It was never going to happen

Despite the febrile excitement displayed on occasions by our provincial media, the chances of Tony Blair becoming president of the European Council are looking exceedingly meagre.

In a lengthy analysis piece by Paul Taylor, European affairs editor for Reuters that is the view expressed by "diplomats and politicians". The smart money in Brussels is on Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker, the centre-right chairman of finance ministers of the 15-nation eurozone. He is the compromise candidate who is likely to come through to take the crown.

Against Blair is the fact that he is too disconnected from the EU mainstream, and he remains too divisive a figure because of his enthusiastic support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq which split Europe in 2003. The wounds of that conflict run deep and have not been forgotten. Thus says an anonymous diplomat, "Tony Blair? Forget it."

Also against any British candidate is the stand-off position of the UK on the single currency and the Schengen zone. Blair is doubly handicapped by having negotiated "elaborate opt-outs" from the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights and police and judicial cooperation.

What got the media going, of course, was the apparent endorsement of Sarkozy, but people forget the French president is half Hungarian. He is playing his own games, and what better way to concentrate the minds of the "colleagues" than to put up a totally unsuitable candidate as a "stalking horse".

French commentators, on the other hand, are suggesting that Sarkozy's real aim in "endorsing" Blair was to upstage the Socialist opposition before municipal polls rather than commit Paris to backing Blair for the EU job, for which he has also dubbed Juncker (pictured) an obvious candidate.

Writes Paul Taylor, former French prime minister Edouard Balladur – who is close to Sarkozy - punctured the trial balloon a few days later, arguing in an article in Le Monde that Blair was too close to the United States, and Britain was too detached from Europe.

"Despite his declarations of good intentions, Mr Blair did nothing to put an end to this singularity in 10 years," Balladur says, adding that the president must represent an independent Europe. "How could Mr Blair embody that ambition credibly when in the disastrous Iraqi affair he always stood zealously at the side of the United States if he didn't goad them into it?"

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president, has also joined the "Stop Blair" chorus, underlining Britain's absence from the central European economic project of the last decade - the euro.

And so the list of negatives goes on, making it crystal clear that Blair would never get the post, even if hell did freeze over. And that is what we always thought, and stand by that position. Only our absurdly parochial media ever thought he had a chance.

Still, that does not stop Neil Clark delivering a full-blown rant against Blair in Comment is free, proving yet again that Guardian writers have a slender grip on reality. Nor does it stop the launch of a petition against Blair's candidacy, which is about as much use as the referendum petitions ever were.

Nevertheless, before this particular farce plays out, there will be much extruded verbal material from the local media. It can be safely ignored as so much fluff.

COMMENT THREAD

Another failure unrecorded

Considering what a total farce its mission to Chad has become, the EU is getting a very easy ride from the media. Only yesterday, the BBC allowed an EU spokeswoman to intone how the deployment its force had been delayed because of the latest fighting, without a shade of criticism over the four month delay. Nowhere, in fact, does there seem to be any mention of the inability of the EU to get its act together.

Somebody who has noticed, however, is Geoffrey Van Orden, defence spokesman for the Conservatives in the EU parliament who notes that Javier Solana's claim that the mission has been suspended because Chad is not peaceful enough for a peace-keeping force puts this whole enterprise into perspective.

It was never clear, he says, how a ramshackle force of 3,700 soldiers from 14 countries, for which there was little enthusiasm, was going to protect 400,000 refugees spread across 200,000 square miles of arid ground. Far from proving the need for an EU mission, the fresh streams of refugees from the capital only underline the misguided nature of the planned deployment.

From the start, he adds, this enterprise was all about flying the EU flag in order to chalk up another few points to prove that the EU had a military role to play.

The news agency Reuters also offers some analysis - from Bjoern Seibert, author of a study on the EU deployment. He reinforces the myth that the EU deployment was halted by force majeur, stating that the recent two-day assault by rebel fighters in armed pickup trucks had the hallmarks of a pre-emptive move against the European mission.

"It was a really good moment for the rebels to strike," said Seibert, arguing that the rebels appeared to see the arrival of European troops as impacting on the fragile balance of power in Chad. "The (EU) force would have shouldered some of the security responsibility that burdened Deby, provided him with a strategic pause, which would have allowed him to concentrate his forces in defeating the rebels," he added.

Nevertheless, Seibert also concludes that the EU "force", backed by around ten helicopters, would be under-strength for its mission to protect civilians in a vast operations area of 350,000 square kilometres, with underdeveloped infrastructure. And, "given the increased instability on the ground, such a force level seems even more inadequate," he adds.

Any which way you cut it, therefore, the EU's attempts to send a mission to Chad have been a dismal failure yet, as so often, the failure goes unremarked. No wonder there is so little public passion in the ratification of the Lisbon treaty. Not only are we not told that the EU is now our supreme government, we are also not told how bad it is.

COMMENT THREAD

The trouble with bloggers ....

... is that they parasites on the MSM. How often have we heard that from all those hard-working, over-pressurized journalists? While there are problems with the British blogosphere in that it does have a cap-doffing tendency, we feel that there might be two sides to that comment.

Yesterday my attention was called to an article in the International Herald Tribune about the new head of the Hungarian secret services having been trained in Moscow. Hmm, I thought, that sounds familiar. Of course, it does. I wrote about it on November 21. Well, all right, Judy Dempsey has added the odd detail or two and a few quotations. I am glad that the pressure she is under has allowed her to interview various people.

On balance, I am not that worried about the rise of Colonel Sándor Laborc. Given his background, he is much more likely to be pro-Western and pro-American than those people in Langley.

"Mass producers of distortion"

Worthy of note yesterday was a piece in The Guardian by author and journalist Nick Davies who has produced a book called "Flat Earth News".

In it, we are told, "An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media", his thesis being that, "An industry whose task should be to filter out falsehood has become a conduit for propaganda and second hand news".

In opening his piece, Davies gives an example of a spurious story, reported by the media about a gang of feral child bullies who had supposedly attempted to murder a five-year-old boy by hanging him from a tree. "This story was not true," he writes. "Indeed, it was obviously not true from the moment it started running."

Nevertheless, he observes, the tabloids ran all over it; and TV and the rest of Fleet Street joined in. The London Evening Standard called it a lynching; the Mail, Guardian and Times ran headlines which stated boldly that the boy had been hanged; the Independent ran a moody feature about fear descending on the boy's estate. Sundry columnists joined in with solemn comment about the youth of today and the impact of violence on television.

Analysing this phenomenon, Davies goes on to write that:

… the ingredients in this little story run routinely through a stream of other small stories, through stories as big as those about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and then into a flood of media commentary that feeds into government policy and popular understanding - falsehood as profound as the idea that the Earth is flat, widely accepted as true to the point where it can feel like heresy to challenge it.

With that we would so much agree, having experienced the phenomenon first-hand, much of which went into the writing, with Christopher Booker, of Scared to Death.

One of my favourite examples was at the height of the egg scare in 1988, when it was the perceived wisdom that salmonella infected eggs were poisoning people by their thousands in what was claimed to be an epidemic of food poisoning.

It was then that the Observer on 18 December solemnly recounted the experience of a 35-year-old construction worker, Paul Morris, who had been taken ill in early October after eating a breakfast of fried eggs and toast in the firm's canteen. According to his wife, Helen: "He started feeling ill about an hour after his breakfast. Everyone put it down to the 'flu... The doctor... eventually told me it was salmonella".

Said Mrs Morris, "I support Edwina Currie. If the egg producers sue her, I would like to get together with other salmonella victims and sue the Egg Marketing Board. I am only a housewife but I know of quite a few cases, so there must be many more than those they have told us about".

Apart from the fact that the Egg Marketing Board had been abolished years before, the most salient point was that the incubation period of salmonellosis – the period between ingesting the bacteria and suffering symptoms - is typically 18-36 hours. It can on very rare occasions be shorter but a period of one hour is unheard of. In fact, for a variety of technical reasons, it is actually impossible.

The simplest of checking would have told the Observer that the story was fantasy. Morris was doing what experienced food poisoning investigators have often found – that the sufferer blames the last meal consumed when, in the case of salmonellosis, it is most often likely to be the meal before that, or even the one eaten days before.

At the time though, as Davies points out, it did feel like heresy to challenge the prevailing wisdom. I endured many hostile interviews from clever-dick journalists who could not even begin to accept that they might be wrong and I might actually be right, that the problem had been grossly overblown.

Amazingly – for it still seems like yesterday – that experience goes back nearly 20 years, which somewhat endorses Davies view that there never was a time when news media were perfect. Journalists, he writes, have always worked with too little time and too little certainty; with interference from owners and governments; with laws that intimidate and inhibit the search for truth.

But, he tells us, the evidence he found in researching his new book, Flat Earth News, suggests that the tendency of the media to recycle ignorance is far worse than it was.

He commissioned research from specialists at Cardiff University, who surveyed more than 2,000 UK news stories from the four quality dailies (Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent) and the Daily Mail.

They found two striking things. First, when they tried to trace the origins of their "facts", they discovered that only 12 percent of the stories were wholly composed of material researched by reporters. With eight percent of the stories, they just couldn't be sure. The remaining 80 percent, they found, were wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, when they looked for evidence that these "facts" had been thoroughly checked, they found this was happening in only 12 percent of the stories. The implication of those two findings is truly alarming, writes Davies:

Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have generally become mere passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest. Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda.

Part of this he attributes to another key finding from the Cardiff researchers. For each of the 20 years from 1985, they dug out figures for the editorial staffing levels of all the Fleet Street publications and compared them with the amount of space they were filling. They discovered that the average Fleet Street journalist now is filling three times as much space as he or she was in 1985. In other words, as a crude average, they have only one-third of the time that they used to have to do their jobs. Generally, they don't find their own stories, or check their content, because they simply don't have the time.

Davies's view is that, if you add that to all of the traditional limits on journalists' trying to find the truth, and you can see why the mass media generally are no longer a reliable source of information.

We have a little sympathy with the problems of time and pressure, as many journalists are indeed required to work under the most extraordinary pressure. But, on the other hand, it has never been easier or quicker to research contemporary issues. Thanks to the miracles of the internet and Google, the process of finding information and checking sources that used to take days, or longer (I once spent two weeks in a library finding the source of one half-remembered report that I wanted to refer to) can now be done in minutes.

Some of the problem is, in fact, intellectual laziness – the willingness of journalists to believe uncritically certain sources. Thus, they do not check the "facts" because they do not think they need to. Another part of the problem is that some are not very good at researching, which is sometimes more intuitive than a systematic process.

Whatever the reasons for the failures, though, we cannot but help endorse Davies's conclusion that the "mass media generally are no longer a reliable source of information". What is truly staggering though is that so many people – despite their protestations to the contrary – still believe they are.

COMMENT THREAD

"This is going to end badly"

So says French socialist deputy Henri Emmanuelli on the occasion of the vote in the assembly, specially convened in Versailles to approve changes to the constitution – a prelude to ratifying the constitutional Lisbon treaty.

Despite Sarkozy's UMP ramming though the changes by a vote of 560 to 181, 152 deputies abstained, provoking a warning from Emmanuelli that, "Sarkozy thinks he is above the sovereignty of the people."

Nevertheless, reports Deutsche Welle, the Assembly plans to vote on Thursday to adopt the treaty itself, followed by the Senate and a final ratification by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

This is in the teeth of a recent survey which showed that a significant majority of French adults wanted a referendum on the treaty. Opposition socialist deputies - while approving of the Lisbon Treaty itself - abstained from voting in protest and several hundred people staged a demonstration, demanding a new referendum.

While the French were voting, so too was the Romanian parliament, which almost unanimously ratified the treaty - a total of 387 members of parliament and senators voting for it. Only one voted against and one abstained.

One would dearly like to think Henri Emmanuelli is right – throughout Europe, the "colleagues" are turning their faces against their own peoples, and there surely must be a price to pay.

COMMENT THREAD

Education, education, education

Though there was a rumour in the late nineties that this inane phrase was invented by Prime Minister Tony Blair, those of us who had been schooled under the Communist system knew better. It was, in actual fact, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (shown here leaving the House of Unions after a session of the First All-Russia Congress on education in 1919) who first pronounced those words and every classroom across that empire had a poster at the back with them translated into the appropriate language.

To be fair to the Communist empire, after the early experiments in the Soviet Union, it reverted to the old-fashioned German teaching method and school discipline. Unpleasant it may all have been (no corporal punishment though, so there had been some progress) and the schools may have resembled prisons more than anything else, but the pupils emerged literate, numerate and in possession of, at least, some basic knowledge.

As we all know things are not like that in Britain but far otherwise. Although there has been a distinct worsening in the last ten years under the Labour government, the Conservative lot were no better; possibly less actively malevolent. At least they had assisted places and left the existing grammar and independent schools alone. On the other hand, there was no talk of extending assisted places to a full-scale voucher system or opening more grammar schools.

Who can forget the particular joy of so-called Baker days when teachers suddenly announced that they were not teaching but doing something else? Who can forget the primary schools which sent half the children to secondary ones unable to read or write? Still, I do admit that it has all become much worse.

Furthermore, as I mentioned above, there is a spitefulness about the Labour attitude to anything that comes anywhere near quality in education that is quite disgusting. This was more or less controlled under Blair, though the destruction went on but under Brown it is full-blown, possibly because the man is a fully fledged socialist not of the “workers must have everything that is good and attractive” school but of the “I must destroy everything good and attractive to ensure that nobody has more of it”.

Then again, I sense a feeling of desperation as the government flails around, coming up with one nasty and idiotic initiative after another either directly or through its useful idiots. Could it have sunk in that ten years of Labour rule have improved nothing and made much a great deal worse?

Recent ideas, if one can call them that without guffaws all round the room, include an underhand attack on independent schools, which are threatened with loss of charitable status unless they can prove in some carefully defined Stalinist fashion that they are doing their duty by society. As if providing good education was not doing that duty.

Many of those schools would dearly love to have more children from poorer or underprivileged homes but who is to pay for it? Assisted places have been abolished, vouchers are an anathema, government funded scholarships all but non-existent. There are scholarships in many schools for this purpose but they go only so far.

A few libertarians, getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, have been dismissing the need for charitable status. Let those schools take their chances. The answer is that the schools will not suffer if they have to raise their fees sky-high on losing their charitable status but a good many people in this country will. The pupils will have to come from the ultra-rich in this country and from outside.

My colleague has already written about the attack on the small primary schools in the country, which are cost-effective and of high quality. Away with them. Fortunately, there seems to have been a hitch in the government’s plans. Not only democracy but education matters – it is our future.

The latest wonderful idea comes to us indirectly from the Sheffield Hallam University and the National Centre for Social Research in a report that was commissioned by the Swiftian Department for Children, Schools and Families, which is looking at the proposals very seriously. I’ll bet.

To sum up, the report wants the abolition of grammar schools because they are populated by middle class children and make faith schools take a certain proportion of pupils from all faiths and none. Furthermore, places in the better and therefore more popular schools should be allocated according to a state-run lottery (fixed, surely) in order to make sure that they are not packed with children from aspirational middle class families.

Other people have already dealt with the obvious point that a good school is not something that exists magically in complete independence of its staff and pupils. The state messes around with either and the good school ceases to be that. Then again, this may not be all that obvious to our political leaders.

I should like to add another point. It is extremely insulting to working class or, perhaps, lower-middle class parents to assume that they do not care about their children’s education. It is just that they are often not in a position to do anything about it, not always being as mobile as people who are better off. There is, however, a good deal of evidence that non-middle class parents want the best education for their children and are prevented from giving it by the state and its control of schools and colleges.

The argument that grammar schools do not help bright children from poorer homes is nonsensical. If those schools are packed with more privileged offsprings it is because there are not enough of them. If there were grammar schools in every town and several in the bigger ones, they would not be dominated by any class.

So, with all that in mind, let me turn to another recent story about a Conservative politician. This time it is George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and, in general, rather a waste of rations politically speaking.

Mr Osborne has announced that he intends to send his children to the highly regarded (not entirely accurately in my opinion but let that pass) and very expensive Norland Place School. This, I must admit, makes a refreshing change from his leader’s mental convolutions whereby it has been made clear that the little Camerons will be sent to schools in the state sector, as long as these are ones the parents can choose freely anywhere in West London and have a very good reputation. This, let me explain to our non-British readers, is not something that is open to most other people and reminds one of the similar contortions the Blairs went through with their offspring.

The discussion on ToryBoy blog made me feel that, by and large, there is a certain amount of sense in the Tory grassroots, which has to be a good thing. (Please, don’t tell my colleague I said so.)

Apart from one or two trolls who spit imprecations at private education (would they like to see the buying of books nationalized, one wonders) and a few Tory trolls who just go dulalee about anything their leaders do and tell us that this has nothing to do with anyone else, the commenters have largely approved Osborne’s decision with the proviso that he should now start campaigning for the availaibility of good and personally chosen education to all families.

This is really the problem with all these sagas. Osborne, like Blair or Harriet Harman or Diane Abbott, uses the obvious argument: I want the best for my children. Fair enough. We all do.

His choice of schooling is of importance to us all not because he is a public figure as some rather fatuous people have it. It is of little significance where most public figures send their children.

His choice is of importance because he is a politician and as such has inordinate control over the choices other people are allowed to make.

Back in the sixties when the Labour government started the destruction of grammar schools, a campaign that was led by the Highgate School-educated Anthony Crosland and the St Paul’s-educated Shirley Williams, who prefers not to mention this fact, (and not reversed by the grammar school-educated Margaret Thatcher) many people knew that politicians continued to send their own children to independent schools. That egalitarian they were not. The media, still in the supposed halcyon days of respecting politicians, rarely discussed this hypocrisy and arrogance.

Next time any of our readers start to sigh for the good old days of “honourable” politicians, they might like to contemplate, instead, this fact. Politicians were no more honourable – we just knew less.

Anyway, back to the present, where the media is not particularly respectful to politicians (and how they hate it); nor are the rest of us impressed by them.

The point the Conservatives might like to contemplate if they are serious about wanting to be re-elected is one that we have made a few times before (and shall make again): we, the electorate, owe them nothing. Even those of us who dislike the present government and its disastrous policies do not necessarily think that the alternative would be any better, unless Her Majesty’s Opposition demonstrate this fact by their ideas and policies. Let me spell it out: while we owe them nothing, they owe us an explanation and a reason as to why we should vote for them.

Given that the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer has now made a point of telling us how important it is for parents to be able to choose the best possible education for their offsping, I am looking forward to the Conservative Party producing some ideas on educational reform, by which I do not mean tinkering round the edges or telling us pompously that a Conservative government will ensure that schools will start teaching children and universities will become centres of excellence (just like they ensured so in the past). I mean some carefully worked out ideas as to how to take the state out of education, starting by how to make sure that the money follows the pupil not gets filtered to schools through LEAs.

No need for researchers to do any work on this – there are plenty of ideas floating around, not least papers produced by Reform.

I might even consider voting Conservative next time though not if they continue to produce inane ideas on the role of the state in childhood.

"Secretive and bizarre" decision-making

Picked up from the Western Mail, a regional Welsh newspaper, comes a story headed, "MPs call for greater EU 'openness'".

Also covered by Politics.co.uk and The Sun (illustrated), the story retails news of a report from the European Scrutiny Committee which, we are told, has its members demanding an end to the "secretive and bizarre" way that decisions are made by European Union leaders.

Perversely, we can find no corresponding report in the Committee’s website. Its latest production there is dated 29 January and does not overtly deal with the issue to hand.

This notwithstanding, the Western Mail story tells us that the Committee is urging greater openness about the actions of the European Council. It also complains that parliaments in some of the other member states are given access to draft European Council documents which our local government withholds from the House of Commons.

The Committee also notes that, despite claims that the sessions are taped, there is no verbatim record of how conclusions are reached. The only records are based on secretary's notes, which are relayed to officials, who then try to advise their respective heads of government against bad decisions before it is too late.

The Committee also took evidence from former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett. She told the MPs that, "Occasionally it will be too late, because by the time you know what has happened, at least 20 minutes, probably more, have passed between what was discussed and you all knowing that it was discussed."

As a result, we are told, Parliaments, the press and the public were being denied the ability to scrutinise the Council's decisions. "In our view, this is unsatisfactory and we recommend that the Government discuss with other member states the options for improving the process and removing the present inefficiencies and eccentricities; and, in particular, whether a clear, definitive and accessible record of the proceedings of the European Council should be made as a matter of course," says the Committee.

The committee also said it was unconvinced by Government claims that it could not submit draft documents to Parliament because they were confidential and such a move would be impractical. MPs learned during their inquiry that some national parliaments already received copies of the drafts, which were known to have a wide circulation in Brussels.

"It seems to us indefensible that the Westminster Parliament is denied access to the draft conclusions when some other national parliaments are provided with the draft conclusions by their governments and have the opportunity to question ministers about them before the meeting of the European Council," the Committee said.

All sterling stuff, except that, when it comes to debates about the Council meetings in the House, very few MPs trouble to attend and, in any case, there is very little they can do about what is decided. And even then, the media scarcely bothers to report the proceedings, most journalists unable even to understand that the European Council actually is.

However, it was a good try by the Committee, and even The Sun got a headline out of it.

COMMENT THREAD

A new logo?

The BBC wants a "happy new image" for its TV licence fee says The Sunday Telegraph, something which fellow blogger Tony Sharp suggests might be a tad expensive.

We at EU Referendum, therefore, have come to the rescue with a new logo for the BBC. Happy it may not be but, given where the BBC's loyalties really lie, at least it is honest.

Honesty is very much an issue with the BBC and it is as well to remind ourselves that it is not always what the BBC does say, but what it does not.

For example, last Friday, there was an animated discussion by the panel on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions, on whether Home Information Packs (HIPs) were a good thing. Closet Europhiliac David Dimbleby let the panel members chunter on for quite a while but neither he nor any of the speakers mentioned the EU origins of this mad scheme.

More importantly, for the first time for a long time, BBC television news yesterday carried a longish item about the deteriorating situation in Chad. Yet, despite the ignominious role of the EU’s humanitarian force, there was no mention at all of the EU in the bulletins.

A brief reference, however, did creep into the BBC website. There, a spokesman for the rebels in Chad was cited, saying the rebels had taken the eastern town of Adre, near the border with Sudan, "an area where some 400,000 people displaced as a result of the conflict in Darfur are living in camps."

Adre, the BBC explains, "is in the area where a French-dominated EU peacekeeping force is due to deploy to protect displaced civilians and the aid workers supporting them. Chadian officials have accused the rebels of seeking to stop the deployment of the EU force."

Now, given that the "force" was supposed to have deployed in November, and was already on its way last week, with detachments turning back in mid-air, when news of the fighting came though, this does not seem to be an accurate representation of the state of play. But, to be accurate, the BBC would also have to be critical of the EU – and that, on such an important issue, it could never be.

Thus it is that the BBC should come out of its closet and declare its true colours. The new logo is not a suggestion – it is statement of fact.

COMMENT THREAD

A Letter from Limburg

In the early evening hours of Friday 29th January, a 16-year old girl from the German town border town of Gronau was out walking her dog when she was struck by a car driven by a 52-year old Dutchman from the nearby Dutch city of Enschede. Apparently, she and the dog were carried some 50 meters on the bonnet of the car before falling off and being run over by another car travelling in the other direction. She died in hospital about an hour later.

A breath test and later blood test resulted in the man being charged with culpable homicide. Of course, the German authorities immediately confiscated the man's driving license ... but Dutch authorities have admitted that under EU law, the man is not banned from driving in any other EU country. The most they can charge him for in the Netherlands is not carrying his driving license.

Is this really what EU cooperation is all about?

Not drowning, but waving!

Them pesky polar bears make another appearance today, this time in The Sunday Telegraph, as Booker notes that, "Arctic ice isn't vanishing after all".

He also observes that, while there was some coverage of the chaos caused in central and southern China by their heaviest snowfalls for decades, little attention was paid to the snow that last week carpeted Jerusalem, Damascus and Amman, none of them exactly used to Dickensian Christmas card weather.

Similarly, Saudis last month expressed amazement at their heaviest snow for many years, in Afghanistan snow and freezing weather killed 120 people (estimated now to have increased to 500) and large parts of the United States and Canada have been swept by unusually fierce blizzards.

But, writes Booker, if the northern hemisphere's chilliest winter in a long time was bad news for the propagandists of global warming, they also had to face serious questions about some of the most iconic images used to support the claims that the world is hotting up towards disaster.

Last autumn, he reminds us, the BBC and others could scarcely contain their excitement in reporting that the Arctic ice was melting so fast there would soon be none left. Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. This was recorded by the Goddard Space Flight Center which issued a striking series of animations.

However, relying on a series of graphs posted by one of our forum members, produced from the latest satellite findings, Booker is able to paint a different picture.

As reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the website Cryosphere Today by the University of Illinois – a body committed to warmist orthodoxy and a contributor to the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 million sq km to just four million from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13 million sq km.

This is shown graphically by the most up-to-date satellite representations taken from the site, which from simple inspection shows this to be the case.


Interestingly, towards the end of January, the news agency AFP retailed a report from the Paris-based National Centre for Scientific Research stating that the Arctic ice cap had shrunk by an area twice the size of France's land mass over the last two years. Research Director Jean-Claude Gascard then said, "The year 2008 promises to be a critical year on every level."

So far, so good, which brings us back to the "inconvenient truth" about those polar bears, the image of which has been relentlessly exploited to promote this panic over the "vanishing" Arctic ice. It was most famously used by Al Gore, who declared that, "Their habitat is melting … beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet." But, concludes Booker, having reported that the ice isn't melting after all (and that the bears were within easy swimming distance of the shore) it seems those famous bears were not drowning after all, they were just waving.

COMMENT THREAD

An establishment turning in on itself

It was almost with a sense of panic that, in the small hours of this morning, I trawled through the internet news sources looking for something newsworthy and interesting (not necessarily the same thing) to park on the blog as our overnight story – or "Horlicks" as we have come to call it.

That we ended up with something fairly lame, if marginally interesting, is a measure of how far the European Union has drifted down the media agenda. That alone makes yesterday's Telegraph leader all the more prescient when it remarked that, "There should have been only one story in Parliament this week: the ratification of the European Constitution, now called the Lisbon Treaty."

Yet, scan today's newspapers for all you are worth and the best on offer relating to the EU is a story in The Sunday Times about how Geoff Hoon, the government chief whip, last week carpeted Gisela Stuart, Frank Field and Kate Hoey over their support for the "I Want a Referendum" campaign.

In a week, therefore, that Parliament is going through the motions of giving a huge tranche of power to the European Union, via the Lisbon treaty, the media have completely abandoned their job and instead devoted all their efforts to the MPs' expenses story, milking the Conway affair for all it is worth.

The same goes for media coverage of the rest of Parliamentary activity. Compare and contrast the exceptionally detailed analysis of the MoD's PR failings by Ann Winterton in her Westminster Hall debate last week, with the treatment in the Mail on Sunday today. The one is ignored while the other – basically a non-story – boasts no less than five reporters on the by-line: Simon Walters; Glen Owen; Dennis Rice; Brendon Carlin and Jason Lewis.

That just about tells you everything you need to know about the state of the media, but it also tells you a great deal about the way our once great nation is going.

In an otherwise lacklustre piece, Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph yesterday noted of Conway that he made his name as a particularly bullying whip when he helped force Tory MPs to vote for the extension of EU authority in the Maastricht treaty in the 1990s. He used his power of the moment, writes Moore, to extinguish his and his colleagues' power in future.

This decline of Parliament's authority, he adds, "also explains much of the bad behaviour: the grabbing of larger offices and allowances, and jobs and bonuses for Rabbit's Friends and Relations, is a sort of compensation for powerlessness. When people really believe in their institution, they do not fuss much about facilities and perks."

For "people", though, read the media, which is devoting extraordinary energy to this issue. But this is also an institution that no longer believes in itself. Unable or unwilling to do its job, reporting on the salient and important issues of the day, it has retreated into trivia, gossip-mongering and tat, turning on the very establishment that sustains it, of which it is still part. In a very graphic sense, we are seeing Saturn devouring its children.

COMMENT THREAD

The new Roman Empire

"While Britain frets about EU expansion," writes, US scholar Parag Khanna, "Europe is overtaking its rivals to become the world's most successful empire." This is from his book, "The Second World; Empires and Influence in the new Global Order," to be published by Penguin on 3 April, as reviewed by The Guardian:

The EU is easily the most popular and successful empire in history, for it does not dominate, it disciplines. The incentives of Europeanisation - subsidies from Brussels, unfettered mobility, and the adoption of the euro currency - are too great not to want. Brussels today rivals Washington with its swarms of lobbyists, including dozens of public relations outfits hired by Balkan and post-Soviet countries actively vying for EU admission.

and …

Europe's growing diversity makes European-ness a gradually attainable ideal rather than a mythical Platonic form, transforming Europe's identities from tribal to cosmopolitan. Even as some west Europeans fear the dilution of their elite brand, Europe's evolution is giving the term European a positive meaning. Europe is already partially Islamic, with growing Muslim populations in Britain, France and Germany and almost 100 million Muslims from Albania, Bosnia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan in the European diplomatic and strategic space via the Council of Europe or Nato.

and …

European has become an identity as strong (or as weak) as American or Chinese. As life imitates art, all countries participating in football's European Championships and the Eurovision Song Contest consider themselves - and are increasingly considered - European. Most importantly, an entire post-cold war generation of students, called the Erasmus generation after the EU's exchange programme, is transcending the national identities their elders fought to establish, all for the sake of European stability. These "post-national" European youth now travel virtually visa-free from Belfast to Baku, speak multiple languages, study in exchange programmes and vote in European parliamentary elections.

and ...

As with all empires, the EU rubber band will stretch until it no longer can, growing until it has fully replaced the dismantled Soviet Union across Europe's east, creating a borderless and contiguous "Pax Europea" of about 35 countries, an imperial blanket covering close to 600 million people…

I don't know what this man is on, but he if he sold it in clubs, he'd make a fortune. Where on earth does he get this Pax Europea from?

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A quick round-up

As my colleague pointed out not so long ago

The reason, she says, that Germany has 300 times as much solar power and ten times as much wind power than the UK is simply because German politicians, led by the Greens, have had the political will to lead the way.

Germany is, of course, is the country, which has closed down its nuclear industry, making it critically dependent for its energy supplies on Russia, putting in hoc to an unstable and increasingly oppressive regime. And this, Mz Lucas, believes, is a suitable role model for the UK?

There is a confirmation of this in yesterday's Spiegel, which talks of the tough future energy producers are facing and if energy producers are having problems can difficulties for consumers be far behind?

It might be a good idea, therefore, to have a quick look at what is going on with Gazprom, Russia’s secondary government, particularly as there have been several interesting items in the news recently.

In the first place, the struggle to keep the existing slices of pie beyond the next election, which Dmitri Medvedev is going to win with a crushing victory which remains undecided as a hotly contested election is being fought out, is ratcheting up within the government and the various security organizations, the siloviki.

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has been under attack, as he is considered to be something of an economic liberal and a probable close ally of Deputy Prime Minister Medvedev. He was, nevertheless, bold enough to say at a recent investment forum in Moscow:

In the nearest future we need to change our foreign policy goals to guarantee stable investment.

Whatever could he and his supporter, Anatoly Chubais, have meant? Surely not that Russia once again throwing its weight around on the international scene to not much purpose might prevent foreign firms from investing money in that country? It is much more likely that the periodic war the Russian government wages against firms that are already there or organizations such as the British Council (and what a famous victory that was) will start deterring western investors, who are still hoping for those mega-profits and not too many problems with the authorities.

As it happens, we do not know what Mr Kudrin meant because in true Russian tradition he backtracked almost immediately.

Although Mr Kudrin later toned down his words when talking to journalists, saying there had been no major mistakes in recent Russian foreign policy, his intervention in the foreign policy debate was a surprise.

His change of opinion was hardly a surprise. One of his deputies, Sergei Storchak, was arrested last year on charges of fraud and embezzlement. It is best to reserve judgement on the case, in my opinion, even after the trial which will happen at some point.

It is not so much Putin's grandstanding that is going to have any effect but the expansion of Gazprom, though whether that will bring any long-term economic benefit to Russia is not clear.

Mr Medvedev has called on Russian business to imitate China and buy companies abroad, though whether Chinese expansion is likely to continue for much longer is becoming ever more questionable.

Russian businessmen have been flexing their muscle in western markets, and the state-run Gazprom energy group has become increasingly aggressive in its pursuit of global assets. As Gazprom's chairman, Mr Medvedev has witnessed the western backlash against the group's expansion drive amid fears it wants to tighten its grip on European energy supplies for political ends.

"This is not a reason for hysteria," he said. "We should quietly and measuredly forward our interests and convince people that investments from Russia are effective, transparent and necessary for the countries involved."

It is not entirely clear how Mr Medevedev is going to demonstrate that “investments from Russia are effective, transparent and necessary for the countries involved”, particularly transparent. The case of Yukos and last year’s shenanigans with Shell and BP do not precisely fill anyone with faith in Russian business transparency.

Nor is it entirely logical for a Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of Gazprom to urge Russian companies to expand in a fairly martial way and then insist that there is nothing to worry about.

Gazprom has, indeed, been rather busy recently. An agreement was signed between Gazprom and the Austrian OMV, which will give the former a 50 percent stake in the latter.

"We are once again demonstrating the tremendous contribution Gazprom is making in securing Europe's natural gas supply," Medvedev said.

Gazprom, which supplies one-quarter of Europe's gas, wants greater access to Western Europe's retail and distribution networks. OMV's Baumgarten gas hub, which Medvedev pledged to make continental Europe's largest, would become the terminus for two rival pipelines through southeast Europe, one planned by OMV, the other by Gazprom.

President Putin signed an agreement during his trip to Serbia that “stipulates construction of a gas trunkline in Serbia with a throughput capacity of 10 billion cubic meters per year. The pipeline will be a part of the South Stream line, which will deliver Russia's natural gas to southern and central Europe”. Of course, stipulation is not the same as actual construction and delivery but one can see the planning here.

It is not secure energy for Europe but secure control for Russia, assuming it will be able to supply all the gas that is necessary. One could argue that with agreements signed in Italy and Bulgaria Gazprom is encircling Western Europe but I am sure one would not want to use such emotive language.

On January 17-18 in Sofia, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed an agreement on the South Stream gas pipeline project. With minute concessions, which made the deal that Bulgarian politicians thought improbable become possible, Russia bought Bulgaria’s agreement to the project and 50 percent ownership of the section of the pipeline that will run through Bulgaria.

On January 18, Russia’s gas giant Gazprom and its Italian counterpart ENI, which initiated the South Stream project through a memorandum of understanding in June last year, incorporated the entity South Stream AG. The agreement to establish the company, registered in Switzerland, was signed about five months after the memorandum. South Stream AG will be in charge of market research and a feasibility study of the project. The deadline for the completion of the research and the study is the end of 2008.

The latest news is that Gazprom is watching Kyrgyzgaz rather in the way the Big Bad Wolf was watching Little Red Riding Hood.

This week Kyrgyzstan’s newly appointed Prime Minister Igor Chudinov announced that Kyrgyzgaz will be sold in the next few months. Although no tender has been held yet, it is clear that Russia’s Gazprom will take partial or full ownership of Kyrgyzgaz. That move would make Russia’s potential presence in the Kyrgyz economy significantly greater, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has already announced plans to invest up to $2 billion into the Kyrgyz economy.

There are, as it happens, problems. According to a report by the Jamestown Foundation Gazprom is not performing as well as it should be.

The giant company had a reasonably good but unspectacular year with its market capitalization increasing by 15 percent, compared with 60 percent growth in 2006 (RBC Daily, December 29). Despite the breath-taking growth of world energy prices, Gazprom reported its net profit dropped by 25 percent in the first six month of 2007, and officials do not expect any improvement in the final accounts for the year (Nezavisimaya gazeta, December 6). Its external debt reached $36 billion, which contributed significantly to the fast expansion of Russia’s total indebtedness (Vedomosti, January 10).

Gazprom’s investment program was revised several times in 2007, so that the share of investments shrunk while acquisitions expanded, and the new investment program for 2008 approved just before the holidays appears – as presented very briefly on the company’s website – quite conservative and does not aim at compensation for the massive under-investment that has accumulated since the start of the Putin era.

2008, according to this article, should see substantial reduction in domestic subsidization of gas prices, which will mean an unpopular 25 per cent rise in fuel prices. So there is the vital question of whether, having partially eased Shell and BP out of their projects, Gazprom will actually deliver the required, ever rising amount of gas.

Furthermore, who will succeed Medvedev when he steps down after his probable (heh!) election to the Presidency? This is getting to be quite interesting. Recent reports diverge.

Two days ago Reuters and others announced that there was a strong possibility of Prime Minister Zubkov becoming the new Chairman on March 3 or soon thereafter. But a new contender has entered the field and he seems to have a great deal of backing.

Step forward Vladimir Putin. Kommersant hinted broadly that he is likely to take Medvedev’s place on the Board of Gazprom.

As of yesterday evening, there were 42 candidates (compared to 26 last year) and more are expected. There names are being kept secret. The election will take place at the annual shareholders meeting on June 27. On the market, they are waiting to see whether current President of Russia Vladimir Putin will run for a place on the Gazprom board.

Off the record, sources hint broadly that Putin will replace Medvedev on the Gazprom board. Experts say that, although article 11 of the Constitution of Russia prohibits the prime minister from participating in the management of an economic entity, being the chairman of the board of directors is not management in the immediate sense.

Pravda seems to agree with that analysis, which is unusual in that the two newspapers rarely agree on anything, least of all what happened to some Kommersant journalists.

In a way, that makes a great deal of sense and explains certain matters that were puzzling some of us. Well, one matter really – how will Putin ensure that he keeps power after the March election. The Prime Minister in Russia has considerably less of it than the President. On the other hand, the Chairman of Gazprom has a great deal of power behind and in front of the scenes.

Like Pooh-Bah in "The Mikado", Putin will remain Lord High Everything Else, while Medvedev will imitate the ex-tailor Ko-Ko and become Lord High Executioner.

Man-in-pub

Thank you Tim for your intervention on this. And "this" is Simon Heffer in full "man-in-pub" mode, ranting about MPs not needing "research assistants". The problem, opines the great man, "stems from MPs' belief that they deserve an entourage."

He would concede an MP needs a secretary, but why do they need research assistants? MPs never used to have them, he says. They just had their secretaries get information from the House of Commons Library. If MPs need advisers, let their parties pay for them. Taxpayers are put upon enough without having to fund such swindles.

I have already declared an interest on this, and our readers will not be at all surprised at our view that Heffer – as he so often does – is talking utter tosh. The real problem is that he needs a "research assistant", as he so quaintly puts it. Myself, I prefer the term, "researcher".

That much is evident from his equally facile comments on Dan Hannan, where he tells us to, "Forget Hitler, the EU is modelled on the USSR". Daniel Hannan, he says, made only one mistake when he drew comparisons in the European Parliament between the way the European Union does business and how the Nazis were enabled to set up a dictatorship in Germany 75 years ago. He could just as easily have compared it with the way business was transacted in Stalin's Russia, and he should have.

This really is classic "man-in-pub" talk. One brief look at the Soviet Constitution should disabuse anyone of the thesis that there is any similarity between Stalin's regime and the European Union, but such niceties are not for the likes of Heffer.

In fact, Heffer is the classic research-free "journalist". Between prejudice and finger, no brain intervenes, no pause to collect information in a systematic way, no attempt to evaluate it and analyse it. Instead, he writes off-the-cuff, sometimes getting it right, but most often not.

Yet this is the man who rants about the Tories and their lack of policy, a man who clearly cannot join the dots. How does he think a policy is actually formulated? Does he think that Cameron sends his secretary down to the House of Commons Library and asks for one?

The big problem, in fact, is that the Conservative Party does not do enough research and much of that which is done is of such poor quality. That, more often, is due to the low status afforded to the occupation of researcher, the inability to understand the role and value of research, and thus the traditionally low pay in the calling, building a self-reinforcing cycle.

But, against the might of the government with all the might of the civil service and the enormous resources available to it, how does Heffer think that MPs can operate in the task he would have them do - holding the government to account?

The worst of it, though, is that – judging from the comments on his online piece – so many people agree with this rather silly man. The seductive rant of the man-in-pub has a strong following. But this does not make him right.

COMMENT THREAD

Mote and beam

The editorial in The Daily Telegraph today is absolutely right, of course. "There should have been only one story in Parliament this week," it intones: "the ratification of the European Constitution, now called the Lisbon Treaty." It then tells us that the adoption of this text will fundamentally and irrevocably alter the temper of the nation.

But it then moves on to tell us that: "…as far as the country is concerned, by far the bigger story has involved MPs who employ their wives."

To an extent, perhaps, but it is also the case that the leaders of the pack have been the media, and the signs are that the Sunday press will be in full feeding frenzy tomorrow, as they clear their pages in order to "out" those MPs who employ wives and relatives. Yet it is those same newspapers, The Daily Telegraph included, who have given no space at all to the debates in committee on the treaty ratification.

However, the Telegraph editorial develops its theme to suggest that, "the two stories might, oddly, be connected." The constant, low-level anger that voters now feel for their representatives, it says, owes a good deal to the sense that MPs are parasitical. It continues:

The powers they once exercised are now wielded by quangos, judges, Whitehall bureaucrats and EU officials. Ceasing to be authoritative, they have become contemptible. In consequence, voters get much more upset about their salaries and expenses than they did a generation ago.

We are in a vicious circle. The less people respect their parliamentarians, the less prepared those parliamentarians are to defend their privileges. A House that has been demoralised by scandal and contumely is readier to surrender its powers than one that is confident in its supremacy.

Here, the paper does have a point, but it is a very superficial analysis. What it carefully omits is the role of the media which, in its pursuit if the trivia, constantly fails to report the more serious aspects of parliamentary work, itself contributing to the impression that the House of Commons is one long soap opera.

Balancing this, though, the reason why media is giving the Lisbon treaty proceedings so little coverage (like this blog) is that it is simply reflecting the general view that ratification is a done deal. And, in the nature of things, what you cannot alter, you tend not to worry about.

There, the Parliamentarians have only themselves to blame. While they rest on the doctrine of "parliamentary sovereignty", they have been in the forefront in giving it away. As the assiduous Dr D R Cooper recently pointed out (kindly sending us an e-mail), he wrote to The Telegraph on this very theme.

Before MPs resume their debate on the Treaty of Lisbon, he stated, they may care to look at its Declaration 17, which claims that EU treaties and laws have "primacy" over the laws passed by their own Parliament. Then they should look at Parliament's official website, which states that it is "the supreme legal authority in the UK".

From this, writes Dr Cooper, it seems a logical conclusion that the laws it passes must have "supremacy" in the UK - but how can that be so, if EU treaties and laws have "primacy"? Unless there is a subtle distinction between "supremacy", and "primacy", which is perfectly clear to the fine minds in the House of Commons, even if it would elude that of the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Therein lies exactly the point made by The Telegraph editorial. Since MPs have been so keen to divest themselves of their power, it is not surprising that they become increasingly irrelevant until all that is left is the soap opera.

With that, the paper avers, they have lost their self-belief. It concludes: "If they became what they once were - the nation's supreme assembly, a senate of men and women determined to give expression to the aspirations of their electors - voters might mind less about their salaries. Giving those electors the referendum they promised at the last election would be an excellent place to start."

We can only say Amen to that.

COMMENT THREAD

Ooooooo … it's dangerous!

A few days ago, Daniel Hannan was getting worked up – not about the disgusting carry-ons in the EU parliament, but at the deployment of the "EU army" to Chad.

The proximate cause of his concern was an announcement that the much delayed EU peace-keeping force was finally to make its way to that troubled country, having finally found enough helicopters and equipment to keep it going.

Under a heading, "The EU deploys its army," Hannan wrote that the soldiers will answer, "not to any national capital nor combination of national capitals, but to the EU's politico-military structures in Brussels". He then asked: "If 3,500 uniformed soldiers at the command of EU institutions isn't a European army, what is it?"

However, whether it is an EU formation is one thing, but there is another measure of an army. The term is usually taken to mean a force which has the capability to fight and, in this respect, Hannan's worries are somewhat over-stated – the EU Army is not capable of fighting.

Despite the concerns of nascent EU power, we now learn that the deployment has been delayed, the reason being that there has been "heavy fighting" between government troops and Sudanese-backed rebels, who have been marching towards the capital in a bid to topple president Idriss Déby.

The mission's Irish commander, Patrick Nash, says the risk of instability was well-known and now, with Irish and Austrian troops due to arrive, this has "fuelled fears" that the EU could get more than it bargained for. Says John Kotsopoulos of the European Policy Centre, "The EU will have to tread extremely carefully so as not to get caught up" [in the fighting].

The problem is that the French have been supporting the government against rebel incursions. So the EU mission, while supposed to be neutral, could ultimately be seen as benefiting the government in Chad by stabilising the situation.

As result, the rebels have stated that if the EU forces stand in their way then they will be under threat. In fact, they bear the distinction of the first ever force to declare war against the EU. Thus, it seems, the potential for casualties is making the EU states think again about sending their men and women to Chad.

So, the EU has an "army" that cannot fight and will not be deployed anywhere dangerous in case it suffers casualties. On that basis, one could be forgiven for thinking that there is very little to be concerned about. The words "paper tiger" come to mind. We know the Europeans talk about "soft power", but this is ridiculous. "Gone soft power", might be more accurate.

COMMENT THREAD

China on the brink

We are used to being told to think of China as an emerging superpower, set to top the league of the world's economies in the not too distant future. But the piece in The Daily Telegraph by Richard Spencer in Beijing should give some pause for thought.

This actually makes more sense if it is read in conjunction with our piece in December, the combination of which suggests that the Chinese economy is much more fragile than is generally reckoned. In fact, as our title indicates, all the signs are there that China is on the brink.

Spencer’s piece is headed, "Chinese snow crisis hits food supplies" and his account is well detailed, citing Chen Xiwen, the government's leading expert on the agricultural economy. He says the long-term effects of the weather were looking "ominous". "The impact of the snow disaster in southern China on winter crop production is extremely serious," he says. "The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic."

This is borne out by government figures said that snow had destroyed crops on 3,000 square miles of land. Wholesalers in Beijing have reported that supplies of some foodstuffs have been down to a fifth of normal levels. In areas directly affected by the snow, such as the central industrial cities of Wuhan and Changsha, food prices have reportedly already doubled.

This is on top of the extraordinary scenes at Guangzhou with 800,000 would-be rail travellers stranded in shelters (pictured). We are told that the travel plans of some 105 million people are affected - 45 million more than the total population of Britain. Millions are stranded on roads, stuck on slow-moving trains or in temporary shelters around railway stations. On top of that, a staggering 150,000 homes have collapsed and another 650,000 have been seriously damaged,

Turning to our previous piece, there we recorded the view of the BBC Radio 4's correspondent who warned that there was a risk of "food riots in China" in the coming year - and that was before these current travails.

Then, from Adam Leyland, editor of The Grocer magazine, we get a reminder that, "China is not insulated from world markets." He says that, "Increased demand for certain staples in China has had an effect on global prices," as indeed has been observed many times during the last year.

As you would expect, the Chinese authorities are trying to put a brave face on the troubles but, given you could detect more than a whiff of crisis in Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao whirlwind visits to farms and rural enterprises in the northeast province of Shaanxi last year, the situation must now be even more taut.

From the British (and European) perspective, we have become used to low commodity prices and the flood of cheap consumer goods from China. That, and the availability of cheap migrant labour have underpinned price stability in this country and kept inflation in check.

Problems in China, therefore, will have significant repercussions here, especially if the effects on Chinese food production lead to more imports being sucked in to relieve shortages – as seems likely. If that also leads to political instability – which also seems likely – the knock-on effects could be even more dramatic, if unquantifiable at this stage.

We are, it seems, about to experience the (rather appropriate) Chinese curse of living in "interesting times".

COMMENT THREAD

A corrosive indifference

Quite rightly, the media is focusing on the Derek Conway affair and, as more details emerge, it is becoming evident quite what a loathsome creature this man is, to say nothing of his family.

Such publicity will, inevitably, add to the general well of contempt in which we hold our elected members – but, as always, the media paints a highly distorted picture.

In The Daily Telegraph for instance, we see a story on rural schools, with the paper launching a campaign on the issue. Yet, its story is nothing more or less than a rehash of information delivered by Owen Paterson and his colleagues in their adjournment debate on 11 December, which the newspaper completely ignored.

And, to add insult to injury, the paper attributes the information to "figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats".

Therein lies the problem. When MPs go about their work in a diligent fashion – and many do – their efforts are largely ignored. When an MP goes off the rails, the media feeds off the soap opera and milks the story for all that it is worth. This cannot help but reinforce the impression in the minds of the public that our representatives are a load of wasters.

Where the greater danger lies, though, is that it lends credence to the siren cries for more and more of the decision-making in government to be taken out of the "political" arena. It should be vested in the safe hands of our dispassionate, Platonic guardians, those diligent officials who are only concerned with the public good.

That is the underlying ethos of the European Union and at the heart of many of the ills in modern society. Governance is far too important to be left to venal politicians. We can do a much better job, say the "colleagues".

This "anti-politics" miasma plays into the hands of those who would abolish democracy and is strengthened by the corrosive indifference of the media. It is falling into the trap set for them by the oh so plausible technocrats. If this process goes too far, we will not only see our rights and freedoms eroded before our very eyes, but we will see the public applauding that very process.

We are playing with fire.

COMMENT THREAD

A marathon trial of strength

Since February 2006 all 16 regions of Poland have declared themselves GMO-free, the GMO-free Europe website proudly declares, telling us that Poland therefore joins Greece and Austria as the third country with a complete "GMO-free" status.

In May 2006, we observed that the Polish government seemed to be headed for a confrontation with the EU on this issue – and so it has come to pass.

The commission has just announced that it has referred the Polish GMO ban to the ECJ, almost exactly two years after the 16 states declared.

Several warning letters to the Polish government have not brought a climb-down. If anything, the government's position has hardened. It has told Brussels that it believes the use of GMOs "encroaches on the sphere of public morality, an encroachment that would justify a total ban on GM seeds." Thus, Brussels is now saying it "has no alternative but to refer Poland to the ECJ."

With Sarkozy also playing games and the commission under pressure from the WTO over member state bans, this is trial of strength between the commission and the member states is turning into a marathon.

With the glacial speed of proceedings in the ECJ, it will be some time yet before the case is heard. If, as is strongly expected, the judgement goes against Poland, then it will be more than interesting to see what happens then. Will Poland huff and puff, and then roll over - as it usually does? We shall see.

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