We should be happy about Obama's performance but ...

Setting aside the hysteria and stupidity of some of the comments, we ought to be happy about Obama's better than mediocre performance in Berlin last night. However, questions arise. Why Berlin? Germany is not the USA's closest ally and not on the front-line of any fight that the West might be waging.

It was during the Berlin airlift that Senator Obama quoted without any reference to President Truman; it was when President Kennedy (not mentioned by Senator Obama) made his famous speech; it was when President Reagan (not mentioned by Senator Obama though he referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall) made his famous comment to President Gorbachev. But now? Hardly.

The frontline in Baghdad and there Senator Obama spoke less than fighting words, as the Wall Street Journal points out, and that is not particularly reassuring. The other developing frontline against the closest of the anti-Western authoritarian states is Eastern Europe, where the countries are, by and large, America's friends and allies. Senator Obama should have gone to Poland where they could have shown him the site of Auschwitz and he could have made his speech there, including the tale of his uncle liberating the camp.

Furthermore, when it comes to the crunch all those hysterical groupies are unlikely to be pro-American even if Senator Obama becomes President Obama. And there is the problem of the European Union and the evolving common foreign policy, which cuts across any ideas of a Western alliance. Given the poor knowledge Senator Obama and his campaign have displayed of foreign lands, it is unlikely that they have heard of this particular problem. They'll learn.

Trouble at t'grid

The importance of yesterday's story on renewable energy in the The Guardian can hardly be over-estimated.

For many month now, we have been banging on about the government's obsession with wind farms and its neglect of conventional power generation but, if this story is to be taken at face value, Brown has now taken a major step in ditching the whole wind policy.

The essence of The Guardian's story is that the UK is attempting to block proposed EU legislation that will cast in stone at a European level a requirement to give renewable electricity sources absolute priority to the national grid.

This is part of the proposed renewables directive which states that: "Member states shall also provide for priority access to the grid system of electricity produced from renewable energy sources", with Britain intervening to change "shall" to "may".

It is that "shall" which drives the whole of the wind industry for, under this legislation, once a wind farm is connected to the system, the National Grid would have no choice but to accept any amount of power produced, shedding load from any non-renewable generators to accommodate it.

At the moment, this is already a UK requirement, facilitated by the ROC system which penalises generators for not delivering its quota of renewable energy, but the EU legislation would lock this in stone.

The problem is – as Denmark and other big "wind" producers have found - is that the variability of wind power, and the fact that grid systems are not designed to accept multiple small packages of power from diffuse sources, risks destablising the grid. Thus, forcing the system to take this power – especially as the amount of renewables increases – will create serious technical problems.

This, it is quite sensible to remove any obligation to take power from wind generators but, without that guarantee of buying anything they produce, many wind farms would not only be uneconomic but also unprofitable. At one fell swoop, changing that single word could bring the "wind rush" skidding to a halt.

And neither is this the full extent of the government's row back. The proposed directive also insists that wind developments immediate access to the grid, something which, without an investment in the order of £10bn, is not technically feasible. Thus, or so we are told, 9.3GW of wind power projects are currently on hold, waiting for word as to whether they can be connected. Some completed wind farms across Scotland are standing idle.

With the proposed directive forcing this issue – if it ever came into force in its current form - the UK government is working to "clarify this obligation", officialese for junking it.

Claude Turmes, a Luxembourg MEP and architect of the directive, has got the UK government sussed: "This," he says, "would take us backwards and would weaken the possibilities of connecting renewable energy to the grid. A government that says it wants to promote renewables cannot go for other policies behind the scenes."

We have, therefore, something of an enigma. Up front, the government is making a big deal of its renewables policy, with a "commitment" to meet its EU targets by 2020, yet, on the other hand, it seems to be doing its level best to ensure that that target cannot be met.

John Sauven, of Greenpeace, puts this down to "Brown's ideological obsession with atomic power," but then he would. More likely, it is motivated by the realisation that the national grid simply cannot accommodate the amount of wind power being proposed. Thus, Brown is trying to run with the hare and the hounds – putting up a public face of promoting renewables while actually preventing their development.

He must calculate that he can keep the charade going for two years, until the Conservatives are elected, when it will become Mr Cameron's problem, allowing the new Labour opposition to sit on the margins and jeer at his failure.

For us mere mortals, however, stemming the "wind rush" is probably good news and, in due course, we may have the added bonus of enjoying Mr Cameron's discomfort as he tries to come to grips with yet another failed policy - one which, in opposition, he has fully supported.

COMMENT THREAD

Do these people actually read anything?

It is always pleasant to be appreciated and I tend to purr (though not as loudly as my cats) when I get an e-mail from an unexpected quarter that tells me that somebody I have never heard of has read something I had written and has been inspired by it. Well, never mind about the inspiration, I am quite happy when they say that they have read it.

Mind you, if it is someone who thinks that the Russian town of Kursk (big tank battle) is in Ukraine, then I think about giving up because clearly one cannot get the readers one is used to any more. Nor am I all that impressed by people telling me with great sighs of sorrow about Greeks feeling strongly about Alexander the Great and me not understanding what Macedonia means to them. I wonder whether they feel strongly about all those Greek City States that Alexander and his father Philip destroyed.

Anyway, enough of this frivolity. Today I received a serious missive from one Carly Scott, who is on the campaign team of an NGO I have never heard of (they multiply by the day and guess who is paying for all that shebang), Every Human Has Rights. The missive was in response to my piece about Zimbabwe and economic matters. I really do not understand why Carly Scott did not write to the boss, who has been covering Zimbabwe far more assiduously recently but who can understand the mind of someone who is on an NGO's campaign team.

Hi Helen,

I saw your post on Zimbabwe at EU Referendum. It's great to see that situation getting coverage in the blogosphere.

Last summer Nelson Mandela brought a group of really dedicated individuals together - ex heads of state and Nobel laureates - to work on solving global issues. His hope for the new group, The Elders, is for them to "speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken". They're working on the crisis in Zimbabwe now, and they want your help.

There are so many issues in dire need of attention right now, but human rights ties them all together. The Elders launched the Every Human Has Rights campaign to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and celebrate human rights as that common thread that weaves our struggles and our victories together. We're asking the blogosphere to take part. Would you be willing to add a link from your page to the Every Human Has Rights website?

We also have badges and flash widgets so bloggers can show support for the campaign. We're trying to get as many people as possible to sign a personal pledge to uphold the principles of the Universal Declaration. We have action partners to help people get more involved. We have tools so people can bring the 'rights perspective' to their own organization's events. We're doing everything we can to bring people together to stand up for human rights.

We need bloggers. We need you. Please join our effort.

When I read through this bilge twice I realized that I had started purring a little too soon. Quite clearly Ms Scott had not read a word I had written. Otherwise, she might have found it a little difficult to conclude that I was the sort of blogger that went weak at the knees when an NGO, which is in partnership with all the usual suspects (at the bottom of the website), calls upon me to help them to bring people together to stand up for human rights. And what a painful experience that will be.

As it happens the story of the Elders was not new to me or to readers of this blog, I trust, and I sent her this link and this one, to inform her of what I had said, suggesting that if she still wants my involvement not to hesitate but get back in touch. I shall not be holding my breath.

At the time I suggested:

As it happens, I have an immediate suggestion for Bishop Desmond Tutu, ex-President Nelson Mandela and his wife, Graça Machel.

There is this country, called Zimbabwe, right on your doorstep. Plenty of immense human suffering there. You have time to spare on world problems, which all just happen to be caused by the United States in President Mandela's estimation? Well, how about spending some of it on that country on your doorstep?

I was informed by admirers of the good Bishop (really Shakespeare had the right idea about bishops, archbishops and cardinals, making them all as wicked as can be) that he was working very hard behind the scenes to sort out the Zimbabwe mess, though not, perhaps, the growing South Africa mess.

A year has gone by and the mess has merely intensified while the Elders, one assumes, have been holding meetings and making pronouncements. Ms Scott, bless her little cotton socks, tells me that the Elders are working on the crisis now. Well good. When I hear what they have done I might reconsider my opinion of that despicable bunch of has-beens.

In the meantime, I have two suggestions in connection with Every Human Has Rights. I have linked to it twice in this posting and let me encourage our readers to spend a little time on that website mostly by writing to the members of the NGO asking them what they have done in practical terms and making a few suggestions. Just five minutes from every reader should make the little darlings' day.

Secondly, I should like to point out that I do my bit to help the developing countries by the surest and simplest method of all. Whenever possible I buy goods imported from those countries thus contributing to their trade, their eventual welfare and human rights. I have told the boss that if he hears of any shop selling goods from Afghanistan to let me know - I wish to do my part in helping that country.

An exercise in nation-building

This blog has no wish to get drawn into the tortuous politics of Ulster. It was, after all, in Belfast many moons ago when I went to Stormont to get a briefing on the situation that I first heard that classic joke about Irish politics: "If you think you understand what's going on, you haven't been listening".

But what is interesting about the current Conservative party initiative, attempting to re-integrate the UUP and the Conservatives into one party in Westminister, is that it draws – perhaps unwittingly - from the same well of thinking that drives a corner of European political integration.

This saw its first manifestation in 1951 during the first meeting of the then Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, following on from the Schuman declaration (pictured). As the "deputies" found their places in their temporary accommodation in Strasbourg, they chose to sit in groups according to their political leanings, rather than as national delegations, so starting a process which was intended eventually to create European political parties.

That process is still ongoing today, the current EU parliament dominated by political groups, the three big players being the EPP (Christian Democrats), the PES (Socialists) and ALDE (Liberals).

This is far from accidental and was, from the very start, recognised as an important part of the drive for political integration. The aim was to get politicians detached from purely local concerns, thinking and acting on a "European" level, focused on issues rather than local interests. By this means is it hoped eventually that there would be created a European demos, with its own distinctive agenda, separate from national concerns.

This, then is what is being attempted on a different scale in Ulster and, while the process is fraught, with untold sensitivities and traps, it is at least intellectually coherent, resting as it does on the idea that united people require united political parties.

Thus do David Cameron and the leader of the UUP, Sir Reg Empey, in The Daily Telegraph (without direct acknowledgement to Owen Paterson, who has done much of the spadework) call for the "support of all those who share our joint agenda and common vision, regardless of their religion, background, or whatever part of the UK they happen to reside in." This, it is felt, will help people to break away from the "vicious sectarian divisions of recent years."

Should this initiative succeed – and it is touch and go whether it will – the model has applications elsewhere. In Afghanistan, for instance, there are over 70 political parties approved by the ministry of justice, while in Iraq there are nearly thirty, mostly organised on sectarian lines rather than issue-based. It could be considered an advance in political maturity if these countries could follow the initiative being so carefully negotiated in Northern Ireland.

But, if the development of issue-based politics is an essential part of nation-building (or, in the case of Northern Ireland, rebuilding), Cameron, in embracing the Ulster initiative for these very reasons, should be aware of the perils in his own back yard. If the process has value to the Conservative party – and the nation – it has the same value to the European integrationalists, who have so far trapped the Conservative party in the warm, transnational embrace of the EPP.

What it being attempted by the Conservatives in Belfast is also being played out in Strasbourg, for very much the same reasons. That makes it all the more important that Cameron, in recognising the technique, should understand the broader lessons and honour his promise to pull his MEPs out of the European exercise in nation-building.

COMMENT THREAD

Today's sob-story

A little while ago I was asked by a very charming and intelligent Italian economist whether I was becoming disenchanted with the European Union. She had detected this in the way I referred to that organization. I pointed out that disenchanted was not really the right adjective since that would imply that I had ever been enchanted.

Similarly, I find it rather frustrating to read about there being a "backlash" against the UN because so many things have gone wrong, through no fault of that organization's. Presumably, this blog would be considered to be part of that backlash but, honestly, when did either of us thought the UN or its peacekeepers to be the answer to anybody’s problems? (Yes, I know, the Korean War, which happened under UN auspices only because the Soviet Union was temporarily absent. The first Iraqi War was America's. If the UN had not agreed to support it, we would have had a coalition of the willing. Incidentally, neither of those wars was fought by the men in the blue berets or blue helmets.)

The latest of these sob-stories about the poor UN and how it cannot cope with all the responsibilities was an article in yesterday's International Herald Tribune by Thorsten Benner, Stephan Mergenthaler and Philipp Rottman, all researchers at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. The are also co-authors of the forthcoming paper "Learning to Build Peace? UN Peace Operations and Organisational Learning." Thinking it over I decided not to bother to order it. One article, which, I presume, encompasses the argument, is quite sufficient.

Incidentally, the GPPI's website talks of the organization’s research focusing on "effective and accountable governance". Yet the article by the three esteemed researchers does not mention the fact that the UN, whom they obviously hold in high esteem, is not accountable to anybody and that may be one important reason why it is so ineffective except to provide those who work for it with an extremely cushy life-style, whether legitimately or otherwise.

The argument, as outlined by the three worthy researchers is that the UN peacekeeping operation has become a little overstretched and, thus enmired in all sorts of problems.

The UN apparatus is severely overstretched, exhibiting increasingly serious pathologies ranging from sluggish deployments to shocking sexual abuse scandals.

Dear me, the things that happen and all of them pathologies, untouched by human hand or brain. The article proposes several solutions. Before we turn to them, let us look at what is causing the problems:

UN peacekeeping is the victim of its own success: Never before in their 60-year history have blue helmets been in such high demand. About 110,000 personnel are deployed in 20 peace operations around the world, more than a six-fold increase from 10 years ago.

That is a definition of success? We now send far more peacekeepers out, thus spending a great deal more money, not forgetting to make some of it disappear, than before, with no peace in sight anywhere, so we are successful? Let us suppose there is a patient on a saline drip, also needing blood transfusion. Do doctors and nurses say: gosh, he is doing really well, we have doubled the amount of blood we are pumping into him today and will probably double it again tomorrow. We shall also increase the amount of saline solution needed. Wow, what a success! I think not.

Then again, that is the only way most of the public sector and especially the transnational aspect of it measures success. How can we tell aid-giving is a success? By the amounts becoming ever larger. How do we know whether it is governments, NGOs or private organizations that are achieving more? By measuring which sector gives more. The idea that success would consist of countries no longer requiring aid or regions no longer requiring peace-keepers is simply outside the discussion. Well, it is time we started framing the debate in those terms.

So you are an organization dedicated to keeping peace? Right, how much peace have you kept, let alone created?

Mind you, some of the three researchers' suggestions are not stupid even if they seem to be unable to list all that "good work UN peacekeepers have done in exceptionally difficult circumstances over the past decade".

Darfur, they agree, is not one of those examples but, as they rightly point out, there really is no peace to keep there and the UN peacekeepers should not be sent into such places and situations. Fair enough but who should be sent in? One could argue that nobody should go in and we should simply stop sending aid to such entities as the Sudanese government. In fact, that is what we have argued on this blog.

On the other hand, if we believe that the world is one entity and we need to deal with crisis situations if for no other reason that these tend to spill over and create difficulties for us, then we have to decide who actually does go in. The UN, if it is not capable of sorting any really messy crises out should stop pretending it can do so and, above all, should screaming blue murder (if I may use that expression) when someone else tries to do something. Yes, I am referring to their routine anti-Americanism.

Messrs Benner, Mergenthaler and Rotman do not follow their own argument through in the way I did above because they are determined to find some way of making the UN workable, acceptable and popular. Not for nothing is the article called "Rescuing the blue helmets".

We are all guilty of making the blue helmets unsuccessful and unpopular except that, of course, they have been very successful and they would be more popular if only people recognized their success and gave them more money to steal use for the benefit of mankind.

Therefore, under present circumstances the UN should not deploy peacekeepers to Somalia or Chad, where the absence of political will among rival parties renders peacekeepers as little more than turquoise targets.

Key member states must also lower expectations on what peacekeepers can realistically achieve in Darfur. They must make it crystal clear to the public that the absence of peace in Darfur is not the fault of UN peacekeepers but a result of the international community's inability to force the conflict parties into a lasting political settlement.

I cannot quite see what it is the UN complaining about. After all, it explains to all and sundry that it is the international community and those nasty Yanks go against said international community when they do not accept the UN's guidance.

“In addition, UN members urgently need to invest in the infrastructure for peace operations worldwide. Resources need to match the grandiose rhetoric and ambitious goals set out in Security Council mandates. This includes seriously enlarging the UN's standby blue helmet capacity - with a clear manpower commitment on the part of the United States, Canada and Europe, not just Asian and African states who currently supply the vast majority of peacekeepers.

It also means expanding the team of rapidly deployable police officers and complementing it with a team of judicial and legal experts who can play a critical role in struggling peace operations worldwide.

UN members should also approve a permanent cadre of civilian post-conflict reconstruction professionals. Last but not least, UN members need to boost the Secretariat's ability to gather and analyze intelligence, develop doctrine, draw lessons and provide training. All governments should have an interest in ensuring that their own soldiers, police and civilian experts on loan with the UN have access to the best information, guidance and training.

I suggest the three authors do a little research into American constitutional history and public opinion, including military opinion, which regards it unconstitutional to have American servicemen and women wearing the uniform of another state and obey another command structure. Their Commander-in-Chief is accountable to the people of the United States, being the President of the country. Even if Senator Obama is elected (and anything is possible in a democracy) he will find it hard to change that attitude or even the constitutional decisions behind it. He will also have to find out how long a presidential term is but that is another story, not much reported by the British media.

Furthermore, the three researchers seem not to have grasped an important point. UN peacekeeping is a form of subsidy to the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. By putting blue helmets on their soldiers and sending them to do what they will in various trouble spots, such as DR Congo (not mentioned in this article) the countries in question acquire money to pay them and shiny new equipment to give them. Does the Global Public Policy Institute want to bring this system to and end?

Apart from that there is little here except a call on the developed countries who are financing the whole shebang to hand over yet more money to a corrupt and unaccountable organization. Then everything will be hunky-dory.

There is only one more thing to add to this sorry tale. The new SecrGen for Peacekeeping Operations is one Alan Le Roy, who has laboured hard in the French public sector.

After serving in the private sector as a petroleum engineer, he joined the public service as Sous-préfet, then as Counsellor at the Cour des comptes (French Audit Office). He is currently Conseiller Maître à la Cour des comptes and has served since September last year as Ambassador in charge of the Union for the Mediterranean Initiative – a proposed community of European Union member States and countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea which is set to be established next month.

He has previously served the world body as Deputy to the UN Special Coordinator for Sarajevo and Director of Operations for the restoration of essential public services. He also went on missions for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Mauritania and was appointed UN Regional Administrator in Kosovo (West Region).

After having been National Coordinator for the Stability Pact for South-east Europe in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was appointed EU Special Representative in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. He was subsequently appointed Assistant Secretary for Economic and Financial Affairs in the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, before serving as the French Ambassador to Madagascar.

Somehow, I don't quite see him sorting the mess out.

Interesting developments in Ulster

In The Daily Telegraph today, with comment by Conservative Home , this has fascinating implications not only for the UK but elsewhere in the world.

We'll write about it in detail later today.

COMMENT THREAD

Gullible or not?

Contrary to popular belief, we do not go out of our way to pick holes in the output of sundry journos. However, increasingly often, it seems, their claims are so outrageous – or their writing so gullible – that we simply cannot leave them without comment.

Storming straight into both categories goes the latest offering from Laura Clout of The Daily Telegraph who today tells us that, "A series of huge solar farms in the Sahara could supply the whole of Europe with clean electricity".

This is according to "EU scientists" with a madcap scheme so bizarre that we had to check the date so see whether the story had been left over from 1 April.

That aside, it is the detail that matters. Here we have the egregious Laura gravely informing us that the scheme proposed would require an estimated investment of around €450bn (£356bn), to "produce 100 GW by 2050, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in Britain."

For the record, peak consumption in Britain last winter was 60 GW but, only last month we were conveying an estimate from Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK, that the UK alone needs more than 120 GW capacity by 2020.

This tells you that we have another inhabitant of the land of the fairies. With Clout twittering away about 100 GW supplying the "whole of Europe" by 2050, we see that just the UK would need 20 percent more than that – thirty years earlier.

The fatuity of her piece really comes home, however, when you realise that, currently, European nations operate 197 nuclear power plant units with a capacity of 170 GW, and that accounts for one fifth of total capacity. By that reckoning, Europe works on about 850 GW, yet this lady is happy to run a story suggesting that the whole of Europe can be satisfied with 100 GW. In fact, by 2050, Europe will probably need in the order of 1000 GW, if not more.

Even then, our Laura has not finished. Through her story, she conveys the idea that this wonderful source of electricity could actually work out cheaper than we are currently paying – a highly dubious proposition. Clearly, she has not done any maths on the capital cost. At £356bn for the scheme, this works out at roughly twice the cost required to build nuclear power plants to produce the same amount of electricity.

What is more, there is one other minor problem with this scheme, which Clout does not seem to mention. Solar power, strangely enough, depends on the sun. That is fine as far as it goes, but – unless you know different – the sun does not shine during the night. During the hours of darkness – which is when we get peak demand – there would have to be 100 percent back-up from conventional generation.

Only yesterday, we were writing about green illiteracy and here again we have another classic example - from the same journalist who, recently told us that the cold wet summer was attributable to global warming.

And yes, it does matter. Even now, broadsheets like The Telegraph carry a certain amount of authority. This sort of garbage, therefore, will be believed by some, supporting the general ignorance of the extent of the failure of our energy policy. We really do deserve better from our serious newspapers.

COMMENT THREAD

Global mismanagement

While European Union member states, individually and collectively, seem intent on wiping out their productive economies through their regulatory obsession – in the main "guided" by global warming paranoia - there is a comfortable assumption that affected industries can move to more benign regulatory environments. Alternatively, we can take up the slack by importing primary commodities (or finished goods) from elsewhere in the world.

Certainly, we have seen industries like cement production and aluminium smelting – caught between the vice of the EU's emission trading scheme and higher energy costs, top-loaded by diverse climate change levies – threatening to relocate. But, it seems, this is not by any means an easy option. Productions systems around the world are undergoing their own stresses and there may be very little spare capacity to make up for the EU's determined bid for economic suicide.

That, at least, is one possible inference from a very recent Reuters survey on copper and aluminium production. This tells us that "sluggish copper mine output and disruptions in Latin America" have wiped out an expected surplus this year, while energy supply problems have cut a predicted aluminium surplus.

The agency's findings are based on a poll of 22 commodity analysts around the world carried out over the past month. It shows the 41-million-ton per year aluminium market only produced a slight surplus of 148,500 tonnes in 2008 compared with 325,000 in the January survey and, for 2009, the market is expecting a deficit of 144,500 "due to power problems". Similarly, the copper market is in deficit to the tune of 68,000 tonnes this year versus an expected surplus of 160,000 January.

Inherent problems have been exacerbated by a strike in Peru, the world's second largest copper producer, taking futures prices to a record $8,940 a tonne in July. Strikes have also hit the world's number one producer Chile, and there has also been a cut in production from China.

Analysts now believe that falling ore grades, delays in bringing new projects online, rising capital expenditure and labour unrest would persistently keep the raw materials market tight.

Equally worrying is the energy-intensive aluminium industry. A shortage of electricity in China and South Africa reduced the expected surplus in both 2008 and 2009 and, when energy accounts for 45 percent of the production of aluminium, tightness of supply cannot help but have a knock-on effect.

In isolation, this survey is bad enough but we also see another report forecasting a 100 million tonnes shortfall of coal in South Africa by 2017, unless the government takes urgent action to secure local supplies.

The South African state electricity company generates about 87 percent of its power from coal and the government may restrict exports to ease a national power shortage. The country is the biggest supplier of coal to European power plants and there is growing demand from India.

Electricity supply difficulties in South Africa are by no means new and, last March, Barclays Capital was reporting that a "global shortage of electric generating capacity" was "dramatically curbing world metal production" - amounting to just under 1 million tons.

Aluminium, in particular, is singled out. Production has been the hardest hit by the world-wide shortage of electric generating capacity, with Barclays estimating that this year alone, shortages of electricity have caused the loss of nearly 800,000 tons of aluminium production.

South Africa was one of the problem countries, alongside Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and Thailand, all of which had "critically low levels of power reserves," leading Barclays to suggest that the shortage of production was "a trend expected to continue for years." The result would be a sustained commodity price hikes.

In South Africa, the electricity supply problems also extend to the production of precious metals, placing supply constraints on gold and platinum. These are also driving up prices in this sector and power is rationed and mines are being forced to make unscheduled shut-downs.

And, what is troubling South Africa also extends to the rest of the continent. Last year, IHT was reporting that energy shortages were hampering development throughout Africa, with frequent power outages being experienced in Zambia and perhaps 25 of the 44 sub-Saharan nations face crippling electricity shortages. This, some experts are saying, is an "unprecedented" power crisis.

With all this happening around the world, messing around with our own power supplies, and driving major production plants offshore by a surge of regulation, does not seem the most intelligent strategy that one could devise. In the context of what appear to be global supply constraints, more enlightened administrations might want to be considering actively encouraging the retention of strategic industrial capacity.

Instead, though, we have the European Union and a claque of member state leaders in the thrall of a shared obsession, determined to add to the crisis rather than relieve it.

COMMENT THREAD

Green illiteracy

With the advent of the London Motor Show, more than a few journos are twittering about the new "green" Hummer, mentioned in passing by The Guardian and given pride of place by our favourite paper.

What allows this sudden conversion to "green" credentials is the use of biodiesel, which the manufacturers "insist" is far more environmentally-friendly than using conventional petrol – a claim which is accepted uncritically by far too many hacks.

Would that they have read our piece on the Great biofuel con where we report that the production of such fuels from conventional food crops can be as little as 69 percent fuel efficient. That means, of course, that for every unit of energy put into the production of the fuel, you get just over two-thirds back – meaning that the conversion of a vehicle to biodiesel ends up with it using even more energy.

To be fair, Car Magazine refers to the Hummer as the "All-American dinosaur" and Greenbiz notes sourly that, "there are more than a few companies that … are trying to put green lipstick on a pig by making environmental marketing claims that far outweigh the size of their efforts."

But the bigger problem is the "green illiteracy" brought about by the lazy shorthand of journalists. Recycling is always regarded as "green" even though, for many items, the energy inputs required for collection, sorting and processing exceed the energy recovered, making it more energy-efficient to go for landfill. Yet landfill is always styled as "environmentally damaging", or some such.

Similarly, the idea of electric cars is fast becoming the idée fixe for the chatterati, lauded yesterday by that economic illiterate Gordon Brown, who wants Britain to be the "electric car capital of Europe".

It takes very little intellectual effort to work out that conversion of fossil fuels (still the main source of electricity) to electric power involves a massive conversion loss, the distribution loses more and then even more losses are involved in battery charging and conversion back to usable power.

Various sources quote an overall efficiency of between 20-25 percent, with masses of other sources claiming internal combustion energy efficiency is as low as 15 percent. Such is the miasma of claim and counter-claim that it is very difficult to work out where exactly the truth lies, although there are some claims that high-efficiency internal combustion engines can deliver 30 percent or more. The science, as they say, is far from settled.

Of more immediate importance, however, is the prospect of real power shortages as the generation infrastructure crumbles, yet here we have Mr Brown advocating an increased burden on the system. This simply cannot be sensible.

All of this points, once again, to a fundamental incoherence in public policy, which is worrying enough in its own right. But when the media also displays its own brand of green illiteracy, peddling uncritically the received wisdom, we stand at risk of sinking into the morass without even being aware of what is happening.

COMMENT THREAD

Meetings in the east

EUBusiness reports the AFP story that there is a meeting due between the two presidents, Kaczynski and Klaus, in Prague tomorrow (Thursday). The main, indeed the only item on the agenda is the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty.

But a senior Polish official dismissed reports that Kaczynski was there to try to influence Klaus's position on the treaty.

"The debate on the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon is following its own course in the Czech Republic," Mariusz Handzlik, Director of Poland's Office of Foreign Affairs, told AFP in Warsaw.

"President Klaus' position is well known. But the problem remains to be solved in Ireland, not in the Czech Republic or in Poland," he added.

So, if President Kaczynski, the remaining twin, is not trying to influence President Klaus, what is there to discuss?

As it happens, the Czech President's powers are limited in this respect. The Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, has already made it clear that he was in favour of the treaty going through, assuming that the Constitutional Court decides on that side. If it so does, there will be nothing President Klaus will be able to do as it will be to the two Houses of Parliament to vote it through (as well as the decision on the radar system).

President Kaczynski, having announced with great pomp and circumstance that the Treaty was dead (a bit like Marlow and the doornail) changed his mind after a conversation with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who clearly has necromancic powers. Certainly, the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty was once again alive in Poland.

The Czech Republic takes over the Presidency in January 2009 and, clearly, does not want to be in the embarrassing position of being one of the few countries holding up the ratification. Not that it is likely to have gone through by then. Will it happen before the next Toy Parliament elections?

We have a problem

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has dropped us a little leaving present for the last day of parliament before, they and the rest of the MPs dashed off for their much-deserved 11-week break.

The committee (prop. Tim Yeo) told the government that it must set a deadline for coal-fired power stations to install technology massively to cut their emissions, or they must be shut down.

Lovingly recorded by The Independent, the committee also tells us that "urgent and ambitious" steps were needed to develop measures to capture and store underground the carbon produced by burning fossil fuels.

And, despite the fact that the technology is not commercially available – to say nothing of being hideously expensive – new coal-fired power stations should not be permitted unless they were "carbon capture ready" and undertook to fit the capture technology as soon as it was available, on pain of being shut down if they did not.

That the MPs on this committee can be so cavalier about the prospect of shutting down vital power stations, on the basis of the imagined harm they might do to the environment, readily demonstrates quite how detached from reality they are.

While one of the most pressing problems we face is the imminent shortage of generating capacity, only someone living in the land of the fairies could even begin to contemplate reducing our capacity still further – or hampering attempts to build new capacity.

Such is the land that these MPs live, however, so it is as well to remind ourselves that the obsession with the global warming is by no means confined to our legislators in the EU.

Mind you, it is probably no coincidence that Tim Yeo is also a rabid europhile, the love of the EU and climate change paranoia very often going together. But, that this man, as chairman of an influential committee, should be spouting such arrant nonsense definitely demonstrates that we have a serious problem – and it isn't global warming.

The picture of power station cooling towers, incidentally, is "uplifted" from The Independent - it is fascinating how the warmists so often show this type of picture to illustrate stories about carbon dioxide emissions. Do they not realise that their plumes are simply water vapour, or do they not care as long as they appear to make a point?

COMMENT THREAD

Proud of the Union

It is times like these which make you really proud to be a European citizen, a member of that glorious, expanding European Union, which can reach out with its "soft power" and bring peace and harmony to the rest of the world.

Thus with such glowing feelings do we applaud our brave and far-sighted foreign ministers who gathered in Brussels today to slay the evil Mugabe, going far beyond the remit that even our own wise and experienced Mr Miliband asked for.

Following in the footsteps of our great leader, it was he, at great personal risk, decided to propose the "killer blow" of adding the names of a further 36 Zimbabwean officials to the EU sanctions list, in a manner which could not help but strike mortal terror into the breast of the foul dictator in Harare.

But so impressed with the prescience of Mr Miliband have been our other 26 gifted foreign ministers that they have not only taken on board this brilliant plan, but have gone even further. Not for them a mere 36 names added to the list. They have made it 37 and gone the extra mile kilometre, adding the names of two companies linked to the Harare government.

Clearly, it was the prospect of this terror that brought Mugabe to heel and forced him into talks with Morgan Tsvangirai, agreeing to sign up to power-sharing talks in a bid to pave a path towards lasting peace in Zimbabwe.

Deny the European brilliance though Mugabe may, it is very clear to all of us who so dearly love the European Union that, having brought peace to Europe for over sixty years, our magnificent leaders have now taken the decisive step in bringing peace and tranquillity to the troubled continent of Africa.

You must excuse me now while I rush off to collect my cheque sing "Ode to Joy".

COMMENT THREAD

Another return

Some readers may have noticed that I have been blogging lightly recently. The reason was preoccupation with other work. That is now finished and I can return to duties though the boss, as ever, managed to fill those gaps.

I shall not write about Obama's trip to Europe as I think I should follow neo-neocon's example and start weaning myself off the subject. Instead, here is one of my favourite subjects, the behaviour of that defender of the nation state, Russia, under its new President, who just happens to say exactly what the old President, now Prime Minister, said.

After the Czech Government signed an agreement on the placing of a radar tracking system in the country Russia voiced her displeasure (one wonders if it is fear of that displeasure that is making the Poles so hesitant - an interesting historic reversal, if true) by cutting down the amount of oil, agreed and contracted for, that would be allowed to flow.

Oil supplies dropped about 40 percent on July 9, the day after the Czech government signed the antimissile deal with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Prague, and have remained at that level since.

Never mind. Putin has stormed to the Czechs' rescue. Well, sort of. According to the article he has instructed Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is in charge of energy policy, to make sure that all partners remain satisfied.

Apparently, there was a certain amount of discussion between the two as to why this rather regrettable situation might have arisen. Nothing to do with the anti-missile deal, which was not even mentioned.

The Czechs appear to have crossed their neighbour in another way as well:

The two then ruminated on the possible causes for the shortfall, according to the report. Putin said he agreed with Sechin's conclusion that "the immediate blame is not on Russian oil suppliers" but rather on unspecified offshore oil trading companies that deal in Russian oil.

Sechin noted that the Czech Republic had declined to sign a energy agreement proposed by the Russians last year.

Putin added that, as a result, the Czechs were purchasing oil "not directly from Russian producers, but through offshore companies."

Russian oil supplies should be back to the agreed levels by August but, it seems, that unlike Germany, the Czech Republic is looking round for alternative suppliers.

Incidentally, as far as I understand it, the much-heralded and much-trumpeted Obama visit will not take in any East European capital. I wonder why that is. Have his 300 foreign policy advisers not managed to tell him that Berlin is no longer the frontline? Ooops, I have failed at the first hurdle.

It's all down to those "modalities"

Sigh … the WTO talks win out. This is one area where there is no substitute for real expertise, and the number of people who really understand what is going on you can count on the fingers of one hand.

Yesterday, Mandelson opened the bidding on the part of the EU, offering to reduce its proposed tariffs agricultural products by 60 percent from the 54 percent originally on offer.

This was immediately denounced by Brazil as "gimmickry", with Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim telling reporters it was "meaningless". This was confirmed by Mandelson's fellow EU commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel, who said the offer was "nothing new", while French trade minister Anne-Marie Idrac explained later that the difference between the two figures was whether tropical products were included in the tariff cut calculations or not.

This is the nature of the beast – arcane detail and play on figures and words, that need prolonged analysis before you know where you stand. But the consensus seems to have been that the "technical discussions" have come up with, "nothing more, nothing less," according to Idrac.

Mandelson then pitches in, admitting that the 60 percent proposal was a "reiteration" of the EU's position, the great man offering the explanation to journalists that, "The more we clarify, the clearer it becomes exactly what we are offering in this round."

Today, it has been the American’s turn for grandstanding, with US trade reprentative Susan Schwab offering to reduce its “trade-distorting farm subsidies” to $15 billion a year provided large emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China open their markets further to imports of industrial products.

The proposed cut is $2 billion deeper than the US promised in June last year, but it is currently more than the US actually spends on agricultural support, which bottomed out at about $8 billion last year.

Brazil, which is one of the key developing nations in the talks, was unimpressed by Schwab's offer and said the US had to go further. "It's a nice try but it's still too high," one member of the Brazilian delegation said.

So for the opening sparring, where gesture politics takes the floor, but WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy – formerly the EU's trade negotiator – chirps that negotiators have "developed a clearer sense of the key issues at the political level that need to be resolved".

They will now turn to the so-called "modalities" - the key percentages for tariff cuts that would form the basis for any comprehensive deal, with Lamy leading the delegates into "detailed text-based work" on both agriculture and industrial goods. Then, and only then, will discussions start on possible solutions to the outstanding issues, with revised proposals released "probably by the end of the week."

You can see why the media largely turns away from reporting these negotiations. Watching paint dry might be more rewarding, except that this is serious stuff.

Taking it very seriously indeed yesterday were Irish farmers, who greeted Sarkozy's arrival in Dublin with a spirited demonstration, as more than 1,200 converged on the government buildings. In honour of their guest, that had decked six tractors in the red and blue of France by way of welcome its president.

On the other hand, bad guy not at the party was our Peter, with the farmers chanting "Mandelson Out" at a fever pitch as Sarkozy's convoy arrived. One man among the protest groups was arrested for throwing two eggs at the cars. And, such is the temperature that farmers' representatives are making it clear to Sarkozy that a "sell-out" of Irish agriculture at the WTO talks would leave most farmers and rural Ireland voting No in any future Lisbon referendum.

This leaves Mandelson in a bit of a mess as he is readily admitting that Europe's farmers will be "major losers" from a new world trade deal. Cutting back tariffs and subsidies will certainly leave them more exposed to world competition and will give Sarkozy plenty of room to make mischief.

Where precisely we go from here, though, is anyone's guess – it all depends on those "modalities" – not something you're going to see on the front pages.

COMMENT THREAD

Back to the garden

It has long been my view that the main trouble with our MPs is the frenetic lifestyle they lead in their artificial bubble at Westminster. It does not give them time to think – not that many of them are capable of that activity anyway.

From my lofty detachment 200 miles away from what is laughingly called the "centre of power", things sometimes look very different but, most of all, the ability as a "home worker" gives me the opportunity to ponder over the day's issues, to think them through in the calm and privacy of one's own home.

The real secret weapon, however, is the garden. A tiny postage stamp of a plot, we have nevertheless over the years turned it into an oasis of calm, styled as a forest clearing, with a stone bench from which one can retreat into one's inner thoughts (pictured).

It is not at all difficult then to imagine oneself in a completely different world, and let the thought processes stew, before climbing back up that "wooden hill" to the office, ready to do battle with the world again, through that gaping portal of the internet.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't help. Despite the thinness of the media fare today – one gets used to flipping through the newspaper and then turning to the net for more information – there is quite a lot going on … too much. The situation in Geneva, with the WTO talks is getting really interesting – and needs some serious treatment.

There is a fascinating interview in Defence News with Society of British Aerospace Companies' chief executive, Ian Godden, which touches on European defence integration. This needs some careful analysis. Then there is the situation in Zimbabwe and, of great interest to us is a recent article in the Zimbabwe Independent about China's role in African politics.

These are just three of the things we would like to do today, but to do them justice, any one will take what amounts to a day's work. And then there is the dog. Daughter has decided to take the family to France, leaving us dogsitting a huge black Labrador called Jeeves. And he likes walkies …

Choices … choices. Back to the garden, methinks.

COMMENT THREAD

Where Africa leads …

Would our own politicians follow? Nice "spot" from House of Dumb.

COMMENT THREAD

One weeps …

Why they ever let Rosa Prince near a newspaper is one of those modern mysteries that is beyond human ingenuity to resolve.

Styled as a "Political Correspondent" her talents (not) are well demonstrated in a piece she writes for our favourite newspaper, telling us that more than 30 waste incinerators are set to be built around the country as councils seek to avoid substantial hikes in landfill taxes.

Under European Union rules, she adds, landfill charges are set to rise from £32 to £48 a ton by 2010, and local authorities have struggled to increase recycling rates to levels which would substantially reduce the rubbish mountain.

Then, apparently not making, the link – and heavily imbibing the received wisdom - she blandly tells us that, "Many are now said to be considering incineration as a means of replacing expensive and environmentally damaging landfill sights (sic)."

Er … even the Green Party admits that it costs only £30-50 to landfill a ton of mixed waste, compared with £90-190 to incinerate it. At top rate, therefore, you are talking about £98 per ton (but as low as £78 even with maximum tax), as against costs which start at £90 and go up to £190.

In fact, an industry estimate puts the cost at £12 per ton which makes the maximum landfill cost nearer £62 per ton, very much cheaper than incineration.

Clearly, therefore, cost is not the issue – and neither can landfill be considered "environmentally damaging". In many respects, it is the most environmentally friendly (and energy efficient) form of disposal known. This is more so if it is given its alternative label of "land reclamation" (pictured) and there is methane recovery in place – which currently provides 30 percent of our renewable energy.

The point, of course, is that Rosa Prince has missed the point. The reason why local authorities are being forced into building a vast network of waste incinerators is because the EU requires it. As pointed out by The Guardian last year, the infamous landfill directive lays down a hierarchy of options, starting with waste reduction and recycling, through incineration and thence to landfill, to be used when there is absolutely no other alternative.

And since the limits of recycling capacity have already been reached, local authorities have no option but to build their incinerators. Last year, the number was estimated at "in excess of 20" and now it seems to have grown to 30. All that is to achieve the 75 percent diversion from landfill required by 2010, which will cost us £5-8bn a year with an additional £10 billion infrastructure costs.

And, just to put the canard to bed that we are running out of landfill space, one enterprising blogger has done the maths. He writes:

We quarry about 260 million tonnes (mt) a year of land minerals, mostly limestone, granite and sand and gravel, plus 9mt a year of opencast coal. In terms of volume, that equates to new holes with a capacity of about 110 million cubic metres (mcm) a year. Our existing licensed holes have a capacity of about 700 mcm. We produce less than 100mcm of waste and refuse a year. The system, as scientists would say, is therefore in equilibrium.

The waste "crisis", therefore – says our man – has been created artificially by a combination of EU blind stupid regulation and the Labour government's cupidity (not that the Tories would be any different). Perhaps now, with the economic situation tightening, the general public will begin to see the madness of this scheme - a criminal waste of resources - when cheaper better alternatives are available.

But, as long as journos like Rosa Prince are allowed to write the story, the public is going to have difficulty understanding quite how badly they have been shafted.

COMMENT THREAD

An unprecedented amount of scrutiny …

That was Channel 4's own description of the reaction to its programme, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which has been subject to an Ofcom investigation, the results of which are published today.

The "warmist" Beeb is trying to spin it as a big deal, but the fact is that nothing in the programme "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence". That was despite 265 complaints having been received by Ofcom, including one 176-page document alleging 137 breaches of the Broadcasting Code.

The Broadcasting Code, we are told, requires Channel 4 to show "due impartiality" on "matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy".

The substance of the Ofcom finding was that the last segment of the programme, dealing with the politics of climate change, broke this obligation, It did not reflect a range of views, as required under the code. But the main portion of the film, on climate science, did not breach these rules.

Ofcom's logic, says the Beeb, is that "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007". This being so, it says, climate science was not "controversial" at the time of broadcast, so Channel 4 did not break regulations by broadcasting something that challenged the link.

Andrew Bolt, however, has a slightly different take on the issue. The Guardian, predicably, gives house room to an opposing view (no impartiality or "balance" there).

David Hughes of The Daily Telegraph notes that the climate change lobby tends to react like scalded cats should anyone have the temerity to question their assertion that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. So certain are they of the righteousness of their case that it has taken on the aura of a religious faith - and heresy will simply not be tolerated.

But, he observes, the programme was actually polemical and since when are polemics supposed to be impartial?

He, like us, does not recall Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" being impartial, or giving a voice to a range of views. But then, it has not yet been broadcast on British television. When or if it is, we shall have some fun.

COMMENT THREAD

Another one?

According to RIA, reporting from Buenos Aires, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus has confirmed that his country would be happy to host an interceptor missile base, if talks between Poland and the United States continue to stall. Hmm. Russia is not going to like this and anything Russia does not like Germany and France absolutely hate. In any case, what happened to the EU's common foreign policy?

A licence to print money

So, Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to sell its stake in the £2.5 billion London Array, the world's largest offshore wind farm, to Eon and Dong Energy, its former partners.

The utilities agreed to divide Shell's one-third stake evenly between them. Eon and Dong will now own 50 percent each.

This, we are told, "will be a relief" to the government, which has put wind at the heart of its renewable-energy agenda. When Shell announced its intention to quit the project in May, there were fears that Eon and Dong, a Nordic group, could scrap it altogether because of the soaring cost of building wind farms. However, the decision by Eon and Dong to buy out Shell means the scheme, already seven years in development, will almost certainly go ahead.

Since Paul Golby, chief executive of Eon UK, had already called the project's economics "marginal at best" as prices for turbines, ships to install them and personnel have soared to record levels, one wonders what might have changed.

The answer, not supplied by The Sunday Times, is to be found elsewhere - the "magic potion" being a change in the arcane subsidy arrangements which turn wind farming into a license to print money.

Uneconomic by any measure, the whole industry is buoyed up by a raft of subsidies and other inducements, in the forefront of which is the Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC) which requires energy generators to contribute to a pot, paid out to wind farmers for the electricity they produce, thereby overcoming their inherent lack of economic viability.

Thus do we find that offshore wind farms, which are even less economic than their onshore equivalents, are to benefit from a 50 percent higher subsidy, lifting these installations from their "marginal" status into a profitable enterprise.

It is worth, in this context, revisiting a piece published in The Sunday Times last January, headed. "Wind farms turn huge profit with help of subsidies". This tells us that the "lavish subsidies and high electricity prices have turned Britain's onshore wind farms into an extraordinary moneyspinner, with a single turbine capable of generating £500,000 of pure profit per year."

Ofgem is then quoted. Having done its sums, it says: "We calculate that renewable energy subsidies will add £60 to consumer bills this year and that will keep rising." This is nothing more than Booker has been constantly "banging on" about, the latest instalment of his exploration into the fantasy world of subsidy wind farming coming in his column yesterday.

There, he offers "final proof" that Gordon Brown is living on another planet, our revered prime minister having boasted to last week's EU "Mediterranean summit" that "Britain's North Sea could be the Gulf of the future for offshore wind".

The absurdity of this claim is readily apparent when it is realised that the 3,000 giant wind turbines than Brown wants built round our coasts will produce a mere 3,000MW, compared with the single Drax coal-fired power station in Yorkshire, which has a capacity of 3,800MW. Thus the entire output of Mr Brown's "Gulf of the future" would be less than that of a single conventional power station.

Compare also the cost of building his turbines. Estimated at £2.3 million per MW, would be at least £20 billion (the £10 million cost of the solitary 3.5MW turbine recently built in Cromarty, Firth, ran out at £2.8 million per MW), plus the cost of building up to a dozen gas-fired power stations just to provide backup for when the wind is not blowing, and we could get considerably more electricity from two new nuclear power stations at a fraction of the cost.

The trouble is that, if Mr Brown is living on the Planet Krypton, he has, alas, been joined by David Cameron and our entire political class. Not one MP, it seems, dares question a policy the total insanity of which they could work out for themselves just by spending 20 minutes on the internet.

And therein lies the tragedy. The entire political class has bought into the myth of "renewable energy" – or acquiesced - which means the fantasy must be tested to destruction before someone finally pulls the plug. By then, of course, we will not need to do that – there will be no electricity coming though the wires any more, as we sit in stygian gloom waiting for sanity to prevail.

COMMENT THREAD

Welcome to Hectare

Many a happy hour was spent wandering through the old town – a kaleidoscope of smells, sounds and sights that never failed to entrance. And now, according to The Daily Telegraph, the EU has banned it. Never more Acre, it must from 2010 become Hectare, although there is no word as to whether the town will have to increase its size by two-and-a-half times.

This was, incidentally, the date when we were to go fully metric, with the abolition of all supplementary measurements – so that it would have become a criminal offence for a trader, even by way of information, to tell shoppers the Imperial equivalents of the weights of goods they were buying.

This was also to be the date on which the pint disappeared but the EU, conscious of the PR disaster which awaited it, backed off from this high profile measure – although we can no longer buy pints of milk in our shops.

But, true to form, in its sly, underhand way, it works at the margins, gradually eroding the very basis of our national identity. All the time it tells us it is celebrating diversity, while doing its best ruthlessly to eradicate anything which is distinctively national.

One wonders, though, whether the Israelis have been informed of the change, and whether the travel agents are preparing to change all their brochures, on pain of being locked up for using the soon to be prohibited word.

Oh! And, by the way … the Tories are "angry"!

Mark Francois, the Shadow Europe Minister said: "It is this kind of pointless interference into the nooks and crannies of our national life that frustrates people about the EU. Whether we use hectares or acres should be a matter for Britain to decide, not the EU."

And who got us into this mess?

COMMENT THREAD

Excused trade

There was once a time when trade issues were a central part of British politics, with the potential to bring down governments and split parties.

It is yet another measure of the deadening effect of our membership of the EU, therefore, that one of the most important political issues of this decade – with massive implications for decades to come – does not even register on the domestic political scene.

We write, of course, of the WTO negotiations in Geneva today on the Doha Development Agenda which are widely considered to be make-or-break, having struggled through tortuous and labyrinthine haggling for nearly seven years.

But, with trade negotiations being an exclusive EU competence, this is not an issue for debate between our political parties and, taking a cue from them, it is attracting distressingly little coverage and comment from our own media, and next to none from our own self-obsessed political blogosphere.

Nevertheless, the issue is covered quite widely in the European press, no more so than in Deutsche Welle which retails the latest pronouncement from EU commission president Barroso, as he calls for the parties to reach a "balanced deal", and warns that emerging economies too had to make a major contribution.

The sub-text here is the EU commission's own attempt to break the deadlock between the developing nations' demand for lower farm subsidies and agricultural tariffs in the developed world. In return, industrialised countries are pressing that developing countries reduce import duties and make their markets more accessible to imported services and manufactured goods.

So far, the talks have been stalled on the extent to which developing countries like Brazil, India and China are prepared to open their markets, combined with a general reluctance of the "big three", the United States, the EU and Japan, to reduce their agricultural subsidies.

The precise details are not for mere mortals but suffice it to say that the pressure is on because, from next January, the United States will have a new administration and a new Congress whose attitudes toward trade liberalisation are "uncertain". If a deal is not struck now, it may be many more years before the parties even get close to an agreement.

On the other hand, there are considerable "noises off" from a protectionist French President Nicolas Sarkozy – with Merkel quietly lending support – over the degree to which the EU is prepared to cut subsidies, hence the recent spat between Sarkozy and Mandelson.

Waiting in the wings are also the Irish farmers who are convinced that the EU is prepared to go further than they would accept, with the WTO talks having featured strongly in the recent Irish referendum. It is probably no surprise, therefore, that Sarkozy has chosen this day for his delayed visit to Ireland.

Interestingly, French trade minister Anne-Marie Idrac is calling for a "new balance", but you can be assured that the French idea of "balance" is a million miles away from that set out by the commission, even if the same word is used. Certainly, the French are wholly opposed to giving away any more concessions to developing countries, and are struggling to maintain the current level of EU agricultural subsidies.

Whatever emerges over the next few days, therefore, will be complex and difficult to assess, with the different parties spinning heavily as they seek to gain maximum advantage for themselves.

Fortunately for our political classes, since we have dumped our trade policy on the EU, our politicians can carry on with their own internal bickering, untroubled by details which, over time, have the potential to change the world. They have been "excused trade".

COMMENT THREAD

A mixed blessing

We've been getting rumours for some weeks now that "a personality" was intending to start up a new eurosceptic party, headed by none of the "usual suspects".

Now, it appears that the cat is out of the bag, with an article in The Sunday Telegraph which has the "hero" of the Irish referendum, Declan Ganley, stepping up to the plate.

According to this article, Ganley is planning to field more than 400 candidates for next June's euro elections, in all the 26 countries – including Britain – where voters have had no direct say on the treaty.

The man claims to be starting to raise £75 million from online donations to run candidates in all 12 of Britain's European parliamentary constituencies, and in seats throughout the EU. As his base, he will use his existing platform, Libertas, turning it from a straightforward pressure group into a fully-fledged political party.

Ganley's message is a simple one: "We will tell people that Libertas is the box you put your X in if you want to vote 'No' to the Lisbon Treaty. It's clear, it's simple," he says. "The message will be: we are now giving you a referendum and it's going to take place in June of next year at the European elections."

The Sunday Telegraph thinks this plan "will unsettle the Brussels establishment," but it is more likely – in Britain at least – that it will unsettle the existing parties. Both the Conservatives and UKIP will be pitching for the eurosceptic vote next June. And like Ganley, UKIP has high hopes of turning the election into a referendum on the constitutional Lisbon treaty.

We have, of course, been here before with Jimmy Goldsmith's Referendum Party in the 1997 general election. But, as he had a fighting fund reputed to be in the order of £20 million, Ganley's £75 million spread over 23 countries begins to look rather modest.

Further, Goldsmith captured the mood of the moment – effectively committing both Labour and the Conservatives to a referendum on the euro. Ganley has no prospect of gaining such a clear outcome. Neither – for all his recent fame in Ireland – does he have the charisma which gave the Goldsmith's campaign its initial boost and had volunteers flocking to the colours.

Ganley's biggest handicap, though – at least from persepctive of the hard core eurosceptics – is that he openly supports the European Union, confining his objections only to the constitutional Lisbon treaty, on which platform we are told he hopes his new party will return 80 MEPs to Brussels. But, in distancing himself from the eurosceptic movement in Britain and setting himself up in competition with the Conservatives, he could well find it difficult to make any progress at all.

The worse case scenario is that he could split the vote, making the euro elections something less of a disaster for Gordon than they might otherwise be. Another possible scenario – if his campaign does build a head of steam – is that he could leach votes from UKIP, robbing it of any chance of getting any MEPs at all for the next parliamentary session.

That makes Ganley's intervention a very mixed blessing indeed.

COMMENT THREAD

Our "strategic partners"

The grainy picture above, of uncertain age, shows one of the delightful ancient traditions of the Chinese government – a firing squad for Tibetan prisoners. The rest are too horrific to show.

But, of course, such barbaric rituals are now redundant. Instead, the government has acquired a fleet of modern "execution vans" – built with the aid of an Italian company. These are parked outside the courts ready to act the moment a verdict is handed down. The record is seven minutes between sentence and execution.

The merits of such a procedure are obvious. A lethal injection preserves the vital organs allowing the bodies to be rushed to the local hospitals where the organs are extracted for use in the growing trade in spare body parts, "donated" by their former owners to a health service which is not available to ordinary Chinese.

This is the country to which the great and the good will flock for the opening of the Olympics in a few weeks time and it is that self-same country which Booker highlights in his column today - the supporter of that bloody dictator in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.

Picking up on our work, Booker reports on how Mugabe is now the proud owner of a palatial £4.5 million mansion in Harare and a similarly lavish country hideaway, each fitted with the latest electronic security systems, including anti-aircraft missiles.

Thus he highlights that which our revered foreign secretary fails to point out – that the corrupt and violent Zimbabwean regime is bolstered by a similarly corrupt and violent regime in China, all on the back of shady trade deals, raping the mineral wealth of the continent.

The point which Booker makes so powerfully though is the contrast between this and our own Government's response to Mugabe's tyranny. Since Zimbabwe is included in the 28 areas of "common foreign policy" we have ceded to the EU, we can do nothing except in conjunction with our EU colleagues.

Last Monday we saw the humiliating spectacle of Gordon Brown pleading with the EU's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to add 36 more names to the list of Zimbabweans on whom the EU has imposed pathetically ineffectual "personal sanctions" and, this week, we are to see Gollum (aka David Miliband) creeping over to Brussels to ask his fellow EU foreign ministers to cement in a deal which simply goes to underline our impotence.

Meanwhile, we remind you once again of the state of play between the EU and that wonderful, liberal society that is China. This, as readers will recall, was articulated during Tony Blair's visit to China in September 2005, in his capacity as EU president. Then, at the 8th EU-China Summit, he signed a joint statement with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, part of which said:

The two sides underlined their commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights and continued to place a high value on the EU-China human rights dialogue. They underlined the importance of concrete steps in the field of human rights and reaffirmed their commitment to further enhance co-operation and exchanges in this field on the basis of equality and mutual respect, while making efforts to achieving more meaningful and positive results on the ground.

This was the infamous agreement which made the EU and China "strategic partners". Writes Booker, it is only too obvious which "partner's" strategy is proving the more successful.

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