Christmas is over

No, it was fine – much time spent with friends, at an exhibition and watching films. We even managed to miss by something like 20 minutes the guy being shot in our street on Christmas Eve. Back to reality.

A few (very few) of the blog's readers may have noticed that my presence on it has recently been erratic and occasionally non-existent. There are various reasons for this and one of my new year's resolutions (well, actually, the only one) will be to make some kind of a decision about it all.

In the meantime, I want to widen the issues we normally discuss. No, I am not going to write about Gaza, that most predictable of developments, except to mention that Hamas is not getting the support of Arab leaders that it is, presumably relying on. (See here, here and here. More on that tomorrow.)

Instead, let me take our readers to a book I have been re-reading in the last week, “Russian Conservatism and Its Critics” by Professor Richard Pipes, probably the best living historian of Russia and the Soviet Union.

In chapter 3, "The Onset of the Conservative-Liberal Controversy", Professor Pipes discusses the inconsistency with which eighteenth century Russian rulers approached the whole subject of public opinion and the amount of freedom it should have. He quotes A. M. Skabichevskii who published in 1892 a history of Russian censorship from 1700 to 1862 (when Alexander II introduced serious political and judicial reforms).

In governmental circles of that time there predominated people brought up in the spirit of old times who simply could not accustom themselves that in society there should emerge any intellectual movement that was autonomous, independent, and lacking in the slightest official sanction. They were accustomed that every undertaking in the intellectual sphere – whether the publication of some periodical or book, or the founding of some educational institution – all this was done not only with the sanction of the authorities but by the authorities themselves, and the entrepreneur, if not previously in the service, by virtue of this very enterprise turned into an official.

Setting aside the argument about people brought up in the spirit of old times, this is a pithy analysis of our rulers and controllers, whether in Brussels or London.

We have remarked on numerous occasions the propensity for assuming that "civil society" is a number of organizations set up by the Commission; of a similar propensity to assume that accountability means discussing proposed legislation with carefully selected organizations and self-appointed "representatives"; of the notion that entrepreneurship consists of obeying a set of rules set up by the government, be that the Commission or the DTI; of the assumption that education and cultural activity cannot exist without some kind of guidance from above.

The point is that this sort of belief is completely genuine. The ever-growing army of regulators at all levels cannot imagine that anything can possibly exist outside their rules and decisions. And then they wonder why European countries are floundering economically, scientifically and culturally.

The most terrible aspect of it all is that this attitude should be acceptable in Britain, the country that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the ideal of private enterprise at all levels for those unfortunate countries that did not know how they would achieve that state of affairs. Instead, we have lost what we had. And yes, we did it ourselves. For once, Dr Heinz Kiosk,s famous comment of "we are all guilty" is actually accurate.

Worse than we think

Booker is in an optimistic mood today in his column, declaring that, "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved."

To support his thesis, he points out that all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare.

He thus tells us that last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world.

As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

However, reading The Times leader yesterday, headed "The war on Carbon", you would think its writer lived on a different planet.

In a litany of warmist orthodoxy, it tells us that, "There will be continued argument about the science of climate change over the next 12 months, but not, except on the conspiratorial fringe, about the threat. Climate change is real and worsening, and there is an overwhelming likelihood that much of it is man-made."

And still we get the same mindless drivel from the warmist tendency in The Daily Telegraph, that darling of the greenies, Louise Gray telling us that, "Daffodills at Christmas and snow in October were just some of the unusual weather patterns noticed by the National Trust in the last year as climate change begins to takes its toll on the British landscape."

Thus, snow in October is "climate change". Nothing of what has so engaged Booker and many more of us has percolated the orthodoxy, which has not shifted one iota from its original position. It goes on regardless.

Nor, from an op-ed by the Great Leader, David Cameron, do we see any retreat from his position. He proudly reminds us of his commitment in an advertisement almost exactly three years ago "to tackling poverty and climate change, our backing for the NHS and our belief in a free enterprise economy."

But, bringing us back down to earth with a bump is a piece in The Times - business section, of course, headed, "Blackout fear as UK power plants face axe."

The story is interesting because it tells us what we suspected and feared – that the effects of the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive is going to be more damaging than predicted.

The nub is that, when power plant operators made their decisions to opt out of the directive and thus close down a number of coal plants by 2015 rather than pay the exorbitant sums needed to conform with the directive, it was assumed that these plants would only be used for peak generation, working on limited hours.

Because of the recent price distortions in the energy market, however, these plants have been working more or less full time, providing base load electricity and thus becoming worn out faster than anticipated. With major refits being economically unviable, given the limited lives of the plant, many will now have to close down early.

The first of them, Scottish Power's 1.2GW plant at Cockenzie, which generates enough power for 1m homes, will close as early as September 2010 based on current rates of electricity production. The "energy crunch" is thus predicted to hit us by 2013 rather than 2015, as we lose some 7.6GW of electricity – ten percent of the UK's total capacity.

The seriousness of this issue is such that it is this, rather than their fatuous obsession with "climate change", on which our policy-makers should be concentrating, to say nothing of the anticipated shortfalls in crop yields that will come as a result of the extended bad weather.

If we are already seeing global instability, this is nothing compared to the chaos which will ensue as more and more developing countries compete for dwindling food supplies. The world will be in flames, but it won't be because of "global warming".

Unfortunately, therefore, while Booker is undoubtedly right – the miasma of "global warming" having now lost whatever credibility it ever had, the dark shadow of obsession still afflicts our ruling classes and they are not even beginning to budge. I suspect it will take catastrophic failures in our own electricity supply system, and famine on a global scale before reality percolates their dismal brains.

By then, it will be too late, but for the hand wringing. Perhaps we should encourage them to practice that, so they are well-prepared. Anything else, clearly, is too much to ask.

COMMENT THREAD

Toothless talk

There is only so much you can write on any subject before you start repeating yourself, to the point where you are boring both your readers and yourself.

That may be a terrible indictment of the human condition but, as one views the latest Israeli attack on Gaza, the feeling of déjà vu and deadly ennui combines to make you want to turn away and write about something else.

A small cheer for the Scottish Sunday Herald therefore, which heads its leader with the title, "Toothless talk can't solve Israel conflict". It then goes on to note the "apparent impotence" of the so-called "international community" when faced with such a crisis.

"Impotence" is a good word in this context. We have the ritual statements from the UN, from the EU, from the United States and all the others piling in to add their penn'orth, but nothing ever happens – nothing changes.

Be it Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Gaza, DRC or any number of hotspots where fighting or another humanitarian crisis (or both) can break out at any minute, the only response we can count on is a torrent of verbiage from the media and masses of hot air from the politicians.

The Herald's answer to this is that we should be looking for ways to give the United Nations, African Union or whatever regional or global body responsible, the resources and political teeth to implement diplomatic and military measures, when nations, states, or organisations flagrantly defy the collective good and well-being of the majority.

What that misses though is the recognition that the political processes that bind these organisations are part of the problem. Giving them more money simply exacerbates the stresses already within these organisations and, ultimately, produces nothing but more hot air.

Perhaps the real answer, therefore, it to recognise that the current world order is not working, and has not worked for some time - if ever. We have had, since the Second World War, the tranzie doctrine of the "united nations" acting collectively, and it has failed.

Thus, while The Herald wants the term "international community" to have "real resonance or relevance", what we are actually seeing is living proof that there is no such thing as an "international community" in any meaningful sense of the words – and never will be.

That suggests that we also need a new paradigm. Maybe it would be a good idea if we gave "national interest" another chance, allowing those involved to take whatever action they felt necessary, with the rest minding their own businesses.

As with Afghanistan, there are plenty of those who have opinions, but precious few who are prepared to put real resources into helping solve the problems. Thus, in a new world order, those who "do" should be allowed to do, and the rest – like the incessantly posturing EU – should simply shut up and keep out of it.

The result may be bloody, but is what we have really any better?

COMMENT THREAD

The voice of ignorance

A quick thought before I plough on with the book - 47,000 words and counting – The Daily Telegraph today offers a letter from Chris Marks of Polegate, East Sussex.

He informs us that, on a visit to London last weekend, "we passed Portcullis House and saw that every single light seemed to be switched on throughout the whole building."

"What a waste of taxpayers' money," Mr Marks opines – probably correctly, although there is less to be saved by switching off fluorescent lights than might be imagined. But then he goes and spoils it all, writing: "The Chancellor should put his own house in order, then we might follow by example."

Portcullis House is one of the many office buildings used by parliament to accommodate its MPs and their gifted staffs. It is, therefore, a parliamentary building and is part of the Parliamentary Estate.

On the basis that parliament is sovereign in its own house, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the government and does not fall within the remit of the Chancellor's control. Technically, the responsibility is that of the Speaker, but the management is devolved to the House of Commons Commission. Mr Marks should, therefore, be lambasting our wonderful MPs for their profligacy.

For all the frivolity, two quite important points emerge from this. Firstly, it is an example of how little many people know about our government and the way it works – and how power (and responsibility) is diffused through so many institutions. And, if Mr Marks didn't know, the letters editor of the paper should have known better and spiked what ended up a facile letter.

Secondly, in the absence of knowledge on the way power is diffused, there is this ever-present tendency to blame "the government" and its officials, rather than point the finger at where the fault lies. The other side of the coin is that, when something needs fixing, the same tendency is to point to "the government" and demand that it "does something".

The overarching issue here is that power and responsibility is so diffuse – and now so complex - that very few people (if any) have any real idea of who runs this country and where the power lies.

But, if not even the basics are known, then expecting the "man in the street" like Mr Marks to understand that neither parliament nor our (local) government are actually in charge seems a little ambitious.

Instead, we are almost back at levels of biblical superstition, where the sins of the community are laden onto the sacrificial goat which is then driven over the precipice. That, it seems, is one of the main roles of modern government. Shorn of real power, it performs the role of the scapegoat, driven periodically over the cliff at general elections, whence we appoint another, then to repeat the same process.

As I said … just a quick thought.

COMMENT THREAD

Which government?

You would think that the travel firm Thomas Cook would know something about the EU when, earlier this year, it was trying to prise half a billion quid out of the commission.

But then you get to see a headline from The Daily Telegraph which tells us, "Thomas Cook attacks government over holiday compensation."

From this we learn that Thomas Cook has pledged to compensate holidaymakers of failed suppliers from airlines to cruise operators within 24 hours, it having given up "on hopes that the government will increase its supervision of the industry."

The story is by Jonathan Sibun and we finally get from him that the problem is that tour operators have to trade under the ATOL compensation scheme, which protects consumers at a cost of £1 per customer, yet airlines are exempt. Thus, independent travellers are not protected. It was for this reason that, when the budget airline XL failed last year, it left 85,000 holidaymakers stranded abroad and hundreds of thousands more out of pocket.

Complaining of "the absence of the Government making any changes to the ATOL scheme to protect all our customers' money now", Thomas Cook chief executive Manny Fontenla-Novoa, is announcing that his company is taking steps to protect all customers who travel with his firm.

"It is a ridiculous situation where one customer is protected and another is not and they are both sitting on the same aircraft," said Fontenla-Novoa. "The government had an ideal opportunity to bring clarity and protect the consumer. So far they have failed to do that."

Fontenla-Novoa, with another package tour company, Tui, wrote a letter to the Government in late September calling for reform of the ATOL scheme. "Consumer protection should take into account the changes; in the UK, only a third of people taking holidays abroad by air book via a package," they wrote.

The government's response, we are told, was "sympathetic" but no progress had been made.

All this sounds good stuff but the compensation scheme Fontenla-Novoa is talking about is mandated by EU law under Council Directive 90/314/EEC on package travel, package holidays, and package tours. That, of course, cannot be changed by the British government, so it is hardly surprising that there is "no progress".

With UK airlines, the UK could go further than the directive, provided that it did not distort competition or interfere with the workings of the Single Market. But, with such an international operation as the package holiday business, it is hard to see how unilateral British action could avoid this.

More to the point though, the "government", i.e., the EU, has already latched on to the changes in the travel industry. The existing directive, which dates from 1990, only regulates the sales and marketing of traditional tour operators and travel retailers, but does not extend to online travel firms selling foreign holidays with flights and hotels as separate components.

This is called by the industry "dynamic packaging" and EU commissioner for consumer protection, Meglena Kuneva, has confirmed work on revising the directive will begin shortly in order to accommodate this - with legislation expected in 2010.

Thus, in May last, she told a meeting of the European Travel Agents' and Tour Operators' Associations: "The package travel directive needs to be reviewed to take account of the changes in distribution of travel products and consumers' buying habits."

Surely it cannot be the case that Fontenla-Novoa is unaware of this? He really cannot be unaware that the EU is already reviewing one of the most important pieces of legislation for his industry, with potentially far-reaching effects, and precisely those effect he is calling on our local government to make?

I really do find it hard to believe that the chief executive of such a company is so utterly ignorant. He must be playing PR games, surely?

As for DT journo Jonathan Sibun … well, we have ceased to expect people like him to be capable of spotting the elephant in the room, even if it took me something less than five minutes to find out that the EU was proposing to change the law. It was published in the travel industry's own journal, Travel Weekly.

Yet Siburn still manages to write about the "government", obviously without the first idea of where our real government resides on this matter. To his article, therefore, the question is "Which government are you writing about?". To that, I suspect, we would get a blank stare from little Jonathan. He probably wouldn't have the first idea of what we were talking about.

COMMENT THREAD

Their noble parasites

It really is quite remarkable that, as power is increasingly transferred to Brussels, where more and more legislation is made, the cost to the taxpayer of our own domestic "legislators" continues to go up.

That we find from the print edition of The Daily Telegraph today, although a visit to the website reveals that this is recycled from the online edition, where it was posted on 17 December. The story, however, loses nothing of its force for being a few days old.

The thrust of the story is that each member of the House of Lords now costs us nearly half a million pounds a year, the total costs of running the "most exclusive club in London" now reaching £305 million in the last financial year. In 2002-2003, the total cost was £110 million.

From the current inflated sum, direct expenses paid to peers top £18 million, with some 17 peers claiming £60,000 each in "tax-free perks". They include Britain's most expensive lordship, Labour's Baron Brett of Lydd in Kent, a former trade union leader, whose expenses totalled £66,197. He registered an address in Cumbria as his main home. Lord Kinnock, the former Labour Party leader and EU commissioner, submitted claims totalling nearly £22,000 after being made a peer in November 2007.

The Daily Mail runs a similar story, but focuses more on the individual gravy-train riders, attracting over 200 comments on its website – all of them hostile to the peers as far as I can see. Needless to say, by far the greater number of the pigs with their snouts firmly in the trough are Labour peers.

Where their Lordships – and the Commons – seem to have been highly productive, however, is in creating new offences, The Telegraph running a story – which only seems to be in the print edition – which tells us that the "government" has been creating an imprisonable offence once every four days over the past ten years.

Strictly speaking, it is not the government (hence the quotes) as Parliament – the House of Commons and Lords combined - must approve any measure that introduces an imprisonable offence.

Of course, it is a long time since that Parliament took any interest in such matters and, the record shows us why. With the members of both Houses now more interested in lining their pockets than doing their jobs – debates on MPs' expenses being among the best attended – it is easy to see that they have little time to attend to the liberties of the Queen's subjects.

What this really does reinforce, though, is how far our ruling classes have become detached from any sense of reality. If they had they slightest grip, they would not be milking the system but, given that there seems to be little connection between them and the real world, they are quite happy to justify their increased takings.

It cannot last. It never does. The tumbrels will eventually roll. But, for the time being, we have to suffer "their noble parasites" – as they preside over the wreckage of what was once a proud and useful institution.

COMMENT THREAD

Christmas wishes

The boss has, as usual, said it all much better, though I must admit that what with one thing and another I have rarely found Christmas a time for reflection or even thought. This year is no different. Here we are at 2 am on Christmas morn and I am still baking the last things I need to bake before the festival starts. Reflection? What's that? Bah humbug.

Actually, I have always quite liked Scrooge before he went all wet and sissy and started buying turkeys that were too big to roast in time. (I mean when did the Cratchits actually get round to eating that bird?) Several things have always struck me as interesting about that book, apart from the stunning writing.

One is that it is a very fine example of Dickens's usual inability to understand that wealth is created by people who work. He really hates the idea of people being employed. They are always miserable and the bosses are either complete slave-drivers or they do not require their subordinates to do anything at all.

Secondly, it seems that in the far more religious Victorian age Christmas day was not silent with everything that could be, closed. You could buy a turkey and you could get it roasted at the local bakery, though there is some talk in the novel of the kill-joys wanting to close down the latter. Well, they have succeeded. (Of course, I live in an area that is full of non-Christians and most of the cafes, shops and restaurants stay open. Brilliant.)

Thirdly, one cannot help wondering why Bob Cratchit doesn't get a better job or stop having children or both. The truth is that he is no more responsible than Mr Micawber and considerably less entertaining.

But much can be forgiven a writer who can start a novel with the words

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

While we are on the subject of Christmas classics, let us take a quick look at the perennial favourite and much better film than I expected, "It's a Wonderful Life". Hands up all those who realized that what George Bailey does is hand out subprime mortgages. Bah humbug.

There are good things about Christmas, though. The food, for instance. Because of my somewhat rackety childhood and teenage years, I have managed to pick up the cooking and eating habits of different countries and that brightens up all festivals. (I fully expect some angry responses about uppity immigrants and how wonderful it is to have countries where they are not allowed to integrate; where they can pay taxes but are not allowed to vote. Bring it on. Christmas does not make me any gentler a personality.)

Well, there we are. I have done my share of bah-humbugging and had better retreat into baa-lamb mode. Next year will be difficult for many. So let us enjoy ourselves while we can (if we can, which is something I cannot help wondering about). A very happy Christmas to all our readers. We shall be back after the festivity.

Happy Christmas

It goes without saying that Christmas is supposed to be the time of peace and goodwill to all men (and women), even if the divorce rate soars after the holiday. It is also supposed to be a time of reflection, and a break from the more worldly things - even if more people are expected to log on today for on-line shopping than attend a religious ceremony.

It is also a day off for many, although for too many it is just one day in a period of enforced idleness, with many companies extending their breaks for a month in order to cut costs and stock inventories, necessitated by the recession.

It is also a time when we offer the inane greeting of "Happy Christmas" to people we don't know, and care little about, even to those who we would decidedly wish not to be happy.

It is all part of a ritual, but one that takes on an added meaning when to utter those words is likely to invoke the ire of the "multicults" who would have us say "happy holiday" for fear of offending some minority or other. Never mind the greater offence when some of their number try to blow us apart.

From all this, you will guess that Christmas is not what it once was. From a celebration of new beginnings – perhaps – it has become nothing more than a temporary cessation of hostilities, and that for no other reason than the enemy has taken the day off.

However, there is a good precedent for that, as pictured above, with the 1914 unofficial truce in the trenches. Basically, what that amounted to was a day off from trying to kill each other. For that reason alone, it would be nice to have 365 Christmas days in each year – or even for just one year – when humanity collectively decided to take a break from killing.

Nevertheless, those who have had to do that dirty business on our behalf do deserve at least one thought from us today, the anniversary of that day when, 94 years ago, their predecessors spontaneously decided they should take a break.

If you want to turn thought into action, pay a visit to Sgt Slingsby, which embodies some of the very best that humanity has to offer. As long as there are people like this around, not all is lost.

Happy Christmas.

COMMENT THREAD

Make or break!

It ain't snowing here in little ol' England, but, we are told, Canadians cleaning up after a series of snowstorms blasted through the country should hold on to their shovels. Forecasters are predicting some regions will soon be walloped by more winter weather.

Thousands continue to be without electricity in Nova Scotia and travellers across Canada face airport delays while, in British Columbia, residents are bracing for around 4-8 inches of snow, just days after a storm dumped up to 28 inches on the southern coast. Environment Canada has issued storm warnings, or storm watches, for parts of Ontario, with strong winds and 8 inches of snow expected in northern areas of the region.

Many parts of the US are as bad, and it is snowing in Moscow. I guess this will be the make or break year for the warmists, who are being a little quiet about their religion at the moment. It is very hard to be a believer when you taking in that much white stuff.

COMMENT THREAD

A good Christmas game

For those who would like to engage in a good Christmas game there is a posting on the Conservative History Journal blog that takes up an idea first proposed on the New Culture Forum: a list of fifty historical dates that everyone must learn because of their importance. Some suggestions are up already and EUReferendum readers might like to contribute to the discussion, in between eating turkey and playing with new presents.

Distorted priorities

For a blog which is not usually complimentary about the fourth estate, it was a rare moment when, last night, we applauded a piece of intelligent journalism.

That plaudit, however, was offered on the basis of a review of the online edition of The Daily Telegraph. When it comes to the print edition (my copy sold ooop North), the story is confined to the "news bulletin" section, so truncated as to lose most of its detail and therefore its impact.

Yet this same newspaper finds the room to devote nearly half a page (including a massive photograph) to a story headed "Model falls to her death after hearing truth about lover", and just short of a quarter of a page – with photograph – on "Lipstick effect of women facing up to life in the red".

On the face of it, the death of one fashion model, is worth more than the death of one Royal Marine serving his country, in very worrisome circumstances, where the development is one that concerned people will rightly wish to know more.

By the same measure, that death is of far less importance than a story about women buying cosmetics to cheer themselves up because of the recession, while the really "big" military news is that Prince Harry is "to stop drinking" while he trains as a helicopter pilot.

This distortion of priorities – and values – is not a mere academic issue, nor a lament about how low the fourth estate has sunk. It matters.

High in the news over the last few days has been the impending departure of British troops from Iraq, leaving – some would say, including this blog – under a cloud, defeated by the inability to deal with the Shi'a insurgency that cost many lives and set back the recovery of southern Iraq by many years.

In writing a book on this issue, I have reached early 2006 in my narrative, when it was very clear – on the basis of rigorous research – that the Army had all but lost control of Basra. Death squads were brazenly roaming the streets, killing people in broad daylight, and British troops were being hammered whenever they left their bases, suffering 41 recorded attacks in one fortnight.

Yet, what is striking about this period was how little of this descent into chaos was being reported by the British media – or at all. Understandably, it was submerged by greater violence elsewhere in Iraq and the various political dramas associated with the country. Not only was there the "soap opera" of the selection of the Iraqi prime minister, there was the Saddam trial, all of which was in any event competing with the media and world news agendas.

Nevertheless, this was an area under British occupation and therefore one of importance to us all. Yet Basra news – when it was reported – tended to be buried away almost as afterthoughts in reports headlining something completely different.

By way of an example, on 21 April 2006, The New York Times carried a full report on the prime minister al-Jaafari dropping out of the race to lead a new government after the December elections. Embedded in that story was the one line detail that, "In Basra, a car bomb killed two civilians and wounded five others, including three traffic officers and a border guard."

Likewise, in an item about al Qaeda, the International Herald Tribune informed of three men in Basra being abducted in two different incidents. In one case, the kidnappers had worn commando uniforms. In neither incident do the details seem to have found their way into the British media.

Yet, during that period from late April to early June, it was estimated that one person was being assassinated in Basra every hour. Public order had disintegrated.

Nor was this entirely sectarian killing, as was being experienced to a great extent in the rest of Iraq and particularly in Baghdad. In the south, the situation was very different. Much of the increased violence was an intensification of internal Shi'a rivalry rather than the "civil war" which seemed to be breaking out elsewhere.

In particular, what was actually happening, under the cover of the general chaos, was a battle between the Mahdi Army and the other militias for the control of the south, with Muqtada al Sadr's men strengthening their grip and gradually beginning to prevail. This development, almost unrecognised at the time, was to have huge consequences for the British Army and the subsequent battle for the control of Basra.

All this was happening at a time when Tony Blair and his ministers were claiming that the security situation in southern Iraq had improved, in order that he could pursue his agenda – for entirely domestic political considerations – of reducing the number of troops in Iraq.

One would like to think that, had the British public – and the political classes – been better informed, there would have been pressure to rectify a situation which clearly demanded more troops and more resources devoted to the theatre.

That may be a forlorn hope but then, we will never know. The bulk of people – who still rely on limited sources for their news input – were never given the opportunity to react, because they were never really informed by the media.

So does history repeat itself. News coverage of Afghanistan – a vital strategic issue – is similarly sparse. Yet, many of those who are taking a keen interest in the campaign (and in so doing, are having to rely on sources other than the British media) are increasingly coming to the view that the situation now is more dangerous than it has ever been – and that the strategy and tactics are desperately wrong.

Whether indeed that is the case is not something on which the British public is being invited to comment, not least because once-important newspapers like The Daily Telegraph prefer to titillate their readers with tales of dead models, and lipstick usage, rather than address issues of substance.

Currently, though, there is nothing comparable to fill the vacuum created by the departure of the media from the field, which is – to say the very least – a highly unsatisfactory situation.

How we address these distorted priorities is anyone's guess. The blogosphere has not yet stepped up to the plate and we risk drowning in ignorance and tat, while men (and women) die and our strategic interests are destroyed without us being in the least aware of what is happening.

I guess though, that the media is simply reflecting the wishes and interests of its readers – or is it? If that is the case, then we are looking at a society that has lost the will to survive, in which case the media is only a very small part of the problem. I wish I knew what it was, which might then at least give some clue as to how to deal with a very worrying phenomenon.

COMMENT THREAD

Sooner kill than cure

There is something particularly loathesome about the cheap journalism in which The Sun indulges, exploiting as it has done the latest death of a soldier in Afghanistan by turning it into a soap opera tragedy. This is the death of Marine Corporal Rob Deering, who was named yesterday after he had been killed on Sunday morning by an explosive device.

As this paper would have it, under the banner headline "Brave Marine killed in dash to save pals", "Courageous Corporal Rob Deering was killed when he rushed to help wounded pals in Afghanistan."

We are thus told that, "A booby trap exploded as the Royal Marine dashed to a personnel carrier wrecked by a bomb moments earlier. His three comrades inside their armoured Viking all survived the attack in Lashkar Gah, Helmand, on Sunday."

The bulk of the other media reports are little more informative, most relying on an edited version of the MoD press release, doing their usual, lazy cut-and-paste job, filling space and going through the motions.

For once though, the details are there in the MoD release, there for anyone with wits enough to read between the lines, and do a bit of research.

Read more on Defence of the Realm.

Tractor production

Following the recent report on the (partial) collapse of the waste recycling system in the UK, we have a classic response from Jane Kennedy, the "Environment Minister" telling us, "It is very important that we all continue to recycle what we can." Thus she trills, "We really don't want recyclable materials to end up in landfill."

Then, heedless of the fact that more and more of recycled material is finding its way either into storage or tips, she betrays her fantasy existence by proclaiming: "Recent figures are to be celebrated." Ninety per cent of local authorities in November were meeting or exceeding their recycling targets, she announces. "England alone recycled 9·7 million tons of municipal waste in 2007-08."

Then we get the tribalism: "It's a pity,” she adds, "that the Tories won't commit to helping and working constructively with them. Many householders and local authorities have got the reduce, reuse and recycle message and are doing a great job. The government will continue to support them in their efforts."

This is in Soviet territory, redolent of the "tractor production" targets. The woman is equating her "targets" with reality. Because the waste is collected and weighed does not mean that it is actually recycled. As is increasingly the case, it is not. But such is the narrow, fantasy world of Mz Kennedy, that to her, all that matters is achieving her "targets".

COMMENT THREAD

Action this day?

It is in a way rather comforting to have Steve Holliday, the chief executive of the National Grid, tell us that blackouts could be hitting Britain by 2015.

This is nothing new to readers of this blog but Holliday coming out into the open lends heavyweight substance to the growing clamour for action on our depleting generation capacity.

The trouble is that Holliday's prescription – accurate though it might be – is rather difficult to achieve. He opines that, unless the government intervenes to ensure £100 billion investment in new stations, there will not be enough generation to meet demand by 2015. He thus takes the view that the government must offer better incentives for companies to build stations.

"What is happening that people are not wanting to build enough power stations?" he says. "The Government has an obligation to make sure that the markets are delivering. You can't afford for it to fail."

The trouble is here that the government is not in a position to offer direct incentives for the construction of generation capacity that really matters – coal and nuclear. For it to do so would run the risk of falling foul of the – albeit elastic – EU rules. But perhaps more to the point, the government does not have the money. It is struggling to finance its own debt, without taking on any more.

What the government can do, however, is offer the industry long-term regulatory certainty. Building generation capacity is a long-term investment, with huge sums of capital up-front. Investors need cast iron assurances that these investments will yield dividends or their money goes elsewhere.

Here, it seems there has been a thin shaft of light percolate the muddied brain of Ed Miliband, the UK "climate change" and energy secretary. Although he admits his thinking is "not yet fully formed", he now seems to have come round to his predecessor's point of view, telling the Financial Times: "I will not take a position which ignores our security of supply needs."

To that effect, he has ruled out banning the construction of coal-fired power stations pending the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which more or less signals that he will give the go-ahead for Eon's application to build its new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth – much to the fury of the greenies.

In typical partisan style, he attacks the Tories on their "knee jerk" and "not thought through" call for a ban on construction of new stations until the technology is in place, but he does have a point. Such a requirement would stymie any development of coal-fired generation just when we really need it.

However, this small move does not even begin to resolve the investment issue. It cannot be stressed enough that investment in generation is a long-term game. While Miliband has effectively put CCS "on hold" until 2020, that is only 12 years away – the mere blink of an eye for anyone considering putting money into power stations. As long as there is the looming prospect of a requirement for massive investment in CCS, there will be no enthusiasm for putting money into coal-fired generation.

This is, of course, where a clear statement of intent from the Tories could and would help and it makes their continued inability to come up with a coherent energy policy all the more puzzling. Three months ago, we called for a statement of Tory policy. We are still waiting.

COMMENT THREAD

They care not what they do

We have followed the drama of the removal of the UK "opt out" from the European Working Time Directive from afar, but with some dismay.

This was negotiated in 1993 by John Major as one of his Mastricht "victories". It was those same "victories" that had him proclaiming "game set and match" as he scuttled back to his hotel after the summit. There, he was to meet his civil servants for a debriefing, so that they could tell him what he had signed away, before he had to address the Commons later that day.

That all goes to show that, when it comes to lasting promises that have anything to do with the EU, politicians should not be trusted an inch … but then, that applies to everything else as well.

But little did our Johnny – now a born-again Tory sage - realise all those years ago that his deft handiwork was going to be unravelled. Still less would he have realised that this would totally stuff the fire services in the UK.

That latter point is very much on the mind of Jim Kilpatrick, Scottish national officer for the Retained Firefighters Union. He has written to The Scotsman warning that the directive could end the retained fire service in the UK.

Blasting the "misguided MEPs" who had decided to end the opt-out, he tells us that of the 67,951 personal employed within the UK Fire and Rescue Service, 18,827 work on a retained basis. These cover almost two thirds of UK fire stations and the actual UK landmass covered by the system equates to 91 percent.

The problem is that almost all retained fire fighters have some form of primary employment, which in itself averages around 40 hours per week. If you then add two hours training time and a minimum of two calls per week, this could mean that such fire fighters would easily exceed the 48 hour period on a regular basis.

Kilpatrick adds: "No-one forces us to spend our spare time in this way; we regard ourselves as paid volunteers. We do it because we want to not because we have to." But, with the directive, he fears that the system can no longer work. And without the "immense contribution" to emergency response his members provide, he is concerned that the fabric and function of the UK Fire and Rescue Service as we know it would collapse overnight.

He concludes by telling us that his members are extremely concerned that the EU will "legislate their jobs away" with dire consequences for the communities they are committed to serving. Like them, he says, "I am at a loss to see why legislation is proposed to take away freedom of choice."

Well, we are all at a loss, Mr Kilpatrick, but that's the EU for you. They care not what they do, and while they might burn in hell it looks as if, with the absence of your members, we will burn up here.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker – part 2

The column is finally up, with part 2 here - more than twelve hours late, and only after a telephoned reminder. You do really wonder what the website managers think they are doing. Anyhow, you can read it off the link, and enjoy the photograph.

Meanwhile, even the BBC has noticed that it is snowing in North America – and not a word about global warming! Canada is also getting hit and Reuters is reporting on the snow and freezing conditions in China. Greater Kashmir is also having a hard time.

However, never fear, the New Scientist is telling us that the "Arctic melt [is] 20 years ahead of climate models", with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado claiming that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" - a dramatic and irreversible slide towards ice-free conditions.

The warmists, therefore, can sleep easily in their beds, in the certain knowledge that their religion is safe - while the rest of us freeze.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker - part 1

Unless you know different, Booker does not seem to be up on the Telegraph website, so here it is in full - part 1. Or click the pic to the left if you want to read it "as is"...

If the politicians who run the European Union were found to be acting repeatedly in gross breach of their own law, to appease one of the nastiest regimes in the world – and a senior British minister was found to have seriously misled Parliament in the same cause – might this not be thought worthy of some attention? Yet again last week, unreported here in Britain, the EU was reprimanded by its own courts for refusing to obey their ruling that it had acted illegally in outlawing Iran's main democratic opposition movement, the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI).

This ever murkier and more bizarre story began back in 2001 when the British Government – solely, as it later admitted, at "the behest of the Teheran regime" – put the PMOI on its list of proscribed terrorist groups. In 2002 Britain persuaded the EU to add the PMOI alongside Al Q'eda to its own list of outlawed organisations. In 2006 the EU's Court of First Instance ruled this ban to be "unlawful".

In 2007 Britain twice persuaded the EU Council of Ministers to defy their own court’s ruling. This year, after a long court battle brought by 35 MPs and peers, including several ex-ministers, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, upheld a High Court ruling that the British Government had acted "perversely" in claiming that the PMOI was a terrorist organisation, for which it had brought no evidence, ordering it to lift the ban.

Although our Government reluctantly obeyed, last July President Sarkozy, as acting EU president, moved that the EU's ban should nevertheless remain. In October and again this month, the Court of First Instance again ruled that the EU must stop acting illegally. Furthermore the judges stated that, following the British court ruling, the British Government had failed in its legal duty to veto Sarkozy's move. They directed particularly trenchant criticism at the Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown for falsely claiming to the House of Lords that Britain could not have voted against Sarkozy's proposal because this would have meant the ban having to be lifted from all terrorist organisations.

Earlier this month the EU court moved with unprecedented speed to publish its latest ruling, but Sarkozy asked for permission to delay in complying - a plea strongly opposed in a letter to him signed by 1160 mayors from all over France. Last Wednesday the court brusquely rejected Sarkozy's plea, stating that the EU must comply with the law without any further delay.

The same day in the European Parliament, in the presence of Mrs Maryam Rajawi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (of which the PMOI forms a major part), a senior MEP, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, backed by 2000 parliamentarians from all over Europe, warned the Council of Ministers that obstructing implementation of the court's ruling would place it "at odds with the EU's judicial system and the European Parliament" and could "lead to a constitutional crisis within the EU". He sent a letter to Presidenr Sarkozy to warn him of ‘the dire consequences of France's disobeying the rule of law in Europe."

What makes this reckless contempt for the law truly incomprehensible is that the EU's only confessed motive is to appease the one genuinely terrorist regime in the Middle East. Its agents, the Revolutionary Guards, have done more than anyone to destabilise the entire region, from the Lebanon to Iraq and Afghanistan (including the supply of arms used to kill British troops), To this murderous theocratic dictatorship, the only real hope of a democratic secular alternative is Mrs Rajawi's NCRI and the PMOI, the very body the EU seems prepared to stop at nothing to suppress. Just as baffling, however, is why we hear so little of this remarkable drama from our media.

COMMENT THREAD

Getting in first

One has to suppress a wry smile and at least admire the speed with which General Sir Mike Jackson has got his knife in first, before the many knives are directed at his broad but inadequate back.

The man is writing in The Sunday Telegraph today about the impending departure of British forces from Iraq, telling us that the withdrawal "represents a most significant achievement after what will have been a very difficult and challenging six years."

He thus tells us that Britain’s Armed Forces "will leave Iraq with heads held high" and that they "should be proud of their efforts".

That is fair enough, applied on an individual and unit level, where the courage, tenacity, skill, dedication – and suffering – of our troops (and airmen and sailors) is to be applauded, unreservedly. They did what they could, and many did more than we had any right to expect of them.

However, we – and they – should not run away with the idea that the campaign was a success. At best, we could describe it as an "heroic failure". Our armed forces were under-resourced, undermanned and ill-equipped from the very start, given a job that they could not hope to achieve. And thus, predictably – but with no reflection on those at the cutting edge – they failed.

In the end, after abandoning the outer provinces, with their ignominious retreat from al Ahamrah, forced on them by the pitifully inadequate resources allocated to the Maysan Battle Groups – they were driven out of all but one of their bases in Basra, until they were hunkered down in the former Basra airport, out of the game.

It took Iraqi troops, with the support of the US – including its massive air power – to recover Basra from the Mahdi Army and it was not until June that they did likewise with al Amarah.

These points we have made before, but you will not hear Mike Jackson make them. To him, in his piece today, anything that went wrong was the fault of the Americans, or anyone else but Mike Jackson.

Initially, it was all the fault of the Iraqis, whose "expectations of immediate economic improvement were understandably but unrealistically high." Their frustration at not seeing this realised quickly turned to anger with the Coalition forces.

Then, this volatile situation was "much exacerbated by the security vacuum created by Washington's appalling decisions to disband the Iraqi security forces and to de-Baathify the public administration to a very low level; the latter marginalised the very people who were best placed to help."

These decisions, asserts Jackson, "may well have doubled the time it has taken to get to where we are now." Then there was the Iranian backing for Shi'a "militants", which was a further difficult complication. And there was also "the lack of a coherent reconstruction plan and the failure in Coalition capitals to understand fully the complexity of the situation."

All this may be true, and no one will disagree that the Americans made some appalling mistakes. But so did the British. Immediately after the invasion, they failed to recognise that a Shi'a insurgency was building up round them, initially attributing attacks to Saddam loyalists and the remnants of his forces. Instead of taking on the militias, they gave ground to them, made deals with them, and then eventually handed southern Iraq to them on a plate.

Much of that was entirely the responsibility of the politicians, and Tony Blair in particular, who lacked the courage, in the face of the growing unpopularity of the war, to commit the resources and the men to do the job properly. Instead, his "spin" machine went into high gear, painting a wholly false picture of a "success" that was belied by the fact that the security situation was getting worse, and worse and worse.

Writes Jackson, "the campaign became a long haul – we had to have the strategic endurance to see it through." But we didn’t. We did not have the "strategic endurance" nor the political endurance, nor the political will. So it was fudged.

But nowhere do I see any evidence at all that Mike Jackson, who was professional head of the Army until August 2006, had a grip on the campaign, knew what was needed or sought to ensure that the Army was properly equipped for the campaign. It was, after all, Jackson who authorised the sending of Snatch Land Rovers to Iraq and it was he who kept them there, long after it was abundantly clear that they could not do the job required of them.

Thus, while the Americans may have made all the mistakes in the book, they learned from their experiences, adapted and then prevailed. That the British Army came out of the campaign with much the same equipment with which they started, and recognisably similar tactics, says a great deal. Despite the courage and dedication at the cutting face, the high command failed to adapt, failed to meld the Army into an effective counter-insurgency force, and failed ultimately to provide the leadership that the Army needed.

Interestingly, Jackson observes that the period in Iraq has "been a long, hard and controversial campaign, but I believe it has largely succeeded." He is right in all respects, but the success is not his, or that of the British Army. Our forces rose to the challenge, writes the man, but the leadership – both military and political – did not.

And to the end, like his former political master, Jackson is "spinning". He writes of "the announcement that Britain is largely to close down its military role in Iraq by May 31, 2009," not acknowledging that the date is not one of our choice. It has been set not by Mr Brown, but the Iraqis. They have kicked us out.

Even then, that date might not be the final word. When Gordon Brown so confidently announced it last week, he forgot to tell the world that this was a provisional agreement, subject to ratification by the Iraqi parliament. Without its agreement, our mandate ceases at midnight on 31 December, after which we are required to leave.

But the Iraqi parliament has not agreed. Yesterday, it threw out the draft law which would have permitted the extension of our stay to 31 May – by a massive 80 votes to 68.

Another vote is due next week but there is a strong caucus in the parliament which want to see the back of the British. Not least is Nasser al-Issawi, an MP loyal to Muqtada Sadr. He has hailed the rejection of the draft as a "great national achievement", and said he hoped the foreign troops would be forced to leave when the UN mandate ends.

If the parliament finally rejects the law, it will be up to Nouri Maliki to save our blushes by exercising his executive powers and signing individual agreements directly with each of the foreign states with troops remaining, giving them – and us - a legal basis to remain. This would be a messy solution, but rather appropriate for a messy war.

Soon enough, much of that mess – or the reasons for it – will emerge. And General Mike Jackson will not come out so well from its evaluation. It was just as well he got in first. He needed to.

I am cross-posting this on Defence of the Realm.

COMMENT THREAD

Any which way, we pay

In what could have been a fine piece of journalism, Simon Neville and Christopher Hope in The Daily Telegraph today lifts the lid on the council recycling scam revealing that more than 200,000 tons of recyclable household rubbish is being dumped in landfill sites or sent to incinerators each year.

Furthermore, Neville and Hope tell us, the amount dumped this year is expected to rise sharply as councils struggle to sell recyclable waste during the economic downturn.

The fact the recycled material is being dumped is, of course, not new. It has been discussed on this blog numerous times, and in not a few newspapers. But this is the first time an attempt has been made to quantify the scale of the dumping.

The 200,000 tons though, this is probably an under-estimate, as a lot of the stuff goes to contractors. The local authorities are able to put this material towards their quotas, but a significant amount then goes "through the back door", back into the waste stream.

What is missing from the piece, however – which would really have brought it alive - is any mention of the EU and the fact that we have been saddled with a fundamentally flawed scheme, the inevitable consequences of which we are now seeing.

The clue is in the piece, where we are told that, "… with prices for recycled material falling, increasing volumes will end up dumped or destroyed," but no comment is sought to explain that, with a producer-driven scheme, that was always going to happen.

There is only one way a recycling scheme is going to be successful in the long term and that is by creating markets for the salvaged material, sufficient to pull recyclable waste through the system, rather than push it into the market where there is no assured demand.

In this country, however, it is extremely doubtful as to whether such markets can be developed, given our contracted manufacturing base and our reliance on imports. And, if those who manufacture our goods – and are thus interested in buying our waste - are in recession, and demand falls off, there is absolutely nothing we can do to improve matters.

Therein lies the bind of this being an EU scheme. Has this – or any other – British government been stupid enough to launch such a scheme, it could by now have suspended the rules and reverted to the traditional practice of landfill. But, as The Telegraph points out, there is the small matter of landfill tax.

This is entirely a child of the EU. It was devised by the British government as a means of forcing local authorities to recycle and thus to avoid the swingeing EU fines that will accrue if we do not cut landfill. But, with it standing at £32 per ton, councils are potentially spending an extra £6.4million sending recycling to be dumped. Since landfill tax will rise to £40 per ton next year, the potential cost spirals to £8million.

Thus, we are in a classic EU vice. If we do not recycle, we pay massive fines to the EU. But since we cannot recycle, because the bottom has dropped out of the market, we pay massive amounts for recyclable waste to be collected, then we pay silly amounts to have it stored and then, when the storage space runs out, we pay for the landfill tax when it has to be disposed. Then we also pay massive fines to the EU.

It is this story that is not told in the Telegraph – it should be, but the sleeping elephant rules. The EU must not be mentioned.

Instead, we get a facile, partisan comment from Eric Pickles, the Conservative local government spokesman. He is allowed to say: "This once again shatters the Government's green credentials. Labour's idea of recycling is dumping huge mountains of rubbish on landfill sites and in warehouses fuelling the 80 million strong rat population. The sad reality is that families who want to go green can't under Labour."

The fatuity of this is obvious. This is not "Labour's idea of recycling". It is an EU scheme and, if there is no market for the material, then there is little Labour or anyone else can do. What would Pickles suggest as an alternative, one wonders. Would he eat the surplus?

There is, of course, the option of producing energy from waste, and for Pickles to have suggested that would have been an intelligent and useful contribution. That is what I would have suggested. But then I am not a Tory politician.

Mind you, there is a comment of similar fatuity from Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance. His offering is: "People are constantly lectured on recycling and threatened with fines if they don't comply, so it's outrageous that councils are just throwing the stuff away." And what does he suggest as an alternative?

To be fair, though, the first prize for stupidity goes to the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs – although it has so many already, it's almost unfair to the other contenders to give it another.

It says: "There is a strong incentive for local authorities and recycling facilities to minimise the amount of contaminated recycling due to the cost of extra material going to landfill as well as the loss of revenue from recycled materials."

And its point is? There is no demand for much of recycled materials produced. The local authorities cannot even give it away. Therefore, there is no revenue to lose, and no option other than to store the materials and then dispose of them, or the cheaper option of abandoning separate collections, disposing of the material straight away and taking the hit on landfill tax.

Any which way, we pay. But it would be nice if a newspaper occasionally told us why.

COMMENT THREAD

Parliament's position

It is pertinent to ask what position the British parliament, the glory of the British (and English) system occupies in the grand vision of EU legislation. After all, we are told by numerous clowns politicians of different parties that we should vote for them and they will do such things though, naturally, they know not what they are. Nevertheless, the terror of the earth they shall be.

So should we pay any attention to what these bozos political wannabes tell us? Well, curiously enough an answer was found as I was reading the HoL European Union Committee Report that I have mentioned earlier, "Initiation of EU Legislation".

In the section on national parliaments Paragraph 126 says:

126. Do those views of national parliaments have much influence over the development of legislative proposals? Sir Kim Darroch said that reports of the House of Lords, for example, were taken into account by the Government in formulating and developing policy, and thus might indirectly influence the Commission. His colleague, Paul Heardman (Head of European Parliament Section, UKRep), told us that the Reports were well regarded in the European Parliament. (QQ 299, 300) As one voice among many seeking to influence legislation, the direct influence of a national parliament should not be exaggerated, but it may be able to influence the Commission to a degree. The Minister advised that influence on the initiation of legislation would be greater if focussed on multi-annual programmes. (Q 468)

[I have left the references to the specific questions there, in case some of our readers want to follow them up in the document.]

In a couple of previous paragraphs (116 – 119) we had already been told about HMG’s efforts to influence legislation, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.

What it adds up to is very clear and I, for one, should like to hear some explanation of how they are going to deal with it from some of our politicos and political wannabes. Our Parliament and our elected government have become lobbying organizations that have to compete in the seat of power with others of that ilk. These might be other national parliaments or they might be business representatives, such as the Freight Transport Association that also gave evidence to the Committee, or an NGO, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature. The latter might even be better off as it receives EU subsidies to the tune of €600,000 a year but no, that does not affect their lobbying work at all, said the piglets as they took to the skies.

I suppose we can at least say that we elect the House of Commons to lobby at the seat of power on our behalf whereas the others merely appoint themselves. But it is not much consolation when one thinks of such people as John Hampden, John Bright [pictured above] or Richard Cobden.

The cooling has it!

Looks like all those trucks will be wasted!

And an intriguing thesis from Watts up with that. Carbon dioxide levels follow temperature, rather than the other way around. With the current spate of cooling, we can expect CO2 levels to plummet, adding negative reinforcement to the cooling trend.

I guess we knew this already, but the comments on the expanding biosphere are interesting. The corollary must also apply. If we get cooling and then falling CO2 levels, the biosphere contracts. That is of more than academic interest. The biosphere - or part of it - is what we eat.

That is the really scary thing about this global warming miasma. Even a temporary cooling will have significant effects on global crop yields. A shortfall of even five percent would wipe out global grain reserves, creating a global food deficit. The implications of that are massive.

Such a calamity, however, is readily avoidable, with a little forethough - changing in cropping patterns, putting more land into production, changing seed types, etc. But this needs planning. With governments obsessed with global warming, however, no one seems to be thinking of how to deal with the prospect of cooling, so no one is doing any planning.

Global warming, therefore, could end up creating a crisis for mankind, but not in the way that AGW advocates believe. The obsession, rather than the actuality, could be the cause of our downfall.

Meanwhile, the EU is doing it best to handicap attempts to maintain our food supply – not that you would guess this from the BBC.

COMMENT THREAD

Work that one out

"Las Vegas battered by largest snowfall in 30 years" says The Times, retailing that the US National Weather Service has said that the city faces its biggest snowstorms since 7.8 inches of snow was registered in 1979. Schools have been closed, flights grounded, and major roads have been closed as the iconic Strip was buried under five inches of snow with more forecast.

On the other hand, Russia Today tells us that Muscovites dreaming of a White Christmas are being shattered as the Russian capital is experiencing its warmest winter ever. The Russian capital now has a big problem as it is due to host the FIS World Cup Alpine promotional event on January 2, 2009. This is aimed at stimulating interest for Alpine Skiing as part of the build up to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

Some 30,000 people are expected to watch the events, which are impossible to stage without 4,000 cubic metres of snow, yet Moscow has seen none so far this year. However, the organisers have found a solution. They are now importing snow from the Kemerovo Region in Siberia, which was "troubled" by heavy snowfalls recently. The Siberian snow is being packed into 300 kilogram bags and sent to Moscow in refrigerated carriages, which means the skiing event will take place in time.

China, however, is suffering its coldest weather so far this winter, brought in by a Siberian cold front. Almost all of the country, except for Tibet Autonomous Region, has been affected by the strongest cold front this winter. Some regions recorded temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius.

This is relatively mild though. Temperatures in the northeast Siberian republic of Yakutia are expected to fall to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit) in the next few days.

Gobal warming or global cooling? Take your pick.

COMMENT THREAD

"Same old failings"

A piece over at DOTR (taken most of the day to write), the starting point of which is the assertion that we will never get sensible military procurement until or unless MPs and the media start to take the subject seriously.

Only then, do we assume, that they will make the effort to understand the issues and put the pieces together. And, if they do so, they will be able to target their criticisms accurately and fairly. But they must also come up with clear ideas of what should be done. There is no point whatsoever relying on the MoD – or the military. Time and time again, it has become demonstrably clear that they have very little idea of what they are doing.

Posted on Defence of the Realm

Utterly powerless

In The Daily Telegraph today, we see a lament that "EU laws stop UK Government from making foreign lorries carry safety mirrors".

The story then tells us that EU laws have prevented the British Government from compelling foreign lorries to fit mirrors which would radically cut road accidents in the UK. We are then informed that, "A simple device known as a Fresnel lens would eliminate blind spots experienced by foreign heavy goods vehicle drivers."

Government figures, we also learn, have shown that foreign hauliers are eight times more likely to be involved in a serious or fatal accident than their British counterparts on UK roads. Furthermore, the potential of the lenses is recognized by the Department for Transport, which has handed out nearly 200,000 lenses to left-hand-drive lorries as they arrive at British ports.

But, we are further told, the Government is powerless to compel foreign drivers to use them. That much is admitted by Jim Fitzpatrick, a transport minister, in a letter to John Baron, Tory MP for Billericay.

"We are bound by international convention to accept visiting foreign vehicles on our roads, provided they comply with internationally agreed construction and safety requirements," Fitzpatrick writes. "Our international obligations do not allow us to require unilaterally any additional components on these visiting vehicles."

Baron, on the other hand, believes that the mirrors should be made compulsory and complains that ministers have failed to take a strong enough stand. "The Government is taking only limited steps to combat this problem. But it could solve the problem in one go by simply making Fresnel mirrors compulsory. By refusing to do so, the Government is putting motorist's lives unnecessarily at risk."

This seems like déjà vu all over again, as we raided this precise issue on this blog in September 2006. However, in May 2007, we also reported that the issue had been resolved. And indeed, that seems to be the case. We now have Directive 2007/38/EC of 11 July 2007 "on the retrofitting of mirrors to heavy goods vehicles registered in the Community".

The Directive itself requires that member states shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the Directive by 6 August 2008. The retrofitting must be completed by 31 March 2009, the details of which are set out in this leaflet.

As to the "blind spot" on foreign vehicles, Article 3 would seem to cover this:

1. With effect from 6 August 2007, and not later than 31 March 2009, Member States shall require that all vehicles referred to in Article 2(1) be equipped, on the passenger side, with wide-angle and close-proximity mirrors which fulfil the requirements for class IV and class V mirrors under Directive 2003/97/EC respectively.

However, it is here that the problem becomes apparent. The Directive makes no provision for left-hand and right-hand drive vehicles to have the same sets of mirrors. A left-hand drive vehicle driving on our roads will have the mirrors on the wrong side.

The egregious John Baron, seems to have a grasp of this but he then says: "I think the Government is hiding behind EU regulations. We have a problem here and it is incumbent on ministers to do something. They should be pushing for an EU regulation to make Fresnel lenses compulsory on all lorries."

However, he clearly has not noticed that we already have an EU regulation. Furthermore, the mechanism used to introduce it is by way of Directive 2003/97/EC, which is the "type approval" directive.

And here we really do have a problem. It is not the EU which makes the laws on type approval but UNECE. That is why Fitzpatrick writes about "our international obligations …" and not specifically about the EU. Once again, we meet our old friend the "dual international quasi-legislation/comitology mechanism".

To make Fresnel lenses compulsory, therefore, we have to seek an amendment to a UNECE regulation. And, in the nature of these regulations, the provision would have to apply to all vehicles in the EU and wider area, not just those which come over to the UK. In practice, this simply is not going to happen. There is no way all the member states are going to agree to require their whole national fleets to be modified, just to accommodate the UK.

The problem is, though, that there is no other mechanism by which this can be achieved under the current system. Under the EU regime, "type approval" is an "occupied field". We cannot make law unilaterally. We can only implement EU law. But – and here is the ultimate Catch 22 – the EU cannot make law unilaterally either. It must rely on UNECE. And that organisation simply is not going to move on this.

Thus, we have got ourselves in a position where, clearly, a new law is needed, specifically for the UK (and Ireland). But there is no longer any mechanism available to us to make such a law.

Thus we are left with the Department for Transport defending the Government's handling of foreign lorries arriving in Britain. "We have distributed fresnel lenses to left-hand drive trucks entering the country. We are sharing the evidence of this work with European counterparts to investigate how it can be best used to direct policy on HGV design and use," it says.

What is does not say is that there is nothing else it can do. We can "share" all we like, and we can give away – at the taxpayers' expense – free lenses to foreign truckers. But we cannot make them either buy them or use them. And that is the one thing the Department for Transport cannot tell us – that we are utterly powerless.

COMMENT THREAD

Hey, I was there. So what?

Well, I promised a rant and there it is on the rarely used Umbrella 3. I could have put up pictures of people who told nonsensical lies about the places they had been to and who have been accepted as gurus but I have refrained. Not even a picture of little Mark Leonard, who is now known as an expert on China, on the basis of a few visits and the inevitable book.

This time I shall link to the forum and open up a Comments section as the "I was there" brigade should be given a chance to have a go at me. We all hope that the comments will be new, knowledgeable and written by people who know about full stops, commas and capital letters. But I know that the world is not perfect.

COMMENT THREAD