The loneliness of the long-distance eurosceptics

The march of European political integration never slackens, and neither does the method vary.

That much was evident from yesterday morning's (very limited) crop of stories, dealing with varying degrees of emphasis with an EU plan for "a European CIA" and a proposal that the European Gendarmerie Force (EGF) - which currently only involves France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands - should become an EU body.

Such was the broader lack of interest that it found its way only into a few newspapers, including The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, with Bruno Waterfield also commenting (in some detail) on his blog.

The media refer to a 53-page report drafted by the "Future Group" of interior and justice ministers from six EU member states - Germany, France, Sweden, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, which is variously described as "confidential" and, in one case has the label "seen by …", all indicating a degree of back-door dealing and secrecy.

Whether that was the case, the report is now up on the internet, published by the German federal interior ministry, with the executive summary here and the full text here.

It is, as is usual in these cases, a model of restrained language, studied reasonableness and masterful ambiguity. Thus, on the vexed question of a Euro-gendarmerie, it tells us that, "Civil protection is a genuine responsibility of Member States," with the Group merely offering its "support" for the development of a European policy in this area, "in order to improve overall consistency, better efficiency and even greater solidarity between Member States."

Who could possibly object to that?

Couched in terms of offering "assistance", the key passage states that, "Solidarity is a key principle within the European Union," then noting: "Member States confronted with major emergencies can expect to receive support by Member States and the Community." And, just by way of reassurance, we are informed:

Supporting and additional civil protection measures by the European Union should complement the responsibility of Member States to ensure their own national and local capability. At EU level it is necessary to develop this solidarity principle, which will enable a country at risk to obtain appropriate help from other Member States.

Only the fevered brains of rabid eurosceptics could read into that any idea of foreign storm-troopers landing on these shores to suppress civil disorder and to lock up dissidents who had finally taken direct action against the growing totalitarianism of our government in Brussels.

Any such preposterous outcome can thus be safely denied – ridiculed even – as the "colleagues" purr reassuringly – as has the Home Office – that, "Under European law there is no question of the UK being forced to participate in measures it opposed."

Within the framework of the report, it is indeed up to member states when "confronted with major emergencies" to call in assistance as needed. But, what constitutes a "major emergency" is not specified and nor are the circumstances under which "supporting and additional civil protection measures" might be provided.

Thus, the prospect of armed gendarmes being deployed in support of a British government to suppress civil disorder is not ruled out. No amount of textual analysis would suggest that this could ever be excluded as a possibility.

That, of course, is the way the system works. It relies on ambiguities and deniability, working up structures and systems which can be presented as harmless and innocent, but with a dual-purpose agenda that is never declared until it is too late to oppose it.

Funnily enough, we wrote about the Euro-gendarmerie in June 2007, England Expects wrote about it last October and I linked to his post.

Furthermore, my co-editor and I have written endlessly about the Hague Programme, on which this "Future Group" report is based, more recently in February of this year but with posts going back to 2004.

Our February piece was based on an article written by Philip Johnston who then rehearsed the issue of an EU gendarmerie – and much more - asking despairingly, "does nobody care any more?"

We answered him with the words, "nobody does care or, at least, not enough people care." That was the truth now, and it remains true today.

Taking my customary side-swipe at Iain Dale (But hey! He's a big boy and he can take it), I observe on the forum that our government will need the Euro-gendarmerie for when our Police finally do go on strike, when the lights go out and when there are riots in the streets.

But then, even if they wore jackboots and red armbands, I observe, our chatterati would still be writing blogs about the soap opera. Meanwhile, the "colleagues" can happily make their plans and publish their reports. A few journalists will report it and our provincial government will say, in effect, "Move along … nothing to see here", and everyone goes back to sleep… 'cept us and a few others.

What was that about the loneliness of the long-distance eurosceptics?

COMMENT THREAD

Maybe they should stop complaining

A small news item in today's Wall Street Journal Europe informs us that:

The Red Cross accused Colombia of breaking the Geneva Convention by using its emblem in a disguised military operation to rescue hostages from guerrillas.

Others, such as Radio Free Europe, devote more space to the story. The Red Cross spokesman pointed out that such misuse would endanger other operatives in the field. The Colombian government has apologized though clearly they do not think that there was something wrong with carrying out the operation.

Some years ago we, on this blog, would have shared that indignation. The symbol of the Red Cross organization was so highly regarded because of its work and achievements that using it for any other purpose would have appeared to be completely immoral apart from being dangerous for the operatives.

Is that still true, one asks oneself. There was, after all, the story of wanted terrorists being carried through American check points by the Italian Red Cross in Iraq, allegedly, in return for the release of kidnapped aid workers. I do not recall allowances for this sort of behaviour in the Geneva Convention.

What of the Red Cross's rather ambiguous involvement in Qanagate, described by my colleague here and here and other postings. As I recall, at one point Green Helmet Guy (remember him?) appeared as a bona fide Red Cross operator, proudly wearing the emblem. Again, I find it hard to imagine how that fits in with the Geneva Convention. Come to think of it, there was that rather curious story of the Red Cross ambulance and the hole in the middle of the symbol that was just a little suspect. Should the International Committee not have made a statement about that?

There were the appearance of Red Cross workers and vehicles in the Pallywood and Hezbollywood productions with no statements from the hierarchy about breaking the Geneva Convention. Again, I have searched in vain for words in that Convention that allow and approve behaviour of that kind.

At the very least, one would expect the International Committee of the Red Cross organization to repudiate those of its people on the ground who misuse the symbol to this extent. Should they not worry about endangering their other workers by some being so obviously involved in political activity?

There is a more important aspect that the said International Committee should address. Why is it that the Colombian army assumed – and, as it turned out, assumed correctly – that the appearance of their soldiers dressed in Che Guevara t-shirts, under various NGO banners, such as the Red Cross would fill the FARC terrorists with calm anticipation of friendly activity?

As far as we can tell (and it was analyzed carefully by Mary Anastasia O’Grady in the Wall Street Journal) the assumption was that those guys in their Che t-shirts under the Red Cross and other similar insignia were expected to help FARC by transporting the hostages.

How does this accord with the Geneva Convention, ladies and gentlemen of the Red Cross?

UPDATE: One of our readers sent us a link to an interesting story in which the Red Cross symbol was used to smuggle drugs from Venezuela to Sierra Leone from where it was presumably destined to European countries. There is no evidence, as far as we can see, of any involvement by any Red Cross worker. Nevertheless, this can be described as breaking the Geneva Convention and endangering Red Cross workers. I have no recollections of any statements or protests.

There is only one true God

"Prepare for global temperature rise of 4C, warns top scientist", trumpets The Guardian today from its front page. Couched in different words, the same message would be equally at home coming from the mouth of a fire-breathing preacher – the text being: "Prepare to meet thy doom".

The preacher would, of course, demand that we "repent our Sins", which is exactly what the "warmists" are doing. Repent thy "Climate Crimes", they tell us. Reduce your carbon footprint and walk lightly on the face of this Earth. Only then will you be saved.

In terms, there is no difference in the tenor of the messages. Thus, in "climate change", we are not dealing with science but a belief system. The "scientists" are merely the High Priests of this strange new religion, their bible the IPPC assessment report. This is the Holy Writ, handed down from on High. There can be no deviation from The Word.

This is why the likes of Watts up with that and Climate audit, invaluable though they are, will never prevail. They are attempting to deal, methodically and dispassionately, with the science. But this is a religion. And there is only one true God … the God of climate change.

If you dispute this fact, you are an unbeliever, and you will be cast into to the Hell of a planet warmed by 4 degrees. We know this to be true - Professor Bob Watson has said so and The Guardian has printed it. No more proof is needed.

COMMENT THREAD

Garbage in ...

Been very busy with day jobbing, so I will have to fisk this garbage later today. Meanwhile, be my guest on the forum.

And have a look at this, while you are about it.

COMMENT THREAD

Abandon ye hope …

So cautions Irwin Stelzer, writing in The Daily Telegraph, yet another commentator on energy policy in what has become a politician-free zone.

The Tories, by contrast – seemingly determined to avoid any grown-up issues - are complaining that NHS trusts are calling in pest contractors to deal with the vermin problems they encounter.

The interesting thing about Stelzer's piece is that he is articulating the same point we made in our piece over the weekend - that neither nuclear nor renewables were the solution to our energy crisis. With western Europe being "overly dependent, to Vladimir Putin's delight" on natural gas, he thus concludes that the only realistic option is coal.

However, it would have been useful of Stelzer had gone a little further in his research, which might have helped him avoid some rather misleading statements. For instance, the world, he asserts, "has limitless supplies of coal, most located in nations friendly to the West."

Up to a point, Lord Copper … actually known reserves at current rates of consumption amount to about 200 years. But that is fair enough. In political terms, two centuries is essentially "limitless".

What brings on the smile (or grimace) though, in his advocacy of coal, he rather neglects to point out that the UK is almost wholly reliant on imports and that the main source is, er … Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Just as bad, our second major source is South Africa which, while still "friendly", is having its own problems and is not in a position to guarantee supply.

Further, Stelzer applauds the action of "European countries" who plan to build 50 new coal stations in the next five years, neglecting also to tell us that over half of these are to be in Germany, which will rely on its supplies from er ... Russia and South Africa – putting us in direct competition for insecure supplies.

Even more alarming, Stelzer reaches his conclusion that coal is the right option partly on the basis that nuclear is more expensive than claimed. But he is apparently unaware of the recent developments in South Africa. This country has determined that, in order to maintain its standing as a major exporter of coal, it must go nuclear to satisfy its domestic demand for electricity.

If nuclear is as problematical for western countries as Stelzer asserts, then it will be even more problematical for South Africa. In that case the likelihood of this country being able to continue with its massive coal exports begins to look more than a bit suspect.

This may explain why, even as we write, Germany’s Angela Merkel is seeking to reverse her predecessors's policy of abandoning nuclear energy. Despite the considerable political risks to her ruling coalition, she has realised the danger of excessive reliance on imported coal and gas – while also recognising that renewables will not give the continuity of supply her country needs.

If all of this passes Stelzer by, his sins are mere blemishes compared with the government's default position on electricity supply. We use the word "default" because this is emerging not as the result of any considered energy policy but as a consequence of its lack of policy.

What, in effect, it happening is that the UK will be forced to maximise its reliance on natural gas, owing to the predicatable failure of its programme of installing windmills. Combined with the EU-enforced programme of closing down coal-fired stations and the scheduled retirement of our existing nuclear power stations, our generators will have no option but to fill the gap with gas-fired plant.

As we observed yesterday – and many times earlier – for those who are following the serpentine twists of this issue, this makes the absence of the Conservatives from the debate all the more alarming. We have no expectations of the Labour government getting its act together, which makes it imperative that its putative successor comes up with a worthwhile policy.

If the Conservatives instead insist on avoiding the issue, then Stelzer is entirely right in cautioning that we should abandon hope. What Cameron might like to dwell on is that, when the lights go out, the next step will be to abandon the Conservatives.

COMMENT THREAD

Propaganda Я us

From the la la land of "they would say that, wouldn't they", we actually had a headline in The Guardian yesterday (online edition) declaring, "EU metals and chemical law not huge burden – official".

This is about the EU's REACH directive, supposedly on chemical safety – one on which we have written, several times - the story being a copy-out from a Reuters report.

What we are treated to is an uncritical interview of Geert Dancet, executive director for the EU's Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the man who is being paid by the EU to implement its Directive. And, to the surprise of no-one, he actually says it "will be of huge benefit overall" – not least to the 250 eurocrats employed to process the paperwork.

"The cost of registration is not prohibitive," the man says, "and is affordable for the industry in general". The direct cost to European industry, alone, by the way, is estimated to be as much as €2.3 billion over 11 years.

But tucked into all this is the bland assertion that the regime "may lead to some consolidation" but nothing is made of this. Deconstructed, this actually means that some firms – mostly the smaller, specialist enterprises, will be driven out of business by the costs and the red tape, concentrating the industry into fewer, larger firms, who will then pass on their costs to their consumers.

Dancet happily chirps that, "the cost is around €40,000 ($61,980) for a metal above 1,000 tonnes," referring to the cost of registration for each company, noting also that firms "would also have to pay to collect additional data, describing the metal's environmental impact". But he neglects to say that this is ten times or more than the cost of registration.

He does say though that the kindly EU commission has "set aside enormous discounts ... if a company is extremely small it can get a 90 percent discount on its registration fee," as if that made a blind bit of difference.

However, with an international press agency acting as his conduit for propaganda, Dancet has nothing to worry about … for Reuters read, "propaganda Я us".

COMMENT THREAD

That obituary

It is a day late, but there we are. Put it down to the fact that one cannot possibly on time when writing about a Russian author. Anyway, it is up on Umbrella 3.

An "open goal" goes begging

I do not particularly like Philip Stott, who is rather too pompous, and self-important even for my taste.

However, I cannot disagree (entirely) with his conclusion in his latest post on energy, where he declares:

Finally, but most importantly, the Government must place energy right at the top of the political agenda, and establish a settled energy policy within which the utilities and businesses can feel confident about the commercial environment within which they are planning for the - for our - future.

There are, nevertheless, two problems with his piece, which – with doubtless unconscious irony – is headed: "The Energy Elephant Trumpets At Last".

Firstly, he does not define what he means by "the government", the assumption being that he is talking about our provincial government in London. Yet, as we pointed out yesterday, energy policy has become subordinated to the "climate change" agenda, and that is entirely dictated from Brussels.

We cannot frame an independent energy policy without a serious confrontation with the EU, which none of our mainstream political parties is prepared to countenance. Yet that particular "elephant in the room" escapes Stott's attention.

Secondly, when Stott does refer to our current provincial government, he neglects the role of the opposition Conservative Party. To put energy on the political map, it needs the fuel of political controversy to keep it going. Despite substantial airing of the issue in the weekend press, however, there has been no significant input from the Tories. Predictably, the issue – entirely unresolved – has now been relegated to the business pages.

Worse still, the highlight of the Tory agenda yesterday was Michael Gove's ill-considered attack on "laddish mags", for which he was rightly trashed on the Conservative Home comments.

The effect of political input was well demonstrated on Friday, when the Republicans staged their demonstration in Congress. This set the US political blogs on fire, with energy catapulted to the top of their agenda.

But, today, the Tories are back again with their self-indulgent soft-edged, social agenda, this time on divorce - and the political blogs lamely trail in their wake, with no attempt at setting their own agenda.

No one disputes the need to air such "soft" issues, but they cannot and must not be to the exclusion of all else. The Tories need reminding that, without a coherent energy policy, no other policy can survive.

Furthermore, the test of a political party's fitness for government is how well it performs in opposition. By that measure – on energy, if nothing else – Mr Cameron's party is seriously wanting. This is potentially the most serious crisis Britain faces.

That Cameron and his colleagues may take the country by default – only because voters are presented with a choice between them and the unelectable Labour party - is no evidence that his administration will be any better than the one it replaces. In fact, all the evidence is that, in the key area of energy, Cameron's policy will be very little different from that of his predecessor.

With a political "open goal" in front of the Tories, however, it is a serious dereliction of duty that they should not capitalise on it, and tap the ball into the net. If Cameron and his so far lack-lustre shadow cabinet cannot do even that, then it raises very serious questions as to their fitness for office.

COMMENT THREAD

Where Italy leads?

I don't think anyone is under any illusions – apart from the British media - as to why Berlusconi has put 3,000 armed troops on the streets of major Italian cities.

Ostensibly a measure to "help cut down crime", something claimed by both interior minister Roberto Maroni and his defence colleague Ignazio La Russo, this is nothing more than a fig-leaf, the Italians themselves being very well aware that most of the crime in Italy is Mafia-related, which will be untouched by this "crack-down".

If for "crime", however, you read "immigrants" – and in particular, the Roma – then the agenda becomes clearer, as does the timescale.

Coming on the back of the programme to fingerprint the inhabitants of the 700 or so immigrant encampments dotted around the major cities, the next move comes in October, when the "census" is finished, when the government plans to dismantle all remaining unauthorised settlements.

That the troops have been put on the streets now, with a deployment that is scheduled to last for an initial period of six months, is clearly – on the one hand - a pre-emptive strike, as unease grows at the scale of the "census", and – on the other - a preparation for the major upheaval that is to follow in a couple of months.

It is no coincidence, therefore, that in the main, the troops are being stationed mainly in or close to the camps and at the growing number of immigrant holding centres, all on the outskirts of the cities.

When the bulldozers move in during October – as indeed is planned – there is undoubtedly going to be trouble, as upwards of 160,000 gypsies are going to be targeted, even though up to three-quarters of them are Italian citizens.

That this "pogrom" will have the support of the bulk of Italian people is evidenced by a recent incident in Naples (pictured) when the bodies of two Roma girls who had drowned in the sea were left covered with towels while beachgoers continued to sunbathe.

Comparisons are now being made between this government's action and the census of Jews carried out by Benito Mussolin in 1938, the beginning of a process that put many of them in concentration camps. The Italian government, of course, denies any such connection, but its actions display a rooted determination to clear out what are clearly considered unwelcome "guests".

And all of this is going to present something of a problem for the "colleagues" in Brussels, who have been soft-peddling on their condemnation of the Rome government's action. When the troops go into action for real, however, even the EU is going to find it difficult to turn a blind eye. Unless it takes a firm line – where Italy leads, other member states will want to follow.

COMMENT THREAD

Made in Brussels

Viewed from this side of the divide, there can be no doubt that the intellectual argument on "climate change" has been won. Not only is there ample evidence that there has been no warming for the last ten years, with the last year showing significant signs of cooling, the scientific basis of the AGW global warming creed has been so eroded that it no longer has any credibility.

But, if the argument has been won, that very fact is an irrelevance. So detached now is our government from any semblance of intellectual coherence that mere facts and argument have no impact whatsoever on policy.

By our "government", we do of course mean the European Union, for it is the driver of climate change policy, which then determines member state policies. We, at a national level, have absolutely no say in the major strategic decisions. The role of national governments is simply to devise means of implementing the diktats agreed in Brussels.

That much is evidenced today by the EU commission's launch of a public consultation on the "post-2012 agreement" on climate change. And, from all the propaganda material surrounding the launch, it is as if the debate on the issue had never happened. The commission in particular is entirely immune to discourse, its views frozen in time, locked into the gospel according to St Gore.

Thus does it offer an online "stakeholder" consultation form which admits only views on how it should achieve its declared policy of seeking to "limit global warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures". That is the only game in town, set out in its communication of January last year, from which it has no intention of deviating.

All the commission is interested in is "detailed views of stakeholders on the different building blocks of the Bali Road Map", all with a view to reaching an agreement in Copenhagen by the end of 2009, during a conference which will "bring together the world's nations to tackle this global challenge effectively". It is important, says the commission, "that our contribution to this discussion is shaped by the knowledge and expertise of the different EU stakeholders."

In that context, there cannot be any national debate on the climate change – the issue has been decided at EU level. For national "actors" to re-open questions on the agenda would put them in direct conflict with our masters in Brussels.

That is why, of course, national politicians do not and cannot entertain any debate, and why Cameron and his minions shy away from anything substantive, preferring instead to deal with social and other issues which have no immediate EU dimensions.

This also explains why the Conservatives are not engaging in a debate on our energy supplies. The EU has already decided that energy policy is subordinate to its plans to control climate change, having set out its stall in its energy green paper in 2006. It has handed down the Holy Writ.

That makes any ideas of a national energy policy, majoring on the three essential elements of affordability, adequacy and security of supplies, entirely at odds with EU policy. And that means my articulating ideas in my post on a future Tory energy policy over the weekend was a complete waste of time. The Tories are never going to engage seriously in this debate, as it would mean challenging the received wisdom in Brussels.

Policy on such strategic issues is, these days, made in Brussels. The new game being played by our politicos is to avoid any discussion on such matters, in the hope that we will not notice.

Meanwhile, here is another book (illustrated top) for Cameron to add to his reading list. As a true believer, he will find it compelling.

COMMENT THREAD

An egregious example of myopia

Remember the media frenzy back in 1992 when it was reported that sheep and rabbits in Chile were going blind as a result of the thinning of the ozone layer? With desperate hacks winging their way to the outer reaches of Patagonia, by 1993, the story was in full flood with a July showing of the story on the US network ABC's Prime Time Live.

And, of course, by the time Al Gore got on to it in his book, Earth in the Balance, it had become a matter of firm fact that "in Patagonia, hunters now report finding blind rabbits; fishermen catch blind salmon," all because of the "hole" in the ozone layer.

Not until some time later did a group at Johns Hopkins University investigate the evidence, whence they attributed the cases of sheep blindness to a local viral infection known as "pink eye". But, to this day, the myth survives.

Now fast-forward to today and there is another real crisis in South America – this one in Peru, which we reported a few days ago. And now, so severe is the crisis that, for nearly a month, a major relief operation has been underway.

But, unfortunately for the victims of this crisis, they are suffering from an unfashionable cause - the most severe cold weather on record. Temperatures have been falling to below-zero extremes, threatening the lives of thousands of children and pregnant mothers living in very remote, very poor highland communities. Animals are dying, crops have been wiped out and respiratory diseases are rampant.

And what do we get from the world media? Er … nothing. Nada, rien, absolutely sweet fanny adams. Still though, they prattle on about decreasing Arctic ice, heedless of the reality.

When history comes to be written, the inactivity of the media – to say nothing of the politicians and the chattering classes - surely will be seen as the most egregious example of myopia since Marie Antoinette made her remarks about eating cake.

COMMENT THREAD

Alexander Solzhenitsyn 1918 - 2008

The death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the age of 89 has been announced this morning. I was woken up by a phone call from a friend who wanted to know if I had seen the news. He also asked me whether the great man's writings were different in Russian from that in English.

My response was slightly bleary but very firm: his writings became worse and worse as he managed to avoid any editorial work on it. He was not a good writer and had no sense of style or discipline. However, Solzhenitsyn's achievements in helping to bring down the Communist system were undoubtedly great. On the other hand, the Russian nationalism in its autocratic form that he supported, though undoubtedly an improvement, was not and is not such a wonderful system.

With the boss's permission I shall write a longer obituary on the man later in the day.

A reckoning awaits

The lead story in the Booker column yesterday is so unpleasant that it makes you wonder whether it could really have happened in Britain.

The story speaks for itself but, in brief, three Thames Estuary fishermen - forced to land over-quota fish in order to make a living, through arbitrary refusal of the officials to release unused quota - have been prosecuted for their "crimes".

But, not content with swingeing fines and costs, the officials had sought – and obtained from a compliant judge - confiscation of their assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act, to a total of £213,461. Unless this sum is paid within months the fishermen face two years in prison.

That summary though does not begin to do justice to the true horror of what has happened but, speaking personally, I so hate this type of story that I find difficulty writing about it – hence my leaving it so late.

This is not from any squeamishness. The reluctance stems from the feeling of impotent rage it invokes in me, a sense of frustration combined with a black hatred that comes from the very depths of my soul, for the malign injustice of a policy – and its execution – that deprives good men of a living and treats them so foully.

What is doubly frustrating is that a story that should invoke howls of outrage is consigned to the neglected ghetto of the Booker column and noted only by two bloggers – that I am aware of - Tony Sharp and Tim Worstall.

Although an intensely political issue – arising from policy created over several decades which has conspired to turn commercial fishing into a criminal occupation – it has been divorced from the politicians who allowed it to happen.

Worse still, the current generation of politicians are silent and thus, without comment from them, the episode lacks that essential political controversy from which the political "squawkosphere" takes its lead. It too, therefore, is silent, preferring to comment on the soap opera and drama queens rather than the lives of real people destroyed by malevolent officials.

Thus, even now, Booker's story in the print edition is history and the stories of those of us who have commented on it will shortly be consigned to our archives, picked over occasionally when they show up on a Google search but otherwise ignored.

But, while the story might fade, the black hatred does not. One fantasises about running amok with a Kalashnikov in the offices of these dank, foul officials but it remains fantasy. More to the point, it would be a waste of time. Those slaughtered would so easily be replaced and the injustice would go on unchecked.

Sooner or later, though, the dam will break. It always does – history tells us that. It may not happen in my lifetime but, when it does, it will be very messy, very nasty and a lot of innocent people will get hurt. But it will happen and it will do so because a lot of people did nothing about the things of which Booker reports so lucidly.

COMMENT THREAD

Robert Kagan and the return of history

First thoughts as I read the book over on the BrugesGroupBlog.

Return of the freeze?

In one of the three stories offered by Booker today, he returns to the long-running saga of the vanishing Arctic ice.

Increasingly desperate to sustain their scare, as the evidence suggests otherwise, the global warmists have recently been focussing on this more and more writes Booker, picking up on the fact that the North Pole is still surrounded by six million square kilometres of ice, a million more than this time last year.

However, there may be more interesting news to come. In a comment to the piece on Watts up with that the writer notes: "With the sun's elevation now dropping about 2 degrees per week, and the Arctic Oscillation forecast to be negative through mid-August, there won't be much more melting in the Arctic this season."

Looking at the ice melt graph on Cryosphere today, this seems to be confirmed. But, with two million square kilometres yet to go before last year's melt-back is reached, the comparative images over the last few days (pictured - click to enlarge) also reveal an interesting phenomenon. In the area circled, on the fringes of the Beaufort Sea, the ice seems actually to be increasing - a month earlier than usual.

It is early days yet but, if this becomes a trend, we will be seeing the smallest melt-back since the winter of 1997-8. And this would be in a year when, as Booker observes, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said it was "quite possible" that all Arctic sea ice might vanish.

It's really frustrating, he adds, how that "end of the world" we were promised keeps on having to be postponed.

Yet, still they drone on.

COMMENT THREAD

You read it here first

It was a few days ago when we suggested that plans to introduce a "windfall tax" on energy profits were already in hand, using the EU's emissions trading scheme as a mechanism for extracting the cash.

Today, we see in The Sunday Times a confirmation that Gordon Brown is planning precisely that. What he is doing is seeking – from our masters in Brussels – permission to increase the seven percent of emissions permits up for auction to ten percent, thus yielding another £500 million.

The worst of it is that this is being styled as a "green tax" on energy firms to help poor, a cynical and dangerous impost on energy companies which diverts attention from the fact that the hike in energy prices is primarily due to the government's failure to construct a coherent energy policy.

That this abstraction of cash is dangerous is evident – if you read between the lines – from a second piece in The Sunday Times which tells us that, "Britain's electricity transmission and distribution companies are to announce plans for a £10 billion rewiring of Britain."

This is not actually the case. Reading into the story, we find that if refers to a "report due this autumn" which will "warn" that a £10 billion revamp of the national grid is needed to accommodate the proliferation of windmills and bring them into the system.

This is something we flagged up last year and put a figure on it earlier this month. Now you read it in the MSM.

What is worrying though is that while we actually get confirmation of this figure from Steve Smith, managing director of networks at Ofgem, the report is actually couched in terms of the grid needing this investment - about £3 billion more than the current value of the whole system. But there are no indications that this investment has been secured, or even that the energy companies will be prepared to part with such a huge sum – especially when Gordon Brown passim is planning to extract still more money from the system.

Interestingly, at the time of writing, there had been only one comment to the online piece, from David Martin of Bristol. He wrote:

It is perhaps worth pointing out that the nameplate 33GW of wind power will only output around 10GW on average per hour - around 7 Areva nuclear reactors. The cost will be around £80bn before adding this £10bn. Nuclear stations as well as costing perhaps £28bn would not need so many new lines.

Quite.

Third in the "you read it here first" stakes is an ineffably shallow commentary from Jill Kirby, director of the think-tank, Centre for Policy Studies. With almost a "man in pub" level of superficiality, she pontificates about the coming energy crisis, suggesting that David Cameron should be thinking of subsidising nuclear energy, so that the good lady does not have to clean her teeth in the dark.

There was a time when the likes of the CPS drove the political agenda but, if this is the best Mz Kirby has to offer, we are really in trouble. As we have already remarked new-build nuclear plants are not a solution to power cuts in the short to medium term. We have already left it too late.

Where the egregious Kirby is bang on the button though is in her closing comments, where she notes that, "When the energy crunch comes, Cameron is likely to be in 10 Downing Street. He will have no desire to follow in the footsteps of Edward Heath and be forced to order national power blackouts."

That is precisely the point we made last May and one which Cameron had better heed. Without a coherent energy policy, nothing of his plans for a better Britain will survive. He will go down in history as the man who presided over a blackout Britain.

And that is another thing you read here first.

COMMENT THREAD

Energy: a choice of policies

It is interesting to see, at last, some of the MSM catching up with the implications of the growing energy crisis, not least The Daily Mail which had a robust leader on the subject yesterday.

Rehearsing issues familiar to our readers, this paper declared: "One of the first duties of any government is to ensure that the lights stay on and the wheels keep turning." It then added: "It is no exaggeration to say that energy is as important as the armed forces or the police. Without one, you can't deploy the others."

This was a welcome statement. As one of the few UK political blogs to be banging the drum about the coming energy shortage, we sometimes wonder whether, as a voice in the semi-wilderness, we are getting things out of perspective. The Daily Mail, in that context, offered some reassurance.

In fact, though, it did not go far enough. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the effects of a major power crisis on the policies and activities of this country.

For instance, much has been written about the housing crisis, and the increasing difficulty in obtaining mortgages. Not least of the problems is that mortgage companies have long ceased offering 100 percent (and higher) mortgages and are now requiring substantial deposits amounting to tens of thousands of pounds.

For those who are trying to save such sums, the erosion of their incomes by higher energy bills can only have a deleterious effect which, over term, can only delay (or even prevent) the recovery of the housing market.

If this is just one instance, look to other policy areas which the Conservative Party holds dear. Education would be a good start, where one can ask what the effects of higher energy prices might have on already stretched school budgets. What happens to plans for improvements when increasing sums are absorbed by the need just to keep schools heated and lit?

That, though, does not even begin to factor in the broader implications. If, as is widely anticipated, we do start seeing serious shortfalls in capacity which lead to power cuts, education suffers in a more direct way as children are sent home – perhaps for prolonged periods as their schools are deprived of power.

Many other examples can be given of the profound impact of electricity shortages but it is as well to remember that, long before we experience universal power cuts, the utilities will already be taking steps to deal with the problem.

Amongst these will be a rolling programme of load shedding, cutting supplies to large industrial and commercial users, as a means of keeping the home lights burning. This, over term, will have a major economic impact as production suffers, wages are cut, profits slashed, tax payments evaporate and unemployment soars.

For good reason, therefore, The Mail calls for urgent action – but we know that in the dying days of a discredited and intellectually bankrupt government, this is not going to materialise. Having neglected energy policy for eleven years, this fag-end of a Labour regime is not suddenly going to pull itself together and produce a workable policy.

More ominously, for New Labour, there are selfish and highly partisan reasons why it should not deliver. Given that the overwhelming odds are that it will lose the next election, ceding to the Conservatives, the focus is on seeking to ensure that the first term of the new government is the only one. The Labour view will be, the worse a mess the Conservatives inherit, the better.

As did New Labour benefit from the economic policies put in place by the preceding Conservative administration, Labour strategists can see value in engineering a reverse situation. The Tories must be saddled with major problems, putting them on the back foot and forcing them onto the defensive. A major energy crisis would be a highly effective means of achieving this.

From now until the election, therefore, the Conservatives should be expecting their rivals to be seeding the political terrain with minefields and booby traps, all carefully designed to maximise the stresses on the new administration. Not least of these, of course, is Mr Brown's windmill programme which industry insiders readily admit is unachievable – yet it is Mr Cameron who will be blamed for the failure.

With two years to run before Brown finally goes to the country, there is plenty of scope for more mischief, but that does not mean that the Conservatives can do nothing. The most obvious political antidote is to confront the government, making it plain that the fundamentals of its policy are flawed - thus putting down markers which will distance the new government from the policies of its predecessor.

The next thing that must be done is the production of a sound energy policy. But here, there is an interesting political dynamic. Tory strategists currently are unwilling to roll out policies for fear that Labour will themselves adopt them. But there should be no such problem with energy. Such is the long lead time required to turn policy round that anything of importance proposed now will fall to the new administration to deliver.

However, therein lies the greater political problem. Although the Taxpayers Alliance asserts that the Conservative Party "seems to have learned its lesson" from its over-enthusiastic embrace of the green agenda, there is actually no evidence as yet that this will bleed into energy policies.

More worrying is the fact that there is not even any evidence that the Tories have woken up to the scale of the coming crisis or have begun to formulate a sensible response. All we have to go on is a badly-phrased and weak statement - entirely lacking in detail - from shadow energy minister, Charles Hendry. He pledges only that he will strive "…to come up with the best policies for the UK and its future security."

Even The Daily Telegraph seems to be losing patience with this laid-back approach, declaring in its own leader yesterday that, "The Conservatives, who have finally ditched their naive view of nuclear power as 'a last resort', should start publicly championing new nuclear generation, both for its green credentials and as the only way to stop the lights going out."

The trouble is that it is not as simple as that. The Mail itself notes that in 2006 this Labour government turned its back on British expertise in the nuclear field by selling Westinghouse, our one major nuclear engineering firm, to the Japanese for a knockdown £2.8billion. This puts us in the situation of having to rely on foreign expertise. But this is only one of the reasons why the deal on British Energy was so important - getting into bed with EDF would have put us in the queue for new capacity.

On this, before even the deal collapsed, we were drinking in the last chance saloon and "time" has now been called. Few people seem to realise that the nuclear industry is undergoing a resurgence in terms of orders. Plans are already in hand, world-wide, to build as many as 50 new reactors by 2020. But, after decade of neglect, there is no longer the industrial capacity to meet demand. As the Energy Policy Blog points out, only a handful of companies are capable of manufacturing the highly specialised components of reactors and pressurised vessels.

As orders pile up, the waiting list for deliveries is getting longer and, with a growing number of US utilities lining up to build nuclear power plants, experts reckon completion times would stretch from 2015 to 2020. And that assumes no major regulatory or licensing hurdles. We are now not even at the back of the queue - we have not even joined it.

Taking a realistic view of our current predicament, therefore, new nuclear plants are not, as The Telegraph avers, "the only way to stop the lights going out." In the short to medium-term they are no answer at all. There is simply not enough time to bring new capacity on stream.

However, relying on gas for the "quick fix" is the route to disaster. Although natural gas prices might have currently stabilised – owing to a recent slackening of demand - in the longer term demand is expected to expand substantially. Prices will be driven up to unsustainable levels. For increasing numbers, electricity and heating might become an unaffordable luxury. Hundreds of thousands more will be forced into poverty, the economy will suffer and the balance of payments deficit will soar.

Any Conservative government must, therefore, look to solutions in the short to medium term which lie outside either new-build nuclear or gas plants. Nor are renewables a solution, as recently emphasised by E. on's Paul Golby. For relief, it must look elsewhere.

Golby, in fact, suggests a mixture of nuclear, renewables and coal, but the reason new plant is so urgently needed is because we are shortly to lose a third of our generating capacity through the combined effects of the EU's Large Combustion Plants Directive and the retirement of our ageing nuclear plants.

The short-term answer, therefore, is obvious. The plants which are to be closed by the EU must remain open, at least until replacements are assured. And, if that means confronting the EU, so be it. If Mr Cameron wishes to prove his eurosceptic credentials, there is no better issue on which to drawn the line.

Of course, there may be scope for renegotiating the timescale, as other EU member states are in the same mess with their energy policies. But utilities need notice if they are to delay the wind-down of the plants scheduled for closure, otherwise the wind-down may be too far gone to arrest. Cameron must signal his intentions now.

Secondly, the industry must be encouraged, by whatever means necessary, to invest in a major life extension programme for the existing nuclear plants – which are due for closure by 2015. This again needs to be signalled well in advance as the earlier the decision is taken, the easier it will be to spread the not insubstantial costs.

Thirdly, reliance on imported coal must be reduced – if not eliminated. Demand for coal world-wide is increasing, leading to a substantial hike in prices. Continued reliance on foreign supplies will incur a substantial cost penalty.

As of last year, the UK consumed 62.7 million tons of coal, of which 52.4 million tons was used for electricity generation. Yet, while known UK reserves of coal are sufficient to last 200 years or more at current rates of consumption, the British coal industry actually produced 17 million tons in 2007 (with 2.9 million tons lifted from stock). Yet it imported 43.3 million tons. Of this, 22 million tons came from Russia and 12 million tons from South Africa. Supplies were also obtained from Colombia, Australia, Indonesia and the United States while 852,000 tons were imported from Poland, 46,000 tons from Spain and 41,000 tons from Germany.

That determines a fourth element to a rational energy policy. Clearly, there must be a significant policy shift towards support for indigenous coal production, followed by a switch from gas-fuelled plants back to burning coal for electricity generation.

To pursue these four solutions, however, it is essential that the regulatory framework and matrix of financial penalties and incentives must be drastically revised - the fifth leg of a new policy. As it stands, through the EU's emission trading scheme (ETS), the climate levy and the renewables obligation certificate (ROC) scheme (as well as the Large Combustion Plants Directive), the use of coal and nuclear energy is penalised while renewables are actively encouraged with huge financial incentives.

Pulling out of the ETS, and ending the ROCs and the climate change levy, would, by 2013, liberate over £5 billion a year, making it avaialable for investment without adding to energy costs. Redirecting that income into funding generation capacity and developing indigenous coal production would go a long way towards solving our energy crisis.

That, in effect, dictates (or should dictate) the direction of future energy policy. Currently blighted by the obsession with climate change, affordability, energy security and supply have taken the back seat. What the Conservatives need to do is redress the balance, putting these three parameters first.

Furthermore, a highly desirable outcome would be to put a new government directly in conflict with the EU's climate change programme, not least because it would necessarily mean that the 20 percent renewables target would have been abandoned. That would be another test of Mr Cameron's euroscepticism – to say nothing of evidence of a more "pragmatic" approach to green issues.

Of course, this would provoke the global warmist fraternity and the rabid eco-warriors into a frenzy. But, given the choice between expensive and wholly irrelevant measures aimed at limiting global warming – especially following a few bad winters – and the assurance of affordable and continuous electricity supplies, the odds are that the large majority of British voters would opt for the latter.

The alternative for Mr Cameron would be the prospect, in the not too distant future, of standing at the despatch box explaining to the nation why the lights have gone out and why it is that there is nothing he or his government can do about it. In electoral and practical terms, the choice is a no-brainer.

COMMENT THREAD

Something not right here?

As we are assailed by news of rising gas prices in the UK, and nothing but gloom on the horizon, drifting in from local media in the United States is a consistent message: natural gas prices have "plunged", and with them electricity prices.

That is what the Baltimore Sun is proclaiming, remarking that is the "most under-covered story" of the last two weeks. It offers, says the paper, "a little hope for lower future heating bills than we once might have expected."

Prices for electricity and natural gas have fallen even more than those of crude, which has won all the headlines and gone from $145 to $125 a barrel. Mid-Atlantic electricity for January delivery has fallen by 24 percent since early July. Natural gas is down about 20 percent.

We get the same message from the Indiana-based Post Tribune, which reports that residential customers will see a decrease in natural gas costs of 12.17 percent compared to July. A typical residential customer can expect a decrease of approximately $13.61 from last month's statement in August bills.

Maine customers are getting a similar break, with a report that a sudden drop in the gas market price means bills will rise just 3.36 percent rather than 17 percent over the summer.

Gas prices, we are told, fell more than 11 percent from 16 to 24 July and, during the same period, New York Mercantile Exchange futures contracts for August declined by 14 percent. The price drop is due to falling demand, triggered in part by cooler summer temperatures. Less energy was required from gas-fired power plants.

The Virginian Pilot gives even better news, with its local utility company announcing a rate decrease on Friday after a sharp drop in natural gas prices during July. "For customers, 100 cubic feet of gas, known as a therm, will now cost $1.40. That's down from $1.65 in July but still up from $1.01 in January," it reports.

A utility spokesman, however, does say that the market's volatility may make this rate decrease a temporary one. "I don't want to get too excited, because the market is still fluctuating," he says.

In a subject area that is notoriously complex, it is easy to draw the wrong conclusions from a quick "snapshop" and these reported rate cuts may indeed be temporary. But the US situation is now so very different from what we get from this side of the pond that it is germane to ask what on earth is going on.

COMMENT THREAD

A book everyone must read

By everyone I mean everyone who is genuinely interested in the twentieth century's tragic history and does not think that small set-backs in development are catastrophic. Naturally, this does not include people who simply like the sound of their own voice (figuratively speaking, as one cannot physically hear them on the internet) and are proud of their own ignorance and hysterical outbursts.

The book in question is "Under Two Dictators" by Margarete Buber-Neumann, an astonishing lady. Born with the century in 1901 in Germany, she first married Rafael Buber, son of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, then secondly, Heinz Neumann, Stalin's trusted apparatchik in the German Communist Party.

In 1934 the two of them escaped to the Soviet Union. In the summer and autumn of 1937 Stalin launched a campaign against foreign Communists, many of whom, like the Neumanns, lived in the Lux Hotel. Others lived in their own flats but that did not save them. There were nightly raids, some of which, as Robert Conquest describes in "The Great Terror" turned into shoot-outs.

First Heinz, then Margarete were arrested and the first part of her book is a description of her imprisonment, interrogations and life in Karaganda, in one of the Soviet camps. Along the way she found out that her husband had been shot, though probably after the fictitious sentence of ten years without rights of correspondence.

In 1939 as part of the agreement with Nazi Germany, Stalin handed over all the German political prisoners and there is a tragic-comic description of their terrified arrival in the land of the Gestapo. The Jews were separated and sent off; the others were sent home with the proviso that they report regularly to the nearest police station.

Margarete was kept back for a very odd reason. The Gestapo officers in charge of the operation did not believe her story that her husband had been shot. Neumann, they reasoned, had been not just a Communist but one of Stalin's most faithful henchment. Nobody shoots his faithful henchmen. (Little did they know.) Therefore, Neumann must have been sent back to Germany on a secrete mission and the best way of finding that out is by imprisoning his wife in Ravensbrück.

So she spent the rest of the war in Ravensbrück, helping when she could, other prisoners and getting into trouble with the Communists when she tried to tell the truth about the Soviet Union.

Liberated at the end of the war she made for the American zone. As she was from Potsdam she ought to have gone back east but knew full well what would happen to her if she did.

The first English language edition of the book, which I read years ago, ended there. Now Pimlico has republished the book with a new introduction and some additional chapters about the period immediately after the war. Later on, Margarete Buber-Neumann wrote and lectured on the subjects she knew best. She wrote about her brother-in-law Willi Münzenberg, her friend Milena
Jesenská, Kafka's great love, murdered in Ravensbrück, gave evidence at the Kravchenko trial and, generally, fought the good fight.

I strongly recommend it to everyone who, as I said, is interested in the horrors of the twentieth century and in the degradation as well as the survival of the human spirit.

The land where politics still survives

We won't say it's grown-up politics but at least it is politics. In a dramatic revolt against Speaker Nancy Pelosi's refusal to allow Congress to vote on legislation to increase American-made energy and lower gas prices (now reported by CNN) Republicans refused to leave the floor of the House after the Speaker had adjourned the session for the five-week August break.

As recorded by Free Republic they stayed in the chamber to speak directly to Americans watching the historic event unfold above the floor in the House gallery. Even after lights, cameras, and microphones in the chamber were turned off, House Republicans were undeterred, continuing to make speech after speech.

They demanded that Speaker Pelosi listen to the calls of the American people – including those coming from whistling, applauding, and cheering Americans sitting in the gallery – for more environmentally-responsible drilling for oil and gas here at home to reduce the price at the pump. Rep. John Culberson defied the Democratic majority by providing live updates on the protest via Twitter directly from the House floor.

Given the silence of our politicians over here, it is refreshing to see the Republicans in the United States Congress take the energy crisis seriously, attempting to keep it on the agenda.

Somehow, one cannot imagine Mr Cameron's sad crew doing anything like this.

COMMENT THREAD

Signs of the times

A state of emergency has been declared in 11 of 25 provinces in Peru, affecting over five million people, in response to a severe unseasonable cold spell, known locally as El friaje.

According to a local report, thousands of acres of food crops have been lost. Smallholders in high-altitude areas whose livelihoods depend completely on raising alpacas have found pastures covered in snow which has frozen over, making grazing impossible. Unable to find adequate food, the alpacas have become weak and susceptible to disease,

The cold arrived well ahead of the usual season – in March and April, instead of June and so bad has the situation become that the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has mounted an urgent relief programme, bringing aid to hard-pressed farmers.

A similar programme is being mounted for some 18,000 alpacas in the country's Pilpichaca en Huanvavelica district (pictured), with the supply of anti-parasitic medicines, antibiotics and vitamins. These are being used to treat animals that have been weakened or fallen ill as a result of the unexpected cold snap.

Nor is this unusually cold weather confined to South America. New Zealand is reporting exceptional snow conditions and, in Australia, the local media is reporting that August is shaping up as a dream peak month for skiers with snow in the NSW Snowy Mountains lying four feet deep. More is expected.

In Melbourne, residents have suffered their coldest July nights since 1998, while Queensland has also experienced unusual snowfall.

This follows recent reports from Anchorage, where the coldest summer ever is expected after recording the fewest days ever in which the temperature managed to reach 65 degrees.

Even sunny Norway is claiming good snow conditions on their high mountains, breaking records for the number of visitors enjoying the skiing. And, further south, the district of Zabljak in Montenegro has experienced lower than normal temperatures, with snow still lying on mountain farms above 4,000 feet.

With the slowdown of the ice melt in the Arctic, record ice levels in the Antarctic, these are yet more possible indictors of a cooling. And, although nothing here can be taken as definitive, the Peru experience suggests that the adverse effects of cooling can be significantly greater than any notional harm from global warming.

Policy-makers would be unwise to ignore these signs – but, of course, they will.

COMMENT THREAD

The sound of silence

"The collapse of the British Energy deal is bad news for UK consumers" says The Daily Telegraph (business section, of course). But it is rather more than that.

The attraction of the deal was that it gave EDF and Centrica both a stake in Britain's nuclear industry, bringing expertise and, most importantly, the prospect of serious investment. Without that investment – whatever the fond hopes of government – the new generation of nuclear power stations will not be built and, without those, we will be looking to serious gaps in our future generating capacity.

Since it is estimated that, from scratch, it can take upwards of 16 years to commission a nuclear plant, a replacement programme has already been dangerously delayed. The collapse of this deal may add more years to this timescale, meaning that we are perhaps looking to beyond 2024 before we start seeing the vitally necessary additions to our generation capacity.

In the interim, the only "quick fix" is to resort to gas-fired plants – which can be commissioned in as little a six years. But even further reliance on gas, in the context of increasing world demand and reducing supply, simply sets the scene for a "perfect storm" of monumental price rises. The 35 percent price hike by British Gas will, in retrospect, become a fond memory, as utility bills double and double again.

What is particularly worrying though is the absence of any sense of urgency from the government. While a national energy strategy was due earlier this year, there is still no sign of it and no indications as to when it will appear.

Something of the growing irritation at this inertia even leaks into the The Telegraph piece, with the throwaway line, "While the Government is paralysed by its own childish in-fighting this summer, British consumers are being hit by wave after wave of energy price hikes…."

But it is not only the government. As we remarked yesterday, the entire political class seems to have called "time out" while it indulges itself in an orgy of introspection and trivia, avoiding any serious discussion of the energy issue.

In two years time, however – at the very latest – we expect a general election, whence it is also widely expected that the Conservatives will sweep into office. Yet, for a potential government, we hear absolutely nothing that gives us any clue that the shadow cabinet, or even the broader party, has even begun to realise the depth of the crisis that will overwhelm any new administration.

To the contrary, if the Conservative Home site is any guide – along with the prattlers at the Spectator blog, the party at large is in la la land. One of Cameron's first appointments, it is suggested, should be the creation of a secretary of state for climate change, with talk of the first priorities of the new government being "centrepiece reforms on schools and welfare".

Yet, over on Global Warming Politics, we find Philip Stott declaring: "… no political party should be considered electable until it commits itself to new coal stations, to new nuclear plant, and to the improved import and storage of gas. Above all, we want, and need, to hear on this from the currently-empty vessel that is David Cameron and the Conservative Party."

At the moment, though, all we are hearing is silence. That is seriously disturbing.

COMMENT THREAD

A triumph of hope over experience

It is a while since we covered the situation in Darfur – much as we would like to keep up with all the issues that trouble us … we can only do so much. In fact, is was November when we last did a substantive story, building on the incredible farce over the supply of helicopters to support peacekeeping forces in the region.

At the time, it looked like there was a sort of resolution, with various promises of machines forthcoming, but it now looks as if these have not materialised, making a total mockery of international support efforts.

This is from a report compiled by Thomas Withington, a defence analyst who specialises in military aviation and air power issues.

He has listed India, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Italy, Romania and Spain in order as best able to provide the aircraft and identified 140 aircraft suitable for use in Darfur.

Out of those, a mere 18 helicopters are needed but these have not materialised. "Many of these helicopters are gathering dust in hangars or flying in air shows when they could be saving lives in Darfur," says Withington.

The report has been endorsed by "36 rights and aid groups" and the foreword has been signed by South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu, former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, former US president Jimmy Carter and the wife of Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel. "The time for action is now; the time of excuses and explanations is long past," they say.

One of these days, they may begin to realise that their misty-eyed tranzie paradigm of a benign world order simply does not work. When it comes to good intentions and "caring" it gets top marks, but it does not deliver, cannot deliver and never will.

But there again, perhaps, they will never get the message. As always, we are seeing the human condition – the triumph of hope over experience. We hope it makes them feel warm and self-righteous, because it is not going to achieve anything else.

COMMENT THREAD