simple, straightforward analysis is thin on the ground. Van Rompuy may be warning of a "survival crisis" while others are giving mixed messages but the truth is we don't know. We do not have the first idea what is going to happen next. We can hope, and we all have our hopes, but if I was to make an informed guess about the outcome of this current crisis, it is that we are looking at yet another anti-climax, and nothing much will then happen until the next crisis.

COMMENT THREAD

Collopse is nigh!

UPDATE: "The entire European Project is now at risk of disintegration, with strategic and economic consequences that are very hard to predict," says Ambrose - writing under the title: "The horrible truth starts to dawn on Europe's leaders". He talks freely of a "proto-Fascist organization", and Austrian corporals.

The Guardian, meanwhile, is retailing a tale of woe from Herman Van Rompuy, described as "president of the EU". He is warning that the EU faces a "survival crisis", with the risk of contagion spreading from Ireland across the continent.

In other words, we are getting the usual crap, via a crappy newspaper, which tells us very little, other than the Euroslime are having a hard time of it at the moment. This could be just another "drama queen" act – which the "colleagues" are so good at doing. But if it is for real, we do wish they'd get a move on - this ham actor death scene is getting a tad repetitive. If the euro is going to die, then better it is done quickly before we all die of boredom - or cynicism.

On the other hand, Reuters is warning of dire things should the IMF/EU impose a bail-out. Ireland's public sector workers face the risk of further wage cuts and redundancies and its "sacrosanct" low rate of corporation tax could be raised, says the agency.

Then we start to get into interesting times as a million or so Paddies rip Dublin apart. London cannot be far behind, which will leave Euroslime Dave, with his ideas on "happiness" rather stranded. He would be better off, methinks, calculating a POI (Pissed Off Index), which probably increases every time he opens his mouth.

However, the thought that the EU is that little bit closer to collopse is certainly enough to counter the normal feeling of revulsion engendered by contemplating The Boy, and might even bring to the bring to the fore a glimmer of a smile. Whether we need to put the champagne on ice yet is moot, but we can always be persuaded to consider it.

COMMENT THREAD

Lightweight fools

The award-winning Dellers is having a pop at Phil Jones – at the most appropriate level. One should not take these fools seriously, and that has possibly been the sceptics' mistake all along.

None of these people are serious scientists, none of them are worth a pile of chickens' droppings and, in fact, chicken manure is more useful. Arguing with them is to afford them a degree of gravitas they have neither earned nor deserve. Dellers shows them up to be the lightweight fools that they are.

COMMENT THREAD

We have been there so many times

It is not exactly the "boy crying wolf" syndrome, although we have been regaled with so many stories of the imminent collapse of the euro – and predicted the same ourselves – that we struggle to hope that this time it is for real.

However, the indomitable Ambrose is certainly ladling it on thick, with his talk of contagion hitting Portugal as the stresses spilling out from Ireland take hold.

Confusion, ill-will, acrimony and even panic seem to be dominating proceedings, and for once we seem to have the "colleagues" thrashing around with very little idea of what to do and how to manage the situation. There is a whiff of the euroslime having lost control.

On top of that, at 12.06 am, we had Reuters reporting that the budget talks between the EU parliament and the Council had "collapsed" - "threatening to throw EU financial planning into chaos and boding ill for the bloc's ability to reach deals", says the agency.

Generally speaking, it is very bad form to derive too much enjoyment from the misfortunes of others but, in this case, we are happy to make an exception, especially as Merkel is signalling that collapse of the euro could bring down her beloved "Europe". With the collapse of the budget talks providing a happy precedent, it just begins to look as if we can once again live in hope.

COMMENT THREAD

The end of popular science

The complaint was reported here and the detail is here.

The response, just received, is below – in JPEG format as the PCC file will not allow copy and paste (click to enlarge).

I am not surprised by the findings, which stem from the key statement by the PCC, as follows (pg 5):

The complainant said that the correction was inaccurate and misleading by stating that the "IPCC's statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence" because it was not "supported" in the sense which is accepted by scientific convention. However, the Commission was of the view that the newspaper (Sunday Times) was entitled to express the correction in layman's terms. The Commission noted that the newspaper was able to demonstrate that peer reviewed studies existed which, arguably, could be said to "support" the thrust of the IPCC's statement in a more general sense.

...

The correction did not claim that the IPAM research had been properly referenced or was in itself peer-reviewed.

In effect, the Commission is claiming that there are two meanings of the word "supported" – the strict, scientific sense, which it does not dispute, and a hitherto unknown layman's definition. And, without even specifying which meaning it was relying on, the Sunday Times was permitted to rely on this layman's definition. To do so was neither inaccurate nor misleading.

The broader implications of this are rather interesting. Effectively, the Commission is branding newspapers as "lay" publications, which are thus permitted to use (and rely on) layman's terms, the meanings of which are not recognised in science. And if the words they use do not conform with general scientific meanings, what their journalists write and what they publish has no scientific value whatsoever.

This is the end of popular science as we know it. You might as well buy comics (or nothing at all). The newspapers have written themselves out of the script.

COMMENT THREAD

Nothing is true

... until it has been denied by a minister. And it certainly looks to be true that Ireland's financial ordeal is far from over.

But it seems that it is going to cost us a fortune, thus adding very little to our happiness index. By my reckoning, if the population of Eire id about five million, that works out as a gift of £2,000 from the British taxpayer to every man, woman and child in the Emerald Isle.

As the talk generally is of Ireland needing a £70 billion bail-out, this works out at £14,000 per Irish head, which is an awful lot of debt for one very small country to cover – somewhat underlining the scale of the mess their politicians have created.

Meanwhile, with more details about Greece emerging, we are told that the EU is spending £850 million of taxpayers' money constructing a new HQ for translators and lawyers. The building in Luxembourg will house support staff for the EU Commission and Parliament - which are based in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Due to be completed by 2016, the 3.1 million sq ft building will add to the almost 25 million sq ft EU officials already occupy in the three cities.

The contrast, one with the other, points up what we are having to deal with – public profligacy and incompetence, with the taxpayers having to pick up the tab. There is fast coming the time when we are going to have to rise up and slaughter them. We are truly domed.

COMMENT THREAD

Unfair to satirists

Every time this man opens his mouth, another thousand satirists bite the dust – unable to compete in an environment where real life is more bizarre than you could hope to invent.

But if Euroslime Dave really wants to know what would make us happy – which I seriously doubt – he would have to do just one small thing. It is a three-letter word. Foxtrot Oscar is another clue, to something that you cannot be polite about, or even begin to address rationally.

Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference, this barking fool says: "Wellbeing can't be measured by money or traded in markets. It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times."

One is staggered, however, to learn that almost 30 MPs have signed an EDM calling for the move, arguing that ''promoting happiness and well-being is a legitimate and important goal of government''.

What these little muppets don't seem to realise is that the greatest single contribution they could make to our wellbeing is to cease to exist. Failing that, a good start if they tried to avoid going out of their ways to piss us off with such gay abandon.

But that it just a start. The truth is that, like a three-headed dog with rabies, any politician dipping into this pond is beyond redemption. We are domed.

COMMENT THREAD

Linkage

Booker actually writes two pieces today in his column, the one on climate change and the other dismissing Euroslime Dave's attempt to lecture the Chinese on democracy. The two issues, ostensibly different, are in fact very closely linked. In a properly functioning democracy, there is no way that the worst and most expensive aspects of the climate change scare could have been implemented, and it is only by ignoring their democratic duties that the MPs can permit their continuation.

Interestingly, even the lame and the stupid are beginning to get a little rattled, as they realise that driving your grannies and Aunt Mabels into fuel poverty and then hypothermia simply to satisfy the ambitions of the ghastly Huhne is not exactly a winning strategy.

But then, climate change and energy are issues where ToryBoyDiary has taken the coward's way, keeping schtum about them because they are contentious and require both drive and commitment to fight the cause. And if there is one thing the modern ToryBoy doesn't have, it is commitment – at least to anything that might require principles. Principles are divisive and might cause "splits" in the party.

However, now that Euroslime Dave has declared his hand on the EU, turning out to be a one-nation Heathite who would happily sell us to the highest bidder, we are not going to get excited about a few Tories who have finally seen the light and are getting worked up about Dave's Europe Bill.

As in the manner of all Tories, they will be full of good intentions. But when the chips are down, they will indulge in the political equivalent of coitus interuptus, getting terribly excited only then to pull out at the very last moment. As long as I have known them, that's what Tories always do. They will always let you down.

Now is the time, of course, when MPs could take on the government and make some serious demands, as the electoral arithmetic is with them. There will be few better opportunities to address the insanity and expense of the Climate Change Act, and demand real changes.

But this is not going to happen. As Booker says, MPs seem oblivious to the world around them. It comes as no surprise – but it is a touchstone issue against which we can measure their good faith and competence. For as long as that Act is in place, its serves as a marker to remind us of who our enemies are. They have "MP" after their names, they take our money under false pretences and they work in an institution which is laughably called a parliament.

To restore their own credibility - and regain the respect that should be their due - they know what they have to do. And the opportunity will not be around forever.  Sooner or later, the price of indifference has to be paid.

COMMENT THREAD

Climategate a year on

The terrifying thing is, it doesn't feel a bit like a year since the issue broke cover. But The Observer marks the passage of time, and so does Booker. You might notice subtle differences in how they approach the issues. On this, Remembrance Sunday, I'll have a look at both articles, and much more, later today.

COMMENT THREAD

The answer is "yes"

The question, of course, is "can they be that stupid?" – the "they" being politicians and in this particular case Alex Salmond. I've met Salmond several times, and watched him work. He's a smart cookie, and an extremely skilful operator. You don't get to his position and stay there without being both. But, on the matter of energy policy, he is being ineffably stupid.

That is the great paradox in human affairs. Highly intelligent and clever people are also capable of an incredible level of stupidity. The reason is the system and environment in which they work. If these people thought they were doing stupid things, they would stop.

What the system does is block the feedback loop, depriving them of signals that tell them they are being stupid, or diluting their effect. That is how generals are able to send thousands of men to their deaths, and then repeat the experience. No one is able to stand up to them, face-to-face, and tell them they are being stupid. The ones that are able do not have the access or authority.

That was the interesting thing most recently about the Spectator dinner, with Dannatt present. You had all the Spectator nobs gushing over the "great man", who was at times talking utter tosh. Yet they lapped it up. To call the man out over what any one of us would easily recognise as blind stupidity is akin to farting in church. In that environment of quasi-religious reverence, such heresy is not permitted.

That is how these people get away with it, surrounded as they are by fawning courtiers. And there is no point in hoping sense will prevail – that these people will suddenly see the error of their ways and make things better. They will not. We have to depose them.

In a democracy, this is done through the electoral system. When that no longer works, people effect change by different means. Salmond should be grateful that there still remains the residue of a democracy. When the lights go out, he may find that that is not enough to protect him.

COMMENT THREAD

Running to the wire

Negotiations on the budget between the EU parliament and the Council in the conciliation committee are running to the wire - with both sides indulging in grandstanding.

The deadline is the end of business on Monday, this being the end of the 21-day period allowed under the amended Treaties for the committee to reach an agreement. However, that should not be taken as read – there is always the option of "stopping the clock", which is no problem for a collective that makes the rules up as it goes along.

Even then, if agreement is not reached, the EU reverts to last year's budget levels, with a month-by-month allocation, while the Commission submits a new budget proposal and the process starts all over again. But neither an agreement now nor later rules out votes for additional money through supplementary budgets.

As with anything to do with the EU, therefore, it ain't over until it's over, and even then you have to count the silver to make sure it's all there.

COMMENT THREAD

Go figure - get angry

With its genius for public relations, British Gas is to increase gas prices this winter. Yet, there is an international gas glut and pressure on prices is downwards. Despite that, the company has the nerve to blame "rising wholesale prices", as well as "environmental investment, and infrastructure costs." Experts warn that households face an "extremely bleak winter" as a result of the price increases.

Adam Scorer, a director at the Government-funded watchdog Consumer Focus, says: "Consumers will be dismayed by this news. Winter is going to seem that much colder and budgets are going to be that much tighter after this announcement."

Scorer adds: "British Gas and other suppliers respond to forward energy prices, and that will be their argument that price rises are needed. However, wholesale prices are around half of their peak in 2008 and yet in the same period customers prices were cut by less than 10 percent. Consumers will feel that suppliers didn't make cuts when conditions allowed it, but are covering their profit margins as wholesale prices nudge up."

This, of course, is not the half of it. There are all the additional costs and taxes that are being thrown in. That is the real reason why our bills are going up. Bulk energy costs are actually going down ... so go figure - and get angry.

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Hypocrites of the world unite

You have your leader.

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Backlash to the backlash

Inevitably, we've had the Daily Mail and the Tory Boys of all ages and sexes screaming for blood, demanding that the revolting stoods are put away forever. But now we see a sort of backlash to the backlash.

Thus we are told that more than 2,000 people have joined a Facebook group objecting to the "victimisation" of those arrested after demonstrating at Millbank on Wednesday. Lecturers from King's College, London Metropolitan University and Goldsmiths have publicly pledged their support.

Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall, author Naomi Klein and musician and activist Billy Bragg have also signed an online petition against the "witch-hunt".

John Wadsworth, a senior lecturer in education at Goldsmiths, said: "The situation that happened at Millbank grabbed the media's attention across the world." He adds: "We don't feel the event was necessarily as disruptive as they say it was. It detracted from the march but it did get the issue right up there in people's attention. I see more broken glass from bus stops on the pavement than I saw at Millbank."

Actually, a plague on all their houses – but we're not going to get excited about stoods trashing the offices of a political party that is trashing our constitution and when, cumulatively, we see more damage and criminality in our streets and homes than they have ever had to put up with – with absolutely nothing ever done about it.

As to stoods ... they've always been revolting. That's what they're for.

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Smoked mirrors

The euroslime Economist thinks it's wonderful, but poor little Douglas Carswell thinks that Euroslime Dave's EU Referendum Bill is all "smoke and mirrors".

And he expected anything different from Dave?

Still, it's better than being in Europe and run by Europe. That would never do - after all, as far as we are aware there is no increase in jurisdiction (see col. 362), and the dogs like it.

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From our forum

Q. How do you tell if it's a good joke?

A. You get arrested ... or

B. It gets elected? ... or even ...

C. It becomes a judge.

Let them dig peat

"Energy company shelves wind farm scheme," says The Herald. With that, the Scottish & Southern Energy has "provoked outrage" after shelving a long-standing plans to link wind farms on the Western Isles to the mainland grid.

SSE chief executive Ian Marchant said: "The wind farm developers have said they cannot pay that so they have not signed their connection agreement that would give the financial guarantees. No wind farm developer will commit so there is no guarantee to build the link."

Councillors in the Western Isles see the decision on the power link as "clear discrimination" against Scottish islands and vowed to take the matter to Europe.

But get this. A Scottish Government spokesman said ministers also saw this as discrimination. "We believe that the UK Government and Ofgem now need to deliver the appropriate conditions that will secure a sub-sea cable connecting the Western Isles to the Scottish mainland."

He then goes on to say: "That cable, and those planned for Orkney and Shetland, are vital to delivering our renewable energy potential, sustaining and connecting communities and to creating new jobs."

What a terrible shame for the poor dears. But, since the money is no longer going to flow, one supposes that they can always go back to digging for peat.

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Kermit Airlines

In that otherwise redundant but expensively maintained pile of masonry that pretends to be a parliament, we see the following written question and answer:

Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many Rafale aircraft the new aircraft carriers will be able to accommodate. [22247]

Peter Luff: The Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers have been designed with the capacity to deploy up to 36 Joint Strike Fighters. The number of Rafale aircraft that they could accommodate will depend on their support requirements under different planning assumptions which we are now evaluating.

How interesting it is to see a Tory minister behave just like his predecessors. The answer, roughly translated, means, "I wish you hadn't asked that, but since you have, I'm going to tell you as little as possible." But at least it confirms that plans are well advanced to accommodate the Kermit, and in due course the Fleet Air Arm, Rafales into the European Carrier Group.

Of course, 13th Century Fox knows all about the European Carrier Group. He asked about it in 2008 and now he's working on developing it, alongside the European Carrier Group Interoperability Initiative (ECGII), incorporating Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

So, Kermit Airlines here we come, as the Queen's Navee sails off into the sunset flying a blue and yellow ensign and the white flag is run up the Whitehall jackstaff.

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Behind the curve

Almost exactly 24 hours behind our story, we get The Daily Excuse running its version of how police intelligence failed on the Millbank demo. Newspapers being newspapers, however, their story is one-dimensional, focusing entirely on this demo, and still not making the link with the London rave and a similar failure in intelligence.

As always, we get the reliance on talking heads instead of thinking and analysis, and thus we get a quote from Kit Malthouse, the head of the Metropolitan Police's "watchdog".

Transcribed faithfully by the newspaper, he trots out the rather lame offering that: "The problem seems to be a gap in the intelligence. From the large amount of work they did before the event, did police they have the right intelligence? And what assessment did they put behind that, which meant they put 250 people on the streets to police it?"

But actually, the problem is exactly as we described it yesterday. Since then, we've had junior plods tell us they knew what was going down, but senior plods didn't listen ... which is about par for the course.

That problem, is that the senior plods don't "get" the internet. It's not just a "gap" but a systemic failure. That means there is no quick fix. The defect is characteristic of the corporate mentality and stems as much from attitude as ability.

From the same wellspring come the MPs and the anally retentive ministers who are so grand that they can't possibly read their own e-mails, and get their staff to print off messages. These same people don't do Google and don't read blogs – other than a very limited number which share their views. Some actually take a perverse pride in not even being able to switch on a computer. They think it is somehow clever to be computer illiterate - computers are something the paid help does.

Yet these are the dinosaurs in charge, the ones that get caught out and will keep getting caught out. And that is why we, 200 miles from this action – with an international network of watchers – are better and more quickly informed than the people at the centre, who claim to be (or should be) on top of things.

Interestingly, that is how I knew, well before the MoD, that the terrorists in Iraq were using the internet to publish training manuals on constructing and placing IEDs – and in fact had to tell them what was going on. That is how we picked up the Van Rompuy story a day before The Daily Excuse and could pick up many more if we could be bothered and had the time to write them up.

If information is power, the flow and direction of information is changing and with it the balance of power. The traditional purveyors are behind the curve and they are losing out.

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That £1,500

We are advised that the news story about foreign crims being bribed £1,500 to go home in order to do their bird is not necessarily true. One of our readers tells us that a distant relative from Colombia got paid £3,000 when he was deported after three months for a violent offence. It seems that the £1,500 could be a minimum amount.

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The biggest enemy of Europe

There is nothing to fear but the European Union itself - or words to that effect – says Autonomous Mind. Actually, I'm not sure he does say that ... but he should have, in which case he probably will - if he hasn't already. Confused? I am. Read the piece. It isn't.

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Restoring the link

Of course, if our brain-dead, self-obsessed MPs extracted their heads from their backsides occasionally, and looked at the world around them, they might see things like this, a report from Australia on solar energy. More than $1 billion of taxpayers' money has been wasted on subsidies for household solar roof panels, it says. The subsidies favoured the rich and did little to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

However, at least in Australia, the federal government solar rebate scheme has been scrapped. It is being junked in Spain and wound down in Germany. Yet here, our shit-for-brains climate change secretary keeps the system going, while our MPs play their little games, and old ladies on fixed incomes subsidise those who can afford to milk the system.

If there was any justice – and sense – those students, along with the rest of us, would be in London, not just trashing Tory HQ, but Portcullis House and No. 7 Millbank – a much more juicy target. So, with the deliciously affronted Tory Boys (of both sexes and all ages) now baying for blood, they might reflect that the purpose of the Criminal Justice System, about which they are suddenly so enthusiastic, is to create a link between action and consequences.

With MPs, though, that link between action and reaction has been broken. They can approve – or continue to permit – obscenities like the Feed-in-Tariff, and there is no penalty for their action or neglect. Restoring that link is one of the most urgent tasks in modern politics. If it means trashing a few buildings, that is a small price to pay.

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Join the club

And now Euroslime Dave is whinging about the police failing to protect Conservative headquarters and for underestimating the strength of a student protest that turned into a riot.

In the real world, however – the one where you don't have machine-gun toting police guards on your doorstep and a fleet of chauffeur-driven cars – we are quite used to this. This is the world where the police cannot (or will not) prevent burglaries and vandalism, where our newsagent, in a prominent position on the high street got turned over by thieves smashing down the front door.

This is the world where the police do not bother with vehicles causing dangerous obstruction on the roads, even asserting that such obstruction is not against the law, yet happily sit in their fast cars on the motorway to pick off "speeders", mostly in the small hours of the morning when there is little traffic, because it is "safer" to stop cars then.

And, of course, this is the world were the police break into your house at midnight to cart you away to prison for not paying the police precept in protest against the useless shits who wear a uniform, take our money and don't do their jobs.

Well, it is nice to see little Dave and his Tory Boys suffer a little inconvenience from our useless plods. He joins a very large and disaffected club who were very, very happy to see Tory HQ trashed. Now you know how we feel when you wake up in the morning to find the back door wide open and treasured possessions gone.

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Caught out again

The police are complaining that they didn't see the violence coming at the Millbank demo. Yet students from a number of universities say they co-ordinated the Millbank raid via Facebook weeks ago. One 19-year-old student from Bournemouth University, said: "This has been arranged for ages and I’m surprised the police didn't do their homework." And "arranged" included the entertainment at Millbank.

But it was exactly the same with the London rave a fortnight ago. That had been planned well ahead and had been all over the internet. But the police don't get the internet, any more than do the politicians. They don't understand it, and as a result don't use it properly or effectively. Thus, we have an alternative system of communication to which these groups are completely oblivious.

Their great problem, of course, is that they believe the internet is just another means of getting their message out to a captive audience. They are incapable of understanding that the "conversation" is there, going on without them. They are not part of it because they have no listening mode. And so, they are going to get caught out again and again and again. They will never learn because they can't learn.

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It's all Hitler's fault

The demise of the polar bear has nothing to do with global warming. And here is the proof - a Nazi U-Boat in Arctic waters, around 1943, the crew proudly displaying its trophy. Note how one carries a machine pistol.

Killing polar bears was obviously the real agenda. This is all but admitted in the caption: "U-Boot-Besatzung mit Gewehren posiert an Bord mit totem Eisbär". Sinking Allied shipping was only a cover for destroying the world's ecosystem and bringing civilisation as we know it to a halt. Nearly 70 years on, it is pretty obvious that the plan has all but succeeded.

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Interesting

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the building housing the Tory Party headquarters today as a national demonstration against tuition fees descended into chaos. A window was smashed at Millbank Tower in central London and eyewitnesses said students attempted to force their way into the building.

This is according to The Independent. The Daily Mail has the students chanting "Tory scum" as well, which means they seem to have acquired a little education.  The pink sign betrays less erudition - the lad could at least spell the name right.

Dozens of police officers stationed outside the entrance of Tory Towers were overwhelmed as the crowd of thousands pelted them with rocks and bottles. Reinforcements in riot gear were deployed in an effort to stem the damage but appeared unwilling to engage the troublemakers, says The Daily Telegraph. Obviously, chanting "Tory scum" is the right thing to do!

What is interesting though is that the students are demonstrating against the Tory Party and not the government. Mind you, they would have to go to Brussels to do the latter, so the Tories are as good a target as any - and the pink sign, apart from the spelling, certainly bears an appropriate message, if for different reasons.

Meanwhile, The Guardian is running a live blog, with some students complaining about "Tory cuts", although I think they've missed a letter out. However, the Daily Mash also had a reporter on the scene, and their report adds a few important details.

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Another king, another country

Well, would you die for Sarkozy, The Leader Of The Kermits? I don't think Mary Ellen Synon would, especially as the deal with the Kermits is all about setting up the euro-army.

It is interesting – if not a little alarming – that this issue has disappeared from the MSM so quickly, with so little comment, letting Euroslime Dave get away with the biggest sell-out since Heath took us in to the accursed EEC. At least some commentators are keeping it going though, while others indulge in vomitus.

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Irish eyes ... continued

The grief goes on as the yield on 10-year bonds rose above eight percent for the first time since the launch of the euro, 11 years ago. The cost of funding Irish debt has risen steadily since September, when the government admitted its bailout efforts of five banks would cost at least €45 billion, equivalent to €10,000 for every man, woman and child in Ireland.

That gargantuan bill, in turn, has made the projected 2010 deficit rise to 32 percent of GDP, the highest in post-war Europe.

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The destroyer of nations

Yesterday, Herman Van Rompuy pronounces the first "Berliner Europa-Rede", whatever that is – not that I actually care. What I do care about is the fact that this man actually exists, and that at public expense he has a forum to promote his loathsome doctrine. Thus does he say:

We have together to fight the danger of a new Euro-scepticism. This is no longer the monopoly of a few countries. In every Member State, there are people who believe their country can survive alone in the globalised world. It is more than an illusion: it is a lie!

He then goes on to say:

The biggest enemy of Europe today is fear. Fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism, and nationalism leads to war ("le nationalisme, c'est la guerre" (F. Mitterrand)). Today's nationalism is often not a positive feeling of pride of one's own identity, but a negative feeling of apprehension of the others.

This is the creed of the supranationalist, the tranzie tribe. To them, nationalism – national identity – is an evil to be rooted out. And, with our money, they mean to root it out, to destroy nations, to destroy national identities - our nation and our national identity.

This is a tribe so scarred by the experience of continental Europe and the rise of the Nazis that they can only see history in terms of a one-dimensional pastiche, and are locked into the mistaken belief that nationalism is evil. But that truly makes them our enemy. There can be no accommodation or compromise for they mean to destroy us. They are the destroyers of nations.

Pic stolen from here.

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