EU Referendum Blog

The Harrogate Agenda – more debate

2012-07-27T02:58:34.8635628-07:00

Following on from the local government piece, Raedwald publishes a few thoughts, and draws our attention to a report on localism by Simon Jenkins.

Although a little dated (2004), it is worth a read, especially Chapter 7. I will reserve judgement until I come back to the issue of local government, but would appreciate comments. Witterings, meanwhile, offers some interesting points.

There are times when only German will do

2012-07-27T07:34:22.6709283-07:00

With the debt crisis in Spain escalating, this headline left untranslated probably best expresses what the Spanish leaders are doing.

In fact, they are "wavering", while Merkel and Hollande both, in a joint statement, have said they "are determined to do everything possible to protect the eurozone".

The euro is truly domed.

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2012-07-27T08:07:55.2689792-07:00

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2012-07-27T08:09:48.4350062-07:00

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The Harrogate Agenda – direct democracy, part I

2012-07-27T12:32:11.1431857-07:00

There are good reasons for being cautious about direct democracy, when the primary instrument of this form of people power is the referendum. It was, after all Hitler who in 1938 used the referendum to cement single-party rule and confirm his dictatorship.

More recent experiences demonstrate the fragility of the process, not least with the 1975 referendum on the EEC where the question was rigged and the campaign weighted in favour of the "yes" proposition.

However, those who would thereby dismiss any idea of extending the role of referendums might care to reflect that the parliamentary process has hardly covered itself in glory. That there are flaws in both is not an argument for rejecting either.

Explored at our Harrogate Conference, however, were particular applications for the referendum process, the first of which – the subject of this essay – was in relation to the approval of legislation.

The anomaly we have at the moment is that all Bills, once they have gone through their procedures in Parliament, require Royal Assent before they take effect and become full-blown Acts. The Queen is thus sovereign, and the people don't get a look in.

If we are to take our declaration of sovereignty at face value, no law should be passed without the approval of the people. To take effect, every law must be given "public assent", the obvious mechanism being the referendum.

The practicalities of this, however, are daunting. We could hardly have a situation where almost daily at times, there could be a referendum. Nor would it be appropriate to have to require multiple approvals in one voting session. That would create its own difficulties and distortions.

What we could do, as an alternative, is borrow from the procedures used for statutory instruments, where regulations and the like go through either positive or negative assent.

For the bulk of such legislation, negative assent applies. The law is "laid" before Parliament for forty days, during which it can be "prayed against", following which a debate may be held and a vote held. If there is no "prayer", then the law is deemed approved.

Using a variation of this procedure, we could have a system where, following parliamentary approval of a Bill – with or without Royal Assent – there is a "window" where a public objection may be lodged, requiring a threshold level of signatures.

Should the threshold be reached, then there follows a referendum. In the event of a "no" vote, the law is voided. It does not take effect.

This then leaves the "positive assent" procedure, where a statutory instrument requires a positive vote before it can become law. In the "public assent" content, this would apply to any constitutional Bills – those which have the effect of adding to or altering the constitution. Then, a referendum would automatically be required.

But that leaves statutory instruments, and also existing legislation. We'll deal with that in part II.

Eurocrash: last ditch or ready to ditch?

2012-07-27T14:35:23.7833217-07:00

Following Drahgi's intervention, with a promise of "whatever it takes", then backed by the joint statement from Merkel and Hollande to like effect, we now get Die Welt reporting that the ECB is preparing a large-scale intervention, and has an "inexhaustible source of money".

There are two ways of looking at this. One option is that the "colleagues" are preparing to ditch Greece – or perhaps something even more traumatic – and are therefore talking up the euro big time to hide their intentions from the market.

The other is that they really do have that pretty amazing rabbit ready to be plucked out of a hat, and they are going to astound us all with a brand new, cunning plan in order to mount a last-ditch rescue.

The Bundesbank, however, isn't playing ball, opposing any further government bond purchases by the ECB, or giving a banking license to the ESM.

Given that Germany has not ratified the ESM treaty, and can't do so until Karlsruhle has handed down its judgement in September, it is difficult to see how the Draghi plan can work. And the idea that there is suddenly a massive new line to credit that the ECB can tap into seems a little far-fetched.

Predictions in this game though are getting too hard to call. Possibly, the "colleagues" are trying to bluff the markets into supporting the euro. But if that is the game, it is a very dangerous play. Markets mislead can extract a terrible revenge.

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2013-01-24T09:55:01.0273437+00:00

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EU politics: tail wagging the dog

2013-01-24T10:19:11.6308593+00:00

Straight from FUD-factory central comes a piece which has "some" business leaders warning that the very idea of an EU referendum will "hurt investment", although it grudgingly concedes that other business leaders support the Cameron initiative.

Delightfully, the BBC photo-caption includes two of our keywords, "fear" and "uncertainty". We've yet to find an article with all three, but the FUD-hunters are on the case. It it's there, we will root it out.

What emerges from the BBC piece (and others), though, is the prominence given to the "business case" in EU affairs, as if what business persons had a greater say in how we are governed than us mere plebs. Not for the corporates must there be "uncertainty", even though we face that plague every month as we struggle to pay their CEOs' inflated wages.

Interestingly, this emphasis has historical roots. It stems from the Monnet genius of disguising political integration as an economic issue. Over term, it is a ploy the legacy media has fallen for, hook, line and sinker, so much so that that the BBC piece illustrated gets the "business" label. Similarly, most EU news generally finds its way into the business sections of the dead-tree media.

One of the great tricks of agenda setters, of course, is to frame an argument, and nothing serves the europhile cause better than framing the EU as an economic issue. That way, the "business leaders" naturally get a bigger say in what must happen.

However, whether we remain in the EU (and therefore have a referendum) is not a business matter. It is a political question of how we are governed, and belongs rightly to the people. Individuals in business should have no greater say than any other individual, and then as citizens which no special authority or weight.

The point here is that decoupling from political integration can be arranged so as to be economically neutral, or even advantageous. A transition from participation in the single market via the EU to the same level of participation within the EFTA/EEA framework covers the business need, following which "business leaders" should have no special status in the debate.

With that, we may find that many of these so-called business leaders are not actually speaking up for the business case, but have their own political agendas. Many are rent-seekers, arguing for a form of government which best serves their corporate preferences, better enabling them to milk their consumers.

What is "good for business" therefore, is not necessarily good for the people and much of the European Union is a corporate ramp. While they may weep and gnash their teeth in public about regulation, for instance, many corporates gleefully welcome their bonds, for the commercial advantages and the "certainty" it gives them.

Thus, over the long years that this campaign develops, one of the things we must not allow is for the debate to be hijacked by the business fraternity. What the likes of ex-thief Branson and his ilk have to say should have no more weight than any other individual.

This is a debate about government – about how we are governed. The greatest lie is that the EU is a trading bloc. It isn't. It is a supranational government, intent on political union. And, about that, business should mind its own business. We the people, and the people alone, should decide on whether we should want such a government.

Anything else is the tail wagging the dog.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: playtime over

2013-01-24T13:26:29.7021485+00:00

If Mr Cameron has judged it correctly, yesterday's euphoria over the announcement of an EU referendum will be sufficient to carry his party to victory at the 2015 general election. What happens at the euro-elections in the interim is of very little consequence.

With a Conservative administration in place, however, we will see the start of a period of great danger for the eurosceptic community for, while a referendum presents a great opportunity, the default position is that we lose it. And the consequences need hardly be spelled out. It will set back the anti-EU movement for a generation.

It is, of course, a given that the renegotiation, if it ever gets off the ground, will be a sham. But that is Mr Cameron's declared trigger for a referendum, whence the forces ranged against us will be formidable.

For a start, all three main political parties will be supporting the "sham deal" proposition, and we must assume that the legacy media will follow suit. Whatever their fine words now – and despite the limited license afforded to dissidents – the media represent the establishment and they will fall into line.

The state broadcaster will also give its full-throated support to remaining in the EU and we can also expect the ranks of "business" to go for the Cameron proposition. They will be backed by a myriad of campaigning organisations ranging from the European Movement to Open Europe, reinforced by phalanxes of rent-seekers.

On our side, we do not as yet have anything approaching a coherent campaign and UKIP, as the single most visible organisation, is more of a liability than anything under the leadership of Nigel Farage.

In fact, some of the biggest problems are going to come from our own side. As Witterings points out, we already have the "Matthew Elliott types" nosing around, seeking fame and glory as �berf�hrer of a putative "out" campaign.

On this, it would be as well to state that the "Harrrogate Agenda" has been incorporated as a non-profit company and we will be holding our first management meeting next month. It is certainly within the realms of possibility that we will be looking to be part of a coalition which makes a bid to be the official "out" campaign.

What must also be states is that no-one, and no single organisation or group of organisations, is going to "own" this campaign. Already, we have seen the tendency of petty-minded, self-serving claques attempt to exclude certain voices, and we also see the legacy media trying to control access to the debate.

What these people must realise is that this is not a game, and neither is the referendum campaign to be treated as a plaything - or a launch vehicle for the politically ambitious. We will not be silenced, and nor will we be excluded from the debate, or from playing an active part in any campaign.

Crucially, we will be making our voices heard on the shape of the campaign strategy, and already have offered many thoughts on the subject. What we must be certain to achieve is a sound intellectual base. It is all very well playing with ideas about how to spread the message, but first we must have a credible message to spread.

Here, many people who call themselves eurosceptics are going to have to take a hard look at themselves. They might like to ponder, for instance, whether damning the EU as a "Nazi plot" and calling it the "Fourth Reich" or the "EUSSR" is quite the best way to convince voters that voting for an EU-free Britain is the sensible way forward.

Similarly, those who continually brand our politicians, past and present, as "traitors" and the like, might care to wonder what effect that might have on the electorate. And that applies to the whole of what Cameron delights in calling the "fruitcake fringe". We've had our fun but now, careless words cost votes.

More mainstream, however, is the "magic wand" model of extracting ourselves from the EU – better known as immediate repeal of the ECA. In the context that our opposition will be seeking to maximise the perils of decoupling from the EU, advocates of this option really need to ask themselves whether they want to win a referendum, or whether they simply enjoy grandstanding.

For many years, such points have not really mattered, as there was no referendum in the offing. But now there seems to be a genuine prospect of casting a vote that will lead from the supranational maw, we now have to recognise that playtime is over.

We need to get down to work.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: don't go to Brighton!

2013-01-24T17:30:46.7060547+00:00

I was rather pleased with my train metaphor yesterday. That was the one where I equated Cameron having Britain staying in the EU but not progressing towards political union with him sitting on the Brighton train and denying he was going to Brighton.

Now we have Cameron in Davros telling the "colleagues" that "any attempt to force countries into ever-deeper political union is a mistake".

"Britain is a major European player on all of the issues where Europe needs to act - being more competitive, fighting terrorism, combating climate change - we are right out there leading the arguments, making the arguments", he says, "and that is the sort of political action that we need. But a centralised political union? Not for me, not for Britain".

Continuing with the train metaphors, this is rather like him sitting in a carriage on the Brighton train and screaming to the driver not to go to Brighton. In my mind I have the image of Cameron ranting at fellow travellers, "any attempt to force passengers to go to Brighton would be a mistake".

Seeing as the "colleagues" so love train metaphors – warning about being left on the platform, or on the slow train, etc., etc. - we can have another one.

To my recollection from my days on Southern Region (although my memory may be faulty), there used to be a composite train out of London Bridge. It would stop at Haywards Heath, whence it would split. The front portion would go to Brighton and the rear to Eastbourne.

If Mr Cameron really wants a resolution to his Europe problem, there's his answer. He needs to decouple Britain from the EU and allow the "colleagues" to proceed on their way, whence he can take us to a destination of our choice.

The trouble is that Mr Cameron really does want to go to "Brighton". His protests are for show, and he is hoping that people will be taken in. But if he keeps on like this, it won't be Brighton he gets, but the political equivalent of Hither Green.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: a challenge from Merkel

2013-01-24T23:05:06.3271485+00:00

Seen as a victory for Mr Cameron by some press reports in the wake of his "Europe" speech, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was reported as saying she wanted "to see a deal" with Britain. The Mail claims he "even won the support of Germany's Angela Merkel".

However, Quentin Peel in the Financial Times thinks celebrations may be premature, and that Cameron is in danger of misreading Merkel. There is a long British tradition, he says, of failing to understand Berlin.

Although Merkel had sent a clear message from Berlin after Mr Cameron's speech on Wednesday, that Germany did not want the UK to leave the EU, she also told Cameron that, if he was just pursuing narrow national (or party) interests, this was a game everyone might play. The European game, she said, was about compromise.

Peel sees this as a warning to Cameron that he would not be able to dictate the outcome of any renegotiation, and it is not untoward to see it in that light. If Mr Cameron is to obtain a new treaty in time for it to be put to a referendum by the end of 2017, the "colleagues" are going to have to march to the drumbeat set by a British prime minister.

Before any substantial changes can be considered – and there is no worthwhile negotiation without substantial changes – there must under amendments added by the Lisbon Treaty, be a treaty convention. This, cannot be convened until after the next euro elections in 2014, and could hardly take less than two years.

That would bring us towards the end of 2016, with the convention resolutions then being circulated to Member States and the EU institutions, which must then draw up proposals for a draft treaty, convene an IGC, negotiate the treaty and agree a final draft.

This must all be done in time for Mr Cameron to proclaim victory and put the revised treaty to the people of Britain in time for the start of a referendum campaign. That would put the completion of the processes somewhere at mid-2017, requiring the "colleagues" to afford maximum priority to the British agenda, and to subsume their own political needs.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, we get Die Welt warming us that there is a limit to Merkel's patience. While she has adopted a conciliatory tone at Davos, this could very quickly change.

Peel reminds us that Merkel is already backing away from the need for big treaty change, and that she will do whatever she can without treaty change. She knows that French president Fran�ois Hollande, her closest ally in Europe, is desperate to avoid any referendum in France.

For her part, Ms Merkel is still unclear about what Mr Cameron wants, adds Peel She wants to know if he is seeking – "for ideological reasons" – the repatriation of primary law (i.e., treaty changes), or whether he will be satisfied with "pragmatic" reduction of secondary legislation. She also wants to know if he is seeking to reduce unnecessary EU legislation for everyone, or just for the UK.

With that, it is clear that Merkel is not disposed to allow Cameron to set the agenda, just to resolve his own internal party differences. She knows as well as anyone that Labour's Miliband is not offering a referendum. To embarrass Cameron at a critical time, refusing to contemplate negotiations, and this could give Labour the electoral edge, whence the referendum – and any idea of negotiations – disappear from the agenda.

Thus, says Die Welt, while Merkel is not going to do anything to push the British out of the EU, she is not going to do anything drastic to keep Britain in the fold. Any concessions to Cameron will be made on her terms, and she is not prepared to expend any political capital to help him out.

Come 2017, Mr Cameron - if he has been elected - may find he has no treaty, no victory and nothing to offer the people of Britain. What will he do then poor thing?

COMMENT THREAD

EU Referendum: subsidiarity rears its head

2013-01-25T10:36:32.3828125+00:00

We shouldn't be at all surprised, but Reuters is turning out to be a major scare-factory, offering this FUD-laden headline to the retail media. This one has Mark Rutte, the Dutch PM and one of Cameron's supposed allies, telling the world that Britain leaving the EU would be a "disaster".

So far, the British media haven't bitten, probably because Rutte isn't a household name, but there are hidden depths to the Reuters piece which offer some clues as to sentiment on the continent.

Rutte, speaking at Davos, concedes that "Europe needed to reform”, but then rules out "special favours" for one country. He argues for the need to "restore economic competitiveness" – assuming that the competence was ever there in the first place – to "reduce the running costs of the Union" and to "focus on subsidiarity".

Says Rutte, "I'm in agreement [with Cameron] on all these issues", then adding, "There might be a difference if at the end of the day David Cameron were to opt for particular opt-outs that he would ask for the UK".

The mention of "subsidiarity " is possibly the clue as to what is going on. This was part of the package, alongside the opt-outs with which John Major sought to buy off the Danes after their referendum on Maastricht back in 1992, with the UK holding the presidency.

The comments made before the referendum make interesting reading, with Major sitting next to a subdued Jacques Delors, telling the media that they were:

... both committed to looking at ways in which the principle of subsidiarity can be enshrined as a natural part of the Community's instincts rather than something that is just wheeled out from time to time when it is convenient.

Now, that seems to be exactly what is happening, with Rutte wheeling out subsidiarity, saying of Cameron's bid for repatriation: "I don't believe you should have unique individual arrangements between individual countries and the EU, but we have to have this debate on subsidiarity".

One wonders whether the "colleagues" are going to try for this as their "get out of jail free" card. If so, stand by to dust off the Edinburgh declaration and the examples they gave. I don't suppose they will be any more impressive now than they were then, but the "colleagues" might just be desperate enough to run this past Cameron.

Like as not, they are looking again at the Danish "rebellion" and working out whether the British can be bought off in similar fashion.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: think of the farmers

2013-01-25T14:18:05.1992188+00:00

Defra Secretary Owen Paterson has told Farmers Guardian that UK agriculture could be better served if Britain leaves the European Union.

This was during an online discussion on the CAP, the same day that David Cameron finally announced he will offer the British public an "in-out" referendum on membership of the EU. Mr Paterson said the UK would "do a good job" of making its own decisions on agricultural policy.

"Within Europe the CAP is moving away from pure food subsidy to a more environmental policy, and we are seeing that in the negotiations it is impossible to impose a one-size-fits-all policy", Paterson adds, then declaring, "I'm completely clear that as we move towards a more environmental policy, these sort of decisions are much better made at national and local level".

Paterson is one of the Cabinet Ministers who is unequivocal about leaving the EU, although he remains realistic about the problems involved. As head of a department implementing more EU legislation than any other in Whitehall, he is acutely conscious that the slate cannot be wiped clean overnight.

His caution is reflected in the FG editorial (free registration required), where News Editor Ben Briggs cautions Mr Cameron to spare a thought for the farmer who remains financially solvent because of his CAP cheque. "If a referendum pulls the European rug from beneath farmers' feet, there needs to be a constructive and consistent alternative in place to soften the blow", says Briggs.

From a standing start, however, an FG on withdrawing from the EU gave 51.7 percent against the proposition, with 40.1 for, and 8.1 percent "don't knows". For the farming community, that is a pretty strong result against the EU, demonstrating the scale of the task the "outers" have to surmount.

The "renegotiation" option was not offered in this poll, but one can assume that farming support for this will be high, which gives Cameron an in-built majority in the small but influential farming community. If the farmers come out against leaving, then they will be fully exploited by the europhiles.

Paterson places great store on Hague's "audit of competences", but to a certain extent we are dealing with a moving feast, as the CAP undergoes yet another periodic reform, bringing in its wake a degree of uncertainty. If there was ever a good time to put withdrawal to the farmers, now is as good a time as any.

But, as Briggs says, there has to be a "constructive and consistent alternative in place to soften the blow". Doubtless, that applies to most other sectors, and the population at large. If people see leaving the EU as a leap in the dark, the status quo effect kicks in, and the voters hold on to nurse.

Think of the farmers: they show the way.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: Article 50

2013-01-25T17:04:42.7978516+00:00

There is a masterful exposition on Article 50 over at The Boiling Frog. He covers the ground very thoroughly, including the oft' raised canard that Britain is excluded from the European Council and the Council for the duration of the negotiations.

This, of course, only relates to the times when discussions on the negotiations are being held. Otherwise, UK representation continues unchanged, with voting powers unchanged.

To understand Article 50 properly, though, we must go to Altiero Spinelli, father of the Maastricht Treaty and of the European Union. His concern was the Union should be seen to be a voluntary association of nations, which it could not be as long as there was no exit clause.

Famously, he said that European Union should not be a prison, and when he first drew up his first Draft European Constitution for the European Parliament in 1984, he included in it an exit clause.

This was taken up during the Constitutional Conventions, proposed, incidentally by Frenchman Michael Barnier, and thence to the Lisbon Treaty where it became the current Article.

Far from being a "trap", therefore, as some will aver, Article 50 is a genuine exit clause, necessary for the EU's own image of itself. Needless to say, they think that their Union is so wonderful that no-one would want to leave it – as did Spinelli – but that is another story.

The main thing to savour is that Article 50 is the way out.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: seriously serious

2013-01-26T01:26:16.5361329+00:00

We've had seriously serious global warming here, coming in near horizontal at times, dumping about four inches in just a few hours after tea time yesterday (pictured above), keeping on into the wee small hours of this morning to about a foot overall. We haven't had it this bad since 1963.

This made a perfect backdrop to Tony Juniper whingeing in the loss-making Grauiniad, offering a FUD-laden prediction that David Cameron's EU speech is "grave news for our environment".

Juniper thus paints a picture of hard-hearted (and presumably money-grubbing) Tory MPs, frustrated at their failure to cut what some ministers see as unnecessary environmental legislation through their red tape challenge (because many of the laws in question originate from Brussels).

But, with the opportunity afforded by the referendum to get us out of the EU, we can dump all that law and storm the heights of the sunlit uplands of a competitive economy, leaving behind sewage-blighted beaches and rampant air pollution.

The idea, though, that without the EU, we would suddenly be bereft of environmental law, and the protection that went with it, is about as laughable as Dr Viner's view of the rarity value of snow, but this has added hilarity when you realise that Juniper is bogged down by the ignorance of how his own country is governed.

If we take water pollution, for instance, even without the framework of EU law, we are signatories to the UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, adopted in Helsinki in 1992, coming into force in 1996.

Now that, you might say only applies to transboundary matters, and you would be right. However, this convention was supplemented by a protocol "done in London" on 17 June 1999, which came into force in 2005.

The objective of this Protocol is "to promote at all appropriate levels, nationally as well as in transboundary and international contexts, the protection of human health and well-being, both individual and collective, within a framework of sustainable development, through improving water management, including the protection of water ecosystems, and through preventing, controlling and reducing water-related disease".

With the addition of that magic word, "nationally" the water convention casts its spell on the UK domestic water management, even where there are no transboundary implications, potentially tying the British government into a web of binding commitments which could be enforced through the UK courts.

However, there is a delightful twist here. Although the UK signed the protocol, it did not ratify it, and opposed EU ratification, noting that the Community had already adopted legislation in this field which met all the substantive obligations imposed by the Protocol. The EU then in 2005 withdrew a proposal to adopt the protocol.

Despite this, the EEA countries of Norway and Switzerland did ratify, and are covered by the provisions of the protocol, which are binding on those parties who have ratified.

We thus have a situation where Norway, outside the EU, has committed to an international agreement which safeguards water supplies and the aquatic environment. Thus, on this – and similar provisions regarding air pollution - Tony Juniper doesn't need to pour out the FUD on the consequences of leaving the EU. He can simply call for the UK to ratify the UNECE water protocols and other agreements.

Given his alarmist response to leaving the EU, though, you might suspect that Mr Juniper has other agendas, and there you could well be right. But, when it comes to protecting our environment, we can be assured that there are enough safeguards available to make the EU supremely redundant.

And that also, is seriously serious.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: crucially different from 1975

2013-01-26T13:16:09.4804688+00:00

If we take Mr Cameron's Wednesday speech as "Day One" of a four-year referendum campaign, then we are now on day four. And already the legacy media are running out of steam, finding it hard to offer anything of very great interest or originality.

That is not to say that the idea of having an EU referendum some time in the future is devoid of interest – very far from it. But the media, which has always struggled to write intelligently on the European Union, lacks the depth to be able to analyse the issues and come up with anything helpful to its readers.

The Daily Mail, for instance, offers a laborious piece from Dominic Sandbrook, drawing parallels between these current events and the 1975 referendum.

While there indeed appear to be resemblances between today and forty years ago, inasmuch as we appear to be looking at a plebicite based on the outcome of a "renegotiation", there are many important differences. Rather than dwell on the similarities, therefore, it might be more profitable to explore those differences.

Starting at the beginning, though, things do look superficially the same. Back all those years ago, the story starts in 1974, on 28 February to be precise, when the Wilson government gained power. This produced a hung parliament with Labour gaining 301 seats (up 13), Conservatives 297 (down 37) and the Liberals on 14 (up eight).

Hampered by having no overall majority, and a divided party, Wilson played the Europe card. This was followed on 1 April with Jim Callaghan asking the EEC for a renegotiation on the terms of membership. Then, on 10 October, there was then another general election, when Wilson strengthened his position ending up with an overall majority of three seats.

With a wafer-thin majority, and his party still split over "Europe", Wilson followed up on 9 December with the Paris Summit which marked the start of the renegotiation process.

Come 1975, the referendum campaign was announced on 7 January, the White Paper was published on 26 February and the renegotiations were concluded on 11 March, with the Cabinet endorsing the terms on 18 March (by a vote of 16 to 7), followed by a Commons endorsement on 9 April (398 to 172 votes). The Referendum Bill passed its Second Reading the following day (312 to 248 votes), and the poll was on 5 June.

When Wilson announced his intention to have a referendum, therefore, he was heading a minority government, but not in formal coalition with the Liberals. He did not make it conditional on his winning the next election and, at that October election, "Europe" was barely an issue, being brought up respectively by 16 percent of Conservative and 47 percent of Labour voters, as against 82 and 73 percent of Conservative and Labour voters who expressed concern at the cost of mortgages.

The similarity, therefore, is that Wilson was using the referendum as a means of settling a long-running division within the ranks of his own party, and so is Mr Cameron. He is, of course, also seeking to gain electoral advantage, and in particular, to neutralise UKIP, which – of course - did not exist then. This is what the Irish Times calls a "cynical political ploy", putting party before country.

That said, such similarities - and even the differences - as may exist are not at all crucial. What really makes the difference now is the institutional architecture of the Communities, which have been re-born as the European Union, and the fact that Cameron is, ostensibly, asking for a treaty change.

Back in 1975, there was no prospect of changing the Treaty of Rome in any material sense and, crucially, the negotiations were handled by the Member States, meeting during "summits". These were without the formal structure of the European Council, without formal input from the Commission, and with no input from the European Parliament, the members of which then were not directly elected.

What now must happen is that the 27 (28) Member European Council must meet, and formally invoke the revision procedure set out in Article 48 of the TEU. Here, there is the "ordinary" procedure and the "simplified" procedure, with the default mode being the "ordinary" procedure.

This actually requires the European Council to convene a convention, after consulting, inter alia with the European Parliament. However, if the Council wants to adopt the simplified procedure, it must first obtain the consent of the parliament.

Here, then, is a major difference. In 1975, Wilson had a great deal of control over the timetable. In the current round, Cameron has none. He is entirely in the hands of the EU Institutions, in the first instance, the European Council and then, especially, the European Parliament.

This makes a key figure in the coming drama the EP president, currently Martin Schultz, who is interviewed in a current edition of Die Welt. And it is here that the UK political background to the referendum is highly significant.

Schultz sees Cameron as "motivated domestically", and "resents" (Das nehme ich ihm �bel) the British prime minister's action in "threatening" Europe for his own political gain.

It will then be up to Schultz (or his successor) to decide on Mr Cameron's fate, and whether, if Cameron wins the next election, he can meet his 2017 timetable. Any blockage – in fact anything short of the wholehearted co-operation of the European Parliament – and there is no way the 2017 referendum timetable can be met. Specifically, if the EP president insists on a convention, negotiations are almost bound to run into 2018.

Furthermore, a hostile parliament will have a huge effect on the outcome of the convention, to the disadvantage of Mr Cameron, and can make it very difficult for the subsequent IGC to accommodate changes that will play well to the British people.

Ironically, the changes in the procedures which are set to make Mr Cameron's life difficult came in with the Lisbon Treaty, on which he refused to have a referendum. Now he does want a referendum, he is dealing with a very different institutional architecture, which could make it almost impossible for him to achieve anything.

That, possibly, will underscore the major difference between this and the last referendum. In Wilson's time, there was a renegotiation result – albeit a sham – to put before the people. In this case, if he is to stick to the 2017 timetable, Mr Cameron may have to go to the polls empty-handed.

At best, according to Jonathan Powell in The Guardian, Mr Cameron may only be able to achieve a few cosmetic changes, in which circumstances he would find it difficult to lead a campaign with all his "heart and soul" for Britain to remain in Europe, as he said he would if he got a good deal.

Thus, we could end up with a prime minister actively campaigning to leave the EU. That really would be different.

COMMENT THREAD

Climate change: more global warning

2013-01-26T16:40:30.46875+00:00

A little jaunt round the neighbourhood, after a wild night. No sign of that rain, and while we saw some thawing, it's getting crunchy as darkness falls. As a pedestrian, you are definitely a second-class citizen. Roads are clear, but the pavements are lethal.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker: in Europe and "ruled" by Geneva

2013-01-26T21:45:25.2070313+00:00

It is an unfortunate headline for the Booker column this week, as it could never be said that we are "ruled" from Geneva in the same way that we are ruled from Brussels.

However insidious "global governance" might be, it is largely undertaken on an intergovernmental level which means that, unlike the supranational EU, we can chose to accept or reject agreements "done at Geneva" and other global venues – for the moment, at any rate.

What makes the column particularly relevant, of course, is the coincidence of David Cameron's speech (the theme would have been broached this week, even if Cameron had not spoken).

Delivered at eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, that speech, says Booker, put one in mind of the White Queen's boast that she could "believe six impossible things before breakfast".

Cameron wanted us to believe that he could persuade the EU to change its nature and the purposes for which it has been built up over 60 years. He wanted us to believe that it could breach its core rule that powers of government once surrendered to Brussels are never handed back; and that he can somehow persuade Brussels, and the other 26 members, to allow us to retain full membership, while opting out of much else except the right to continue trading freely in the single market.

He would also have us believe that he can win the next election on the promise of such negotiations, and that they could be completed by 2017, to be part of a new treaty the EU is planning, for quite different purposes – even though the requirements for such a treaty, including a lengthy intergovernmental conference (and convention), could not possibly be completed by that date.

Finally, he wished us to believe that the results could then be put to the British people in a referendum, without telling us what the question might be if his negotiations fail.

However, the moment that above all showed Mr Cameron as living in cloud cuckoo land was when he dismissed the idea of Britain gaining the kind of trading relationship with the EU that Norway has, as a member of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA); because, he said, although Norway has full access to the single market, "it has no say at all in setting its rules".

Like many other people, Mr Cameron is clearly unaware that recent years have seen a mighty and accelerating revolution in the way that rules are made in our globalised world.

A huge proportion of the regulations governing the single market now originate from global bodies even higher than the EU; and in the tortuous process of shaping those rules, Norway is not only a very active player but also enjoys more influence, as an independent country, than we do.

Britain is increasingly represented on these bodies only as part of the EU, on the basis of a "common position" agreed by majority voting, where we are just one of 27 member states, with eight percent of the votes.

Rather than seeing Brussels as the source of many of our laws, we should be looking at another European city, Geneva, where vast buildings house the largest number of UN employees on the planet (34 organisations, comprising the United Nations Office at Geneva, or UNOG) and such powerful bodies as the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the UN's Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the International Standards Organisation, and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with its sponsoring bodies, the World Meteorological Organisation and the UN Environment Programme, to name but a few.

As I have been reporting, for more than five years, it is bodies such as these that set in train the process that, down the line, results in a great many of the regulations that emerge from Brussels. The famous working-time directives, for instance, derive in large part from the ILO, set up in 1919 by the Versailles Treaty, which actually included the promise of a 48-hour week.

The vast thicket of EU technical standards dictating every detail of how motor vehicles are made now originate from UNECE, a body in which Norway is an active participant, even though it has no motor industry – while Britain, which last year produced a record 1.5 million vehicles, is only represented by the EU.

When it comes to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), whose subsidiaries set global standards on food safety, plant health and animal welfare, Norway, with its worldwide fishing interests, actually chairs and plays host to the powerful committee on fish and fisheries products.

It played a leading role in setting the rules controlling Antarctic krill fishing, providing food for the world's fish farms, another big Norwegian interest – while our own Scottish fish farmers must merely comply with the resulting regulations passed down to us by Brussels.

Last week, Booker referred to an EFTA report that shows that more than 90 percent of the regulations of the single market cover policy areas that are ultimately the province of global bodies, from the immense array of technical standards to the rules governing accountancy and the compiling of official statistics.

Not only does Norway, acting in its own right, enjoy more influence on these international policy bodies than Britain; it also, as a member of EFTA and the European Economic Area, even reserves the right to opt out of single-market rules that it considers damaging to its national interest.

When Royal Mail was forced by Brussels to put its bulk mail of items below 50g out to tender (thus costing it the most lucrative part of its business), Norway, realising that this would render its own postal service unviable, refused to comply.

Similarly, Norway is refusing to comply with new single-market regulations on the safety of oil rigs. Meanwhile, our own oil and gas industry says that it is "extremely concerned" that the EU rules will "dismantle the UK's world-class safety regime, which is built on decades of experience". Although the UK Government agrees, it is likely to be outvoted in Brussels and our industry will have to obey.

When Mr Cameron insists that he wants Britain to negotiate a wholly new relationship with the EU, "with the single market at its heart", he clearly hasn't begun to understand that this is precisely the position enjoyed by Norway.

Whether we would wish to follow Norway's example in all respects is a matter for debate. But the irony is, as we have observed before, that the only way for Mr Cameron to get the results he outlined last week would be to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. This alone would compel the EU to negotiate with us. But first he would have to announce that Britain wishes to leave the EU, the one course he has already ruled out.

Without that, the rest is just pie in the sky. It will not bring him a single one of those "six impossible things" he wanted us to believe before breakfast on Wednesday morning.

COMMENT THREAD

Fisheries policy: Mackerel Wars – part I

2013-01-27T13:44:54.9638672+00:00

An illustration of just how complicated international relations can become is emerging in real time, as a long-standing dispute over North-east Atlantic mackerel (NEAM) stocks comes to a head, with British ministers meeting fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki tomorrow, prior to the Fisheries Council meeting on Tuesday, which will attempt to resolve the dispute.

On the face of it, this is a simple quota dispute between the four main players nations which exploit the stocks, the EU, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Historically, the bulk of the quota has been taken by the EU and Norway, but since 2009, Iceland and the Faroes have been demanding a share.

As tensions have risen, relations between the parties have broken down with the Faroese being accused of acting like "pirates", Iceland of "greed" and the EU of bullying tactics, while there is talk of a new fish war and trade sanctions.

The situation is not helped by the removal of NEAM from the Marine Stewardship Council certification scheme, as no longer qualifying as "sustainable stock", and by the Guardian tendency which has Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall indulging in the most remarkable piece of wishful thinking, when he grandly declares:

… if the countries involved could only agree sensible catch limits this could still be a certified sustainable fishery. The issue could be resolved at a stroke, and we could all go back to eating mackerel again with a clear conscience.

While Fearnley-Whittingstall wants to put the problems down to "politics and greed", which "are getting in the way of common sense", we have here a fiercely complex issue, on four different levels – politics, commerce, science and the environment itself – all of which are intermixed.

If the magic wand of "common sense" could be waved, that would have been done years ago. As it is, the grown-ups are having to sort it out, not least our very own Defra Secretary Owen Paterson – fortunately, a man with some some experience in fisheries policy.

On the political level alone, the situation is extraordinarily complicated, as we are dealing with an amalgam of national interests, the regional bodies of the EU and EFTA/EEA, and a skein of international treaties and agreements and in this first part, we will look at the political structures which create the framework in which discussions are being undertaken.

At the very top of the heap is not the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which some think is the driving force, but the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). But, because NEAM are a migratory and "straddling stock" – the biomass spread over the territorial waters of different states – there is an extensive web of additional agreements.

The key treaty here is the Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, and the 1995 implementing agreement known as the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA).

But this is also augmented by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, adopted in October 1995. This is a voluntary agreement, although certain parts are based on UNCLOS provisions and some parts have been given binding effect by means of other obligatory legal instruments, such as the Agreement to Promote Compliance with International Conservation and Management Measures by Fishing Vessels on the High Seas, 1993.

There is also the FAO International Plan of Action for the Management of Fishing Capacity, which came into force progressively, to be fully effective by 2005. Scientific issues relating to human activities affecting, and affected by, marine ecosystems, and in particular fish stocks, are handled by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).

As regards the European Union, the EU ratified the UNLOS agreement in 1998, and subscribes to the FAO codes, the combination being part of the external dimension of the Common Fisheries Policy, set out in detail here.

Although the CFP is not part of the internal market acquis and is not part of the EEA Agreement, trade in fish and fish products is covered, and to some extent is affected by these international treaties and agreements. Norway, of course, represents herself on the relevant bodies, but EU Member States are represented by the European Commission and the EEAS, which also deals with UNCLOS issues.

This is then further complicated by the fact that the EU has concluded or is party to multiple bilateral and multilateral treaties with neighbouring fishing states. For instance, it lists eleven with Norway, of which three are bilateral, eight with Iceland, and one with the Faroes.

Now, because we are dealing with straddling and highly migratory fish stocks fish, the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) kicks in and, as this briefing note helpful explains, the stocks have to be managed by a Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (RFMO), which consists of Coastal States and relevant Distant Water Fishing Nations (other nations with a real interest in the fishery).

In this instance, the relevant RFMO is the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), to which the Russian Federation, Norway, Iceland, Denmark (in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland) and the European Union are parties. The UK was originally a member but in 2006 the founding Convention was modified and EU Member States as individual members were withdrawn. They are now represented exclusively by the European Commission.

Thus far, and we have only set the scene. We have four nominal parties to this dispute, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands (formally represented by Denmark, an EU member), and the EU representing the UK and others which have a major interest in the issue.

Crucially, in the UK, it is mainly the Scottish pelagic fleet that has the key interest here, but the UK does not have a seat at the NEAFC table, and cannot deal with the parties direct. And that is why ministers are going to Brussels instead of Oslo, talking to EU Fisheries Commissioner, Maria Damanaki, a Greek leftie politicians, born in Crete, and hugely unpopular even in her own PASOK party.

This is not a place where "common sense" will find a comfortable home, and to dismiss the issue as "greed" doesn't even get near.

Part II to follow.

COMMENT THREAD

Fisheries policy: Mackerel Wars – part II

2013-01-27T20:20:49.5556641+00:00

Continuing on from Part I, where we wrote of the complexities of the dispute that has been dubbed the "Mackerel Wars", we find a muddled piece in today's Observer which demonstrates the difficulty in getting to grips with this subject.

What is marginally helpful, though, is the headline: "How climate change spells disaster for UK fish industry". Forget the bit about the UK fish industry for the moment, and concentrate on "climate change".

Referring again to this briefing note, we find that it is a matter of undisputed record that the mackerel biomass has been moving north, a phenomenon attributed to "climate change", triggered by higher water temperatures which have shifted the food supply, with the fish following the food.

Prior to 2008, the bulk of the catch was taken from EU Member States water, from Norway and, to a limited extent by the Faroe Islands, with a small amount also taken by the Russian Federation.

Things then changed in 2009 when the mackerel started moving is large numbers into Icelandic waters, and the catches there started to become significant. This gave Iceland status as a "Coastal State" within the NEAFC and a seat at the table when it came to negotiating annual quotas.

Here, it starts getting seriously complicated for, within the framework of NEAFC, guided by the UNCLOS and FAO agreements, the body of record for setting upper quota limits is ICES, which in turn is reliant on its scientific research with input from member states.

At that time, ICES set the mackerel quota, specified in terms of the "recommended total catch" at 572,000 metric tons. This was not enough to sustain the existing fleets in Norwegian and EU Member State waters.

Invoking the NEAFC rules, Norway and the EU thus argued that "track record" should determine the apportionment of the quota and since neither Iceland nor the Faroes had a qualifying record, they were not entitled to any quota. The pair then promptly awarded between themselves a quote that amounted to ten percent more than the total catch recommended by ICES.

Faced with this, Iceland and the Faroes felt they had no alternative but to award themselves unilateral quotas, allocating themselves 85,000 and 13,000 metric tons respectively, thus triggering the conflict which remains unresolved to this date.

At the heart of this, though – and especially as far as the Faroes were concerned, there was a great deal more at stake than just Mackerel catches – a stock which the Faroese were not equipped to exploit. There were two other issues which were to driving the dispute.

Firstly, the much more important issue to the Faroes was their traditional herring fishery, and the blue whiting, these valuable fish inhabiting the waters into which the mackerel had moved. And what Faroese scientists were able to show was an alarming situation.

Not only did the two species compete for the same food – largely the zooplankton Calanus finmarchicus - but the biomass of fish in their waters has been close to record high, while the zooplankton has been on a declining trend to a record low, and the blue whiting was declining rapidly.

This ties in with the second point where there is a major conflict in fisheries management philosophy between the Faroese and ICES in determining allowable fishing effort. ICES work on the basis of calculating the "Spawning stock biomass" and, by a series of species-specific formulae, then calculating a safe level of human predation – which becomes the recommended catch.

On the other hand, the Faroese fisheries management system relies on a far more sophisticated range of measures, rather than using quotas as the control instrument. They aim to balance fishing effort in relation to the ecosystem in which it takes place and, in particular, to keep the fish population in balance with the food supply, a philosophy which has gained powerful scientific support.

Thus, where there is a deficiency in food supply for a fish stock, be it because of industrial fishing or natural phenomena, the correct way to deal with it is, counter-intuitively, to increase fishing efforts. And, with their increased mackerel quotas, that is precisely what the Faroese – and the Icelanders in their wake – are doing.

The response of the EU has been severe. Reports in Augist 2010 were talking of a "mackerel war" and, as the dispute escalated, on 14 December 2011, the European Commission published a proposal permitting "the use of trade and other types of measures as a means to induce a reduction in the intensity of fishing by third countries allowing non-sustainable fishing".

Citing UNCLOS and the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, which they claimed had been breached, the Commission proposed to bypass the EFTA/EEA agreement with Iceland, and with sanctions also applying to the Faroes, prohibit the import of fish and fish products from these territories.

The final regulations 1026/2012 were published on 14 November 2012, leading to strident calls from Scottish Fishermen for sanctions to be imposed.

For 2012, the dispute had escalated out of all proportion, with the Icelanders having set themselves a mackerel quota of 145,000 tons, and the Faroe Islands setting a massive unilateral quota of 148,375 tons – even though they do not have the facilities to process the fish.

As the war of words hots up, Scots mackerel fishermen have accused Icelanders of "mugging" them of their catches, "plundering" the stocks and putting their �164-million industry at risk.

And this is where the Observer piece comes in. Since Iceland's banking collapse of 2008 and its subsequent attempts to fish its way out of a crisis, Grimsby has boomed on the back of the surge of fresh white fish from Iceland. If sanctions were to be applied, 70 percent of the UK's fish processing industry, along with Europe's biggest concentration of cold storage facilities, would be at risk, alongside 4,000 jobs.

The latest development seems to be a statement from Danish fisheries minister Mette Gjerskov, who has said that it is "quite unlikely" that the European fisheries and maritime affairs commission will approve sanctions against Faroes and Iceland.

The fact that Norway and the EU have decided to allocate themselves 90 percent of the total recommended mackerel catch for 2013 means there will probably be little legal ground for sanctions to be approved, Gjerskov said. Ironically, aside from the Faroes and Iceland, the biggest potential loser from this ongoing dispute is the United kingdom, with two dogs in the fight. On the one hand, Scottish fishermen are being affected and, on the other, our fishg processors stand to lose a massive part of their income.

Yet, the one nation which is not allowed directly into the talks with the parties involved in the United Kingdom. Outside the EU, we could but, in order to preserve that precious "influence" about which Mr Cameron is so keen, we must allow a Greek politician to make the running from Brussels.

And that is yet another benefit of our membership of the EU.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: a picture of ignorance

2013-01-28T00:20:05.4257813+00:00

From the same wellspring as Mr Cameron telling us that we have to be in the EU to be part of the Single Market, we now have Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, telling us that we've got to be in the EU to "win" EU science funding.

Notwithstanding the fact that we are net contributors to the EU budget, and could afford to take up the EU-funded programme and still save money, the man is talking out of his posterior. It is not necessary to be in the EU to take part in EU research programmes.

The evidence for this is our old friend Norway, which takes a very active part in the programme, without being a member of the EU. Thus, through the Research Council of Norway, it participates in the Seventh Framework Programme. So far, it has been involved in 1,139 projects, contrasting with Ireland (with about the same population and an EU member), which has significantly less input than Norway, contributing to with 1,079 projects.

Furthermore, we are told that:

Norway has long traditions in participating in EU RTD actions. It first started in 1987 on a programme level. The EEA agreement (from 1.1.1994) gives Norway full rights and obligations in the framework programmes. Norway's participation in EU Framework Programmes has resulted in a research community that is far more engaged than before, both in European research collaboration and as a participant taking responsibility for structuring and internationalising Norwegian research.

Additionally, Norway is also part of the European Research Area, and of COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research), and of the European Science Foundation (ESF).

A very detailed evaluation of the participation is here, from which we learn that there is a payment made for participation, amounting in 2010 to �142 million, accounting for nearly 80 percent of Norway's �179 million contribution to the EU budget.

However, it certainly gets value for money. Norway is also actively involved in policy co-ordination activities outside the framework programme (FP). It has participated as observer in European Research Area Committee (ERAC) meetings, dealing with financial co-ordination outside of the FP and the development of better framework conditions for research in Europe (mobility, careers, intellectual property and so on).

ERAC will likely be the platform where the European Commission will discuss its plans for ERA-type regulations and directives and seek sufficient support from the Member States before launching anything.

Norway participates in ERA-policy committees such as the Strategic Forum for International Science and Technology Co-operation (SFIC), the High Level Group on Joint Programming (GPC), the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the Steering Group on Human Resources and Mobility, the Working Group on Knowledge Transfer and the European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC).

In the past five years Norway was also invited to participate in the Informal Ministerial Competitiveness Council.

Thus although not an EU Member State Norway has actively taken part in policy co-ordination activities. Given the stability of the EEA agreement its role does not have to be renegotiated with each new Framework Programme.

So, it would appear that Sir Paul Nurse, the man who thinks that human activity contributes seven times more CO2 to the atmosphere than derives from natural sources such as the oceans, knows as little about the workings of the EU as he does about climate science – unaware that Norway has been in the EU research programme for over 25 years.

But that does not stop the legacy media giving him free access to spread his misinformation and propaganda. In that, at least, we are not surprised. It was ever going to be thus.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: the irrelevance of the EU

2013-01-28T14:47:22.0019531+00:00

A little while ago, I wrote that we have to confront the prospect that there is an alarming number of people who lack the basic understanding of how the global and regional regulatory system works.

We can add to that number Wolfgang M�nchau, the doyen's doyen who, today in the Financial Times, adds to the sum of human ignorance by declaring that, "If you are outside the EU, but inside the EEA, you have no vote on single-market policies. Norway and Iceland have to accept whatever the EU decides".

That, of course, is not true, not least because of the "veto" or "right of reservation" – set out in Article 102 of the EEA Agreement – to say nothing of being misleading, as both countries have considerable upstream influence that enable them to shape standards before they get to the EU.

Notwithstanding these little gripes, though, M�nchau is beginning to ask the right questions, asserting that the benefits of the single market are "vastly exaggerated". They will in the longer term be subsumed by free trade agreements and, in particular, a transatlantic free-trade area incorporating the EU and the United States.

This has been something of a hobby-horse of the Financial Times and they are perhaps being more than a little over-optimistic if they believe that the agricultural systems each side of the Atlantic can be harmonised sufficiently to create a level playing field which would permit free trade.

With massive understatement, therefore, M�nchau casually asserts that "hammering out" a treaty "would not be easy" but he is confident that even if Britain were outside the EU, it would without a doubt be a member of such a zone. Thus, in his book, "there can be no question of it being cut off from trade".

There, M�nchau goes a little bit wobbly, as he asserts that, outside he EU, "the UK would still be a member of the European Economic Area". That is not strictly true. It could not happen without the UK joining EFTA and with amendments to the EEA Agreement.

Further, he has not caught up with the reality of the relationship of EEA countries with the EU, but there is hope yet. While asserting that there would a "perceived loss of political power", which would be "unacceptable to the UK", he then says: "the argument misjudges the extent to which the UK can negotiate the terms of exit". Article 50, declares M�nchau, "makes it possible for countries to depart, but leaves the details to the negotiating parties".

Then we get to the "killer point". Faced with the combined development of a eurozone economic union (which we cannot join) and a transatlantic free-trade zone, the added benefit of EU membership loses appeal if most of that benefit can be had outside". Thus we are told: "If one is absolutely certain that one will never join the eurozone, there really is not much of a point to being a member of the EU".

M�nchau is not quite there yet, but with or without a transatlantic free trade area, we are seeing the convergence of global rules, with – as Booker points out - supra-regional standard-setting which makes the EU increasingly irrelevant.

That the doyen of all doyens is nevertheless asking about the relevance of the EU to Britain is good news. Once that question is asked, the politicians will find it increasingly difficult to give an honest answer, and we will be on our way out. Article 50 beckons.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: what is the point?

2013-01-28T16:48:05.2988281+00:00

Thorbj�rn Jagland, former prime minister of Norway, is the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee – which recently awarded of the prize to the EU. He is also the Secretary General for the Council of Europe.

By any measure, he is not exactly an impartial commentator on the EEA, especially as he is on the record as an active advocate of Norwegian membership of the EU, and author of "Ten Theses on the EU and Norway", in late 2003, containing arguments for Norwegian membership as soon as possible.

Asking him, therefore, for his views on the utility of Britain leaving the European Union and adopting the Norway Option of EEA membership is about as productive as would have been interviewing Adolf Hitler in 1936 about the positive contribution of Jews to German civil society.

What then is the point of the moronic Dermot Murnaghan of Sky News interviewing the man? What possible value to the debate does he offer, especially when the man is lying through his teeth, declaring, "We don't have any influence on the rules that affect us"?

COMMENT THREAD

Fisheries policy: a matter of detail

2013-01-28T23:24:45.8818359+00:00

I did a broadcast for Canadian television yesterday on the referendum, telling my interrogator that the EU is a matter of detail. Unless you master that, I said, you will never really understand what is going on.

This is a theme I have rehearsed many times, and part of the fascination of the headline subject – the mackerel dispute – is that the detail is almost mind-boggling in its complexity. But what is also fascinating is the way that the so-called "eurosceptic" press has barely touched the issue, leaving it to the "soft left" such as The Guardian, which gets it completely wrong.

You would have thought, though, that with Monday's Fisheries Council meeting potentially having a major impact on British interests, the media might have taken an interest. But apart from a piece on the BBC Scotland website, and in The Scotsman, one struggles to find any significant British media interest.

Strangely, by far the best report of the day comes from the New York Times. It deals Richard Lochhead, the fisheries minister for Scotland, who has been calling for the appointment of a mediator to help resolve this three year dispute.

He is highly critical of the EU, asking: "How can the European Union, acting on behalf of 500 million people, find itself unable or unwilling to take strong action against an overfishing nation, in this case the Faroe Islands, with 50,000 people, or Iceland, with 300,000?"

Lochhead, of course, has his Scottish constituency to please, and the importance is illustrated by some statistics. Britain, we are told, has 52 percent of the EU quota and Scotland accounts for 60 percent of that. Ireland is also a major player and is feeling the squeeze.

But what is specially interesting about the NYT report is a comment from Sigurgeir Thorgeirsson, the Icelandic government's chief fisheries negotiator. He turns a narrow sectoral dispute into a major example of the inadequacies of the EU, by complaining that European officials appeared unable to grasp that the facts in the water have changed.

Iceland gets about nine percent of its gross domestic product from the fishing industry, Mr. Thorgeirsson noted, and the presence of the mackerel in Icelandic waters means other species on which the country depends are being crowded out. It is "a mackerel invasion", says Thorgeirsson. "These fish aren’t tourists. They're not coming to our waters just to look around. They're coming to feed".

On the other hand, The Scotsman has Jacob Vestergaard, the Minister of Fisheries of the Faroe Islands. He tells of a situation where, in the last decade, there have been major changes in the distribution not only of mackerel but also herring in the North east Atlantic.

The herring biomass has shifted in a south-westerly direction, leading to an increased proportion of fish feeding in Faroese waters during the summer, and for a longer period than previously.

These are the issues I touched upon in my second report of yesterday, and these are the most explicit statements yet that I have seen of the effect of the migration, underlying the fact that food supply is under huge pressure from competing stocks.

If one stands back from this for a moment, we have a situation where the bulk of the mackerel stock used to be in the waters of EU Member States, and in Norwegian territorial waters. Yet a substantial proportion of the biomass has moved into Faroese and Icelandic waters.

What is thus happening is that the EU and Norwegians, with fish having moved out of the waters under their control, are still demanding that they take ninety percent of the permissible catch. They have made no allowance for the fact that the proportion of the biomass in their waters is considerably less than that.

By so doing, and by insisting that the Faroese and Icelanders share the remaining ten percent with the Russians, the Norwegians and EU between them are effectively prohibiting Iceland and the Faroe Islands from fishing for mackerel in their own waters, insisting also that they put their own traditional stocks at risk.

In typical bully-boy fashion, though, the EU is shrieking about imposing sanctions on the Faroese and Icelanders, accusing them of "overfishing", while Thorgeirsson – quite rightly – points out that European officials appear unable to grasp that the facts in the water had changed. If anything, the EU and the Norwegians are most guilty of overfishing.

Clearly, therefore, it is the EU and the Norwegians that have precipitated this crisis. And now, after fifteen rounds of talks, we are still no closer to a solution. In fact, the problem is now getting worse, spreading to a dispute over herring quotas, with Faroe Islands delegation walking away from talks after failing to agree quotas for this stock.

Vestergaard, in accordance with the Faroe System, wants the to adapt joint herring management "to better reflect the realities of the fisheries" – which means fishing the herring hard to bring the stock back into balance with the food supply. The EU, in response, sticks to the rigid ICES mantra of maintaining a notional "spawning stock biomass", irrespective of the capability of the fishery to sustain it.

As for the original mackerel dispute, EU fisheries commissioner Maria Damanaki is under great pressure to impose sanctions, but reports on the ground suggest that she is not very comfortable with the prospect of launching the procedure.

One of the conditions required is the obligation under WTO Rules for both parties to demonstrate that they are open to negotiation and their willingness to engage in "sustainable fishing". By claiming 90 percent of the stock (even if it is in the framework of an overall quota reduction), the EU does not really seem to be demonstrating a willingness to negotiate, and is on a perilously weak footing.

Thus, the EU has done what the EU always does. It has kicked the can down the road to the February Fisheries Council, when it may or may not propose measures.

Meanwhile, British ministers are piggies in the middle. Their fishermen suffer if the dispute is not resolved, and the fish processors suffer if sanctions are imposed – all the time with the British not being able to negotiate directly with the Icelanders and the Faroese.

It would be almost impossible to invent such a bizarre situation, which is now developing into a perfect example of why we must leave the EU. At least, it would be a perfect example if the legacy media understood enough of what was going on to be able to report it properly. But then, you can't have everything in this world - and especially if we rely on the EU to dictate our fisheries policy.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: meaningless polls

2013-01-29T10:33:56.1484375+00:00

It is a fair bet that, if the legacy media pollutes the infosphere with alarums on how the sky was going to fall in if we had an in-out referendum, and the lumpen masses were poised to fall upon their babies and eat them, then the next carefully managed opinion poll would discover that an in-out referendum was a "bad thing".

And so we are informed in the low-circulation Independent that a ComRes poll as cobbled together a result to please its paymasters.

Even then the result does not match the headline. What the poll is testing is the perceived effect of the delay, where some 49 percent of people polled "agree the delay is likely to result in economic harm because of the uncertainty it creates for companies and investors". By contrast, 32 percent disagree with this statement.

This is so much fluff, though. What really matters (if only because politicians believe such polls and tend to act on them) is the finding that 30 percent of the public say they are more likely to back the Conservatives as a result of Mr Cameron's referendum promise.

This suggests that Ed Miliband could reap an electoral benefit if he matched the pledge. More than one in four voters (27 percent) would be more likely to vote Labour if the party promised an EU referendum, a finding that "is bound to increase the pressure on Mr Miliband from within his party to offer the public a vote".

Here, we see the result matching the findings in the weekend's Survation poll in the Mail, where the Conservatives pick up a couple of points in the wake of the referendum announcement, reversing a downwards trend.

But, to add to a growing collection of meaningless polls, we see the received opinion of which "powers" should be clawed back, the top three coming in as immigration, farming subsidies and employment law.

Notwithstanding that this is pure moonshine, we than get 43 percent of respondents wanting to stay in the EU of Mr Cameron wins back powers, with 36 percent wanting to leave and 21 percent "don't knows". By contrast, the straight in-out question gives 50 percent wanting to quit, 36 percent wanting to stay in and 14 percent "don't knows".

Just to complete the confusion, though, this poll finds that 41 percent of people believe we would be economically better off outside the EU and 26 percent worse off, topped by a massive 33 percent "don't knows".

That latter finding is the only honest answer. Whether we are better or worse off depends very much on the deal negotiated, and then our own efforts after leaving, although it helps to have the belief system in our favour. As a real finding, it is meaningless, the message being that the polls are simply part of the propaganda war.

And in that war, we are at least entertained by a poll in France by research agency BVA which shows that a majority (52 percent) of French people favour Britain leaving the EU, while 48 percent want it to stay. With a bit of work and I'm sure we can annoy some more Frenchmen, and get that majority to strengthen.

COMMENT THREAD

EU Referendum: Britain "very isolated"?

2013-01-29T16:23:28.8789062+00:00

Russia Today recently devoted its Cross Talk programme to the EU referendum issue, with Robert Oulds from the Bruges Group, Tony Halpin from The Times and MEP Georges Chatzimarkakis, hosted by Peter Lavelle.

The video clip was brought to my attention by a reader who noted with delight how Oulds had managed argue to the point about Norway's "influence" on Single Market legislation.

But what is equally of interest is the intensity with which Tony Halpin defends the "no influence" pitch. He simply won't have it that EFTA/EEA countries have the ability to influence and even block EU law.

The is first raised by Chatzimarkakis (about ten minutes into the programme), and Oulds disputes this, and Halpin then pitches in with the claim:

I think it's very difficult to be outside a club and be affected by its rules. The rules will be imposed – you don't have a choice whether to accept them or negotiate them. They're presented to you - it's a single economy against a collective weight of – I dunno, seventeen of eighteen. Um, Norway and Switzerland do have to comply with …

At this point Oulds intervenes, saying that Norway had been able to exercise a veto, by Halpin clearly does not like being contradicted. Britain out of the EU would be "very isolated", he says.

Entertainingly, Boiling Frog gives us an example of where Iceland has been able to buck the system. Whether The Times is up to speed on this, I neither know nor care. If Halpin is an example of this paper's output, it is not worth paying to find out.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: FUD of the day

2013-01-29T23:07:15.7226562+00:00

The dregs in the Telegraph and then the BBC, continuing the work of the "colleagues".

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: "selfish Norway"

2013-01-30T12:23:54.9199218+00:00

So the spotlight on Norway continues, bringing to light this review of the functioning of the EEA. It was issued in Brussels on 7 December last year by the European Commission and, but for events, would have remained (for us) just another one of the thousands of documents pumped out by the EU each year, for which there simply isn't time to read.

This one, mercifully, is only seventeen pages, and even then we get a helpful summary in EurActiv, telling us that Norway is failing to live up to its obligations as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), including imposing extra taxes on EU products and not implementing more than 400 directives.

In the report, Norway is also being criticised for imposing tariffs on EU products from 2013 and resisting "EU efforts for ambitious liberalisation" of the EU's single market. Complains the Commission: "This situation might thus lead to competitive advantages for operators based in the EEA-EFTA countries, and more fundamentally risks undermining the legal certainty and homogeneity of the single market".

Moreover, the EU also dislikes the fact that Norway has rejected several directives coming from Brussels. The Norwegian government has for example warned it won’t implement the EU's postal directive about competitiveness for letter mail weighting less than 50 grams.

Danish MEP Bendt Bendtsen (European People's Party), who has been closely following the trade issues with Norway, says the problems started in 2012 when Norway raised the price of hydrangeas from the EU by 72 percent. Eventually, the extra taxes spread to EU food products such as cheese and meat.

Bendtsen says Norway is acting "selfishly" and that the taxes were put on EU goods "deliberately" as the Norwegian Centre Party, which is part of the Norwegian government, has for a long time pushed for the extra taxes. "Norway only wants the cream on the cake," the MEP says.

Brining it bang up-to-date is a report on Norway's TV2 News which headlines that Norway is "threatened with hefty fines" from the EU, while another report has Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg blaming the Socialist government for "poor co-operation" with the EU.

All this paints a very different picture from the image of poor little Norway rolling over and implementing a new law every time the ancient fax machine stutters into life, presenting a much more dynamic and troubled relationship between Norway and the EU.

It may suit the likes of David Cameron to paint a one-dimensional (and dishonest) picture of the relationship, but real life is very different. In fact, links between the EU and Norway are under constant review, and even the Schengen Agreement is being questioned, mainly in response to the Romanian and Bulgarian accession.

I'm beginning to get a sense of the game the Norwegians are playing, which is subtle and clever. Presenting an image to the world as weak, powerless neighbour to the mighty EU, it is using this carefully cultivated image as cover for a ruthlessly aggressive foreign policy, while it exploits every gap and loophole in international agreements, itself acting the bully with its smaller neighbours, as we see with the mackerel dispute.

The Norwegians are not quite the innocents that they would like to make out, and seem to be playing a very successful game of protecting their own national interests, without people realising what they are doing. It is no small wonder that so many want the UK to stay in the EU. They don't want Britain to enjoy the same competitive advantages as Norway.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: "selfish Norway"

2013-01-30T12:23:55.1308593+00:00

EU politics: a debate in the House

2013-01-30T12:56:07.6796875+00:00

Going on now, opened by foreign secretary, William Hague. "A new global race is underway", he says. Would this race be the political class?.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: look elsewhere for the debate

2013-01-30T18:52:25.8349609+00:00

The thing that struck me about the Commons debate on "Europe" (the bit I could tolerate) was its flatness – the lack of knowledge, imagination or of anything new to say. Whatever debate there is, it isn't being driven by MPs, who really do have nothing to offer except the same old, derivative mantras.

For that debate, you are going to have to go to the blogs that the MPs don't read, such as Boiling Frog who has put up Part I of a further exploration of Article 50, taking on board the two-year negotiating period, and the response of the "colleagues".

By coincidence, we also see a piece from Helen Szamuely in International Business Times, also on Article 50, this one in relation to an exit strategy.

There is more wisdom, information and knowledge in these two pieces – both of them worth studying and keeping - than you will find in the hours of speeches from the ranks of dismal MPs who spoke today. None of these have spent any time learning the history of the EU, nor the dynamics of the Community. The shallowness and the misinformation from people who would lecture us on what we should do is, frankly, offensive.

Therein lies much of our problem, especially with the likes of John Denham and Paul Blomfield who are so free with the insult "europhobe", men who complain of resentment towards the European Union, while speaking glibly of peace in Europe through their insults.

These MPs in particular are a disgrace, but there is not one I would give time to, from the pompous of Ben Gummer to the na�vely stupid Andrea Leadsom and the insolent Emma Reynolds. None have taken the trouble to keep themselves properly informed. They have nothing to tell us.

Bizarrely though, information in this country is not at a premium. The ignorance of the "ordinary man" – even those who claim to be educated – is largely self-inflicted. It matches that of the MPs who claim to represent us. The information is there to be had, not least through the modern miracle of the internet and search engines.

In fact, it is though that miracle that we can watch our MPs in action live. With a slight tweak in technology, two screens can be fitted to one computer – as I have done, which allows me to watch the ghastly proceedings on one, while working on a document on the other.

Unfortunately, the technology does not bring the quality automatically. That, one has to search out, and too few people are doing that – especially MPs and their assistants and advisors. They should not be surprised, therefore, if they are progressively left out of the real debate. Worthless prattlers, they really are a waste of space and time.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: more FUD

2013-01-30T23:06:24.0380859+00:00

In October 1999, we had the the launch of the Britain in Europe euro campaign, whence we had Tony Blair telling us:

For months, if not years, there has been a clamour from those opposed to Europe, that has always been shrill and often effective. We are told that Europe is bad for the British economy, that being part of Europe means abandoning our allies in the USA, that Europe is obstinately against reform, dedicated to bloated bureaucracy rather than the needs of European citizens, that being in Europe means losing our identity as the British nation, that as a consequence, Britain should rule out joining the euro and should prepare to leave Europe altogether.

Then said Mr Blair, "It is time we took each of these arguments in turn and demolished them".

Playing the economic card, Blair said 3.5m jobs depended on British membership of the EU and that last year alone 50,000 jobs had been created because of inward investment as a consequence of European membership. He said Britain was stronger because it was in the EU, although he accepted the need for reform of the Brussels bureaucracy.

And sitting alongside the now former prime minister – nearly fourteen years ago - was Ken Clarke, the man who is now telling us that leaving the EU would be a "fatal mistake".

Normally, people who are so consistently wrong become a laughing stock. But this does not apply to europhiles and the BBC. The FUD-factory is open house to predictions of doom. All the same though, you would be hard put to it to realise that this was the BBC report on the Commons debate yesterday.

Of all the quotes they could have picked, this was the one. But then, they are nothing if not predictable, boringly so. After nearly fourteen years, they are still churning out the same old propaganda, the same mantras, the same tired old claims – and still talking about "reform".

Being a europhile, it seems, means never having to think up any new lies.

COMMENT THREAD

UK politics: falling apart

2013-01-31T09:47:51.5439453+00:00

With our very necessary focus on European Union issues, it is easy to lose sight of other events, no matter how important they are. That is the fate of the specialist, but it is one which must be guarded against. What we might treat as "noises off" can well have a significant effect on our obsession, the EU referendum.

One such was Tuesday's vote on constituency boundaries, and the reduction of the number of MPs from 650 to 600. The combined effect of that – in throwing out the proposed measures – was to make the election of Labour that much more certain, giving Miliband a built-in cushion of 20 seats before the first leaflet has been dropped through letter boxes.

No one will disagree on this that the electoral system has now been skewed. With the shenanigans over postal votes – in a system that is also crying out for reform – the British electoral system is acquiring more than a few of the characteristics of a banana republic, ensuring that the next election will be anything but fair and free.

It is hardly remarkable, therefore, that one of our better parliamentary correspondents, Quentin Letts, was outraged. "Watching our MPs on Tuesday", he writes today in The Daily Mail:

I felt no longer as though I was in noble Westminster, "mother" to so many other democratic assemblies. I am sorry to say it felt more like being at a third world parliament, the plaything of one of those former Soviet states run by thick-necked ex-Communist thugs.

In Britain, he goes on, "we have long flattered ourselves that we play by the rules. In the Commons on Tuesday, the rules were blatantly broken. In the 23 years, on and off, I have been reporting Parliament, I have not felt so disgusted by our political class".

Letts is quite clearly outraged: "The behaviour of Mr Miliband, Mr Clegg and their MPs is worse than cash-for-questions or the expenses scandal", he adds "Those were fuelled by small-minded greed. This is the naked abuse of parliamentary principle. This, I am afraid, is anti-democratic theft".

Sadly we could say the same thing of the insistence of our political class over our membership of the European Union, and yesterday's debate on "Europe" was in its own way just as offensive as the to event to which Letts takes such exception.

There, you had MPs indulging themselves in a fatuous, ill-informed debate, not in the least reflecting the concerns of the people who elected them, rehearsing the same tired-old mantras. The debate was an insult to the very concept of democratic principles, without passion or fire. Lazy, disinterested MPs going through a sham ritual of debate without the first attempt to engage in the issues and get themselves properly informed.

What Letts reports of the Tuesday vote, however, is the lack of outrage inside and outside the House to what in fact is blatant cheating. Similarly, we see a lack of response to the lacklustre performance of our MPs yesterday. But what was there to react to? It was a debate hardly worth reporting (and many newspapers haven't bothered).

Unfortunately, the two issues are conjoined. Kate Hoey in the debate yesterday felt certain that Miliband would soon fall into line and before the general election commit to an EU referendum. But, if the Labour leader feels he can win the election on the basis of rigged constituency boundaries, he will most certainly be less inclined to give us a vote on the EU.

If he cheats us, though, the pressure will not go away, and nor will the contempt. The British population may be slow to anger, and very slow to realise what is going on, but it is getting so bad that even Iain Dale has noticed something amiss.

When the chattering classes fall out of love with politics, one suspects that the centre cannot hold for that much longer.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: corporate FUD

2013-01-31T13:35:51.5683594+00:00

On top of the Ken Clarke extravaganza, who is given a free ride on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme for nearly twelve minutes, we are seeing evidence of the corporate scare machine cranking up into high gear, in what appears to be an attempt to head off an EU referendum altogether.

Mostly, they are not even attempting to arguing the case for remaining in the EU (mostly, one assumes, because the case is so poor). Rather, they are attacking the very idea of having a referendum. The corporates – in their own minds – are supreme, and the thought of us little plebs being allowed a vote fills them with terror.

Thus we have the parasites PwC spreading their anti-democratic poison in the corporate rag MoneyMarketing. Parasite-in-chief, PwC hedge fund leader Rob Mellor, is allowed to bleat: "A UK asset management industry outside of Europe may face obstacles to the continued management of assets for EU-based investors. This is a fundamental risk to the growth of the industry".

In any free and fair discussion, you would not give this sort of jobsworth bleating more than a short blast of contempt, so lame and dismal is the argument. But the corporate might of PwC gives it open access to the ranks of the brain-dead.

Similarly, we get the vipers' nest of europhila – the London School of Economic - stir up its zombies in the LSE "Growth Commission" to warn us of the terrors to come if we threaten their gravy train.

And sure enough, Sky TV, where corporate shall speak unto corporate, gives the LSE open access, and has professor John Van Reenen (good English name that) telling us:

The idea of leaving the EU would be very, very damaging for the UK, so I personally think the uncertainty around having the referendum is actually going to retard growth and retard investment, so I don't think there is a strong case for having that referendum.

One also has to note, though, the strap line which conveys the same anti-democratic sentiments held by PwC: "The Government just talking about an EU referendum is damaging investment and productivity, influential economists warn", it says.

There, naked in tooth and claw, is the corporate mind exposed. We shall stay in "Europe" and you shall not even think about leaving it, much less be allowed to discuss it. Any idea of democracy and public consent does not even enter their foetid, closeted minds. We the plebs must not dare to question our masters, nor be allowed to debate their folly and their greed.

What last vestiges of democracy we ever had are draining away into the sand.

COMMENT THREAD

EU regulations: our masters speak

2013-01-31T21:00:34.7177735+00:00

The picture above is not particularly dramatic but, by clicking on this link, you might think you were looking at Commission spokesman Fr�d�ric Vincent delivering yesterday's midday press briefing to journalists.

In fact, though, what you were looking at was a representative of our masters handing down their judgement on what things are to be or, more accurately, how they would wish them to be.

The proximate issue here is neonicotinoid insecticides and their effect on bees, about which we wrote in November last. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. What matters here is not so much what, but how – and whom.

The thing here is that this group of insecticides may or may not harm bees – the jury is out on this, but it does mean that there are calls for the products to be banned. If we were an independent nation, the decision would be made by our own Secretary of State for agriculture (Defra). But it is a long time since we enjoyed that status.

Clues to our second-class status abound, one in a sequence being the press release issued by the 3,216th meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels on 28 January.

And yes, dear readers, there have been 3,216 meetings. Assuming they take one day each (and some go much longer), that is nearly ten whole years, as close a description of purgatory as can be imagined – a ten-year council meeting.

Anyhow, the press release tells us that, at the request of the Dutch delegation, the Commission reported to the Council on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) about the risk assessment of neonicotinoid insecticides with regard to bees. This request came in on 24 January, with the Netherlands asking the European Commission to take action on a "community level".

As it happened, EFSA had reported on 16 January that it had identified a number of risks posed to bees by three neonicotinoid insecticides. Crucially, though, it reported that there was "a high level of uncertainty in the latest evaluations", which meant that EFSA's scientists "were unable to finalise risk assessments for some of the uses authorised in the EU".

With nothing specific to go on, at the Council meeting, "many" member states nevertheless supported a suggestion from the Netherlands to initiate an action at community level "where high risks have been identified or could not be excluded in relation to certain aspects of the risk assessment for honey bees".

This latter phrasing shrieks of "precautionary principle" and it will come as no surprise that some member states – our own included - considered that further scientific advice should be sought before taking any action.

Taking no action, though, is not something for which the Commission is famed. It blandly informed the Council that it would "shortly" present proposals to apply "both the precautionary and the proportionality principles" to the issue.

Sure enough, on Wednesday, the Commission gave early warning that it would present a discussion paper to Member State experts at a meeting of the standing committee on pesticides, aiming "to exchange views on the range of policy options available".

Said Tonio Borg, Commissioner for Health and Consumers, "we now need to carefully assess all the policy options that are available to us before bringing forward any legislative and harmonised proposals".

And so it was yesterday that we had M. Fr�d�ric Vincent telling us that the Commission proposed that the Member States suspend for two years the use of these pesticides in seeds, granulates and sprays for crops which attract bees; sunflower, rape, maize and cotton.

Vincent acknowledged that the issue had been on the table of the Council on Monday and it was true that some delegations expressed the view that it was necessary to pursue further analyses. Some big countries, he also said, "didn't express their view" but there was to be a "discussion". Member States would react and if there was a regulation, it would be before March.

This has now been processed into news by the assembled hacks, a typical result emerging in EU business, with the headline: "EU urges two-year ban on 'disturbing' bee insecticides".

Interestingly, the copy tells us that, "the EU urged national governments on Thursday to ban pesticides deemed dangerous to bees by scientific experts in a bid to prevent a disastrous collapse in colony numbers for an insect considered vital to the integrity of the human food chain".

We also learn that "major EU states Germany, Britain and Spain", amongst others, indicated serious reservations about the plans, but the decisive meeting is set for 25 February. The chemicals then to be discussed are clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, produced by pharmaceutical giants Bayer, Syngenta and Cruiser OSR.

Cut to Bayer CropScience, which believes that "the Commission's overly conservative interpretation of the precautionary principle is a missed opportunity to achieve a fair and proportional solution". It wants the Commission to refer back to "solid science" before making any proposals.

The Company was a little more robust to the House of Commons environmental audit committee recently, having its Dr Julian Little telling MPs that the EU was in danger of "enshrining some sort of museum agriculture".

"I personally absolutely support very strict regulation, but not to the point where we believe you are taking out major advances in chemistry and major advances in agriculture with no discernible improvement in bee health", he said.

Defra rejected a ban late last year saying the scientific evidence wasn't clear, and have commissioned new studies that will look at the impacts of neonicotinoids on bumble bees in field conditions. Unfortunately, the results of those studies are not yet available.

But what Defra thinks doesn't really matter. We are one voice in 27. The "experts" of the standing committee will do the deed, using the comitology process. Rumour has it that there are only three people in the world who have understood the process – one is dead, the second is in a mental asylum and the third exiled himself to a desert island. But whatever the committee decides, we will comply.

That is how our government works.

COMMENT THREAD

EU regulation: another single market success

2013-02-01T00:36:04.4560547+00:00

There were, we wrote just over a year ago, 113 alerts issued by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) about medical devices the previous year. The products ranged from hip joints to surgical instruments, but the agency had no power to check devices until a failure was reported.

This was in the wake of the PIP breast implant scandal, when we were shouting from the rooftops about the failures of the EU regulatory system.

And now the Daily Telegraph has "revealed" that the health of British patients was being potentially put at risk by European regulators "who were prepared to license potentially dangerous medical implants for sale in this country".

These are ASR hip joint replacements, produced by DePuy Orthopaedics, a subsidiary of the American firm Johnson & Johnson. They are metal-to-metal hip implants, launched in 2003, which have now been shown to be faulty, with problems being reported as early as 2006. The product type was withdrawn in 2009 from Australian and US markets, but was still on sale in Europe until 2010.

Approximately 40,000 patients have received an ASR replacement in Europe, 380 of them in France, but more than 10,000 in Britain, before they were finally withdrawn in August 2010,

All of these hip replacements were authorised in conformity with EU legislation under the aegis of the Single Market. Market surveillance and vigilance rules were also specified by the EU.

One should note that the fabulous Single Market which has brought us these great successes is the very same that Mr Cameron so enthusiastically supports, and tells us is so necessary.

The rules are now undergoing revision, and have been going through the process for four years, with further revisions also proposed. But, the relevant directives have already been amended many times. There is no guarantee this time that the EU will get them right this time.

Even then there will be little comfort for the thousands of people left in agony, despite every single one of the hip replacements used being fully certified with the EU's CE mark, a mark of quality that is about as reliable as anything else the EU has on offer.

One wonders therefore, what it is going to take before people finally realise that the EU is not only driving us to ruin though weight of regulation, but also that the quality of its legislation is so poor that it fails completely to achieve its stated aims.

And when that day comes, what will we do then?

COMMENT THREAD

Media: a perfect FUD

2013-02-01T09:44:31.9960938+00:00

For anyone who might have thought that the Daily Telegraph in general, and Ambrose Evans-Pritichard in particular, was going to be in the side of the angels during any referendum campaign, today's article is the wake-up call. It combines the straw man technique with scary headline to produce a "perfect storm" of FUD, guaranteed to send all the City wuzzies scurrying to their bunkers to count their bonuses.

Classic of its genre, the hook on which Ambrose bases his scary movie is Athanasios Orphanides a former member of the European Central Bank's governing council.

Orphanides is a member of the euro-elite and just the sort of person one would go to for a dispassionate account of Britain's prospects outside the EU. This is the man who served as Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, the country with a banking sector equal to 835 percent of its GDP, so large it is threatening to destablise the euro.

This is just the sort of man we need to listen to as he obligingly says that membership of the EU single market, "is the UK's only legal defence against an onslaught of regulations aimed at forcing banks and fund managers to decamp to the eurozone". Greek bankers such impeccable backgrounds are just what we need to tells us that, "It would be catastrophic and suicidal for Britain to leave. The UK would lose the protection it currently enjoys as the eurozone’s major financial centre".

Nevertheless, this is Ambrose's main source for his scary movie. You can just imagine Ken Clarke salivating over that one and Mr Orphanides will be a welcome guest in the halls of British europhila, featuring prominently on the BBC to warn all the wuzzies not to let go of nurse, for fear of their bonuses.

The gist of Mr Orphanide's little gems is that the ECB, "is already clamping down on payments, clearing and settlement systems conducted in euros outside its jurisdiction, a move deemed necessary to head off future crises". Thus, he says, "The only thing stopping regulation that would shift all such activities from London to the eurozone is the legal protection the City enjoys in the EU".

This, of course, is moonshine. So huge is the London market, as one of the hubs of the global market, that if the ECB tried on such predatory policies, it would be buried. Already fragile, the euro would be shattered by the onslaught of hostile trading, and the euro-wuzzies would be cleaning toilets for a living the following day.

Not least, we would see intervention by the Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS), formerly known as the Euro-currency Standing Committee, currently headed by William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. An assault on London by the ECB would be seen for what it is, a move to destabilise the market – the financial equivalent of a suicide bomb, and it would soon be seen off by the global financial system.

But then, the scary movie is only a figment of the imagination of the europhile FUD factory. While Britain is in a "very strong" position now as an EU member outside the eurozone, this would evaporate the moment the UK tears up its membership card, says Orphanide.

Needless to say, Britain would never "tear up its membership card". Only the lunatic eurosceptic fringe advocate that. No sane British government would ever countenance leaving other than through a carefully negotiated exit, with alternative treaty arrangements in place before the knot was finally cut. That is the essence of Article 50.

But the Telegraph is not into sensible reporting. "Legal guerrilla warfare is already under way", writes Ambrose, then citing the paragons of impartial commentary, anonymous "EU officials".

These anonymous officials obligingly tell Ambrose, "privately", of course – so that what they say can never be checked, or attributed to any one person - "that the struggle for control over the financial industry is reaching a critical point, with Britain rapidly key losing allies". Well, they would say that, wouldn't they.

Needless to say, this assertion need a bit of bolstering, so off Ambrose trots to Rodney Leach's little boy, Mats "renta-quote" Persson from Little Europe, to put the "F" into the FUD. "This is a very real threat", says Persson, "what's the question?"

Lining up the skittles, Ambrose then adds Dino Kos, a former head of markets at the New York Fed, to say "the City is more vulnerable to a regulatory squeeze than people realise".

Then we get Graham Bishop, styled as "an expert on EU regulation". That is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Graham Bishop is a self-styled consultant who openly admits to tailoring his services "to highlight my personal commitment to a deepening of European financial and political integration". There's "expert" for you.

But even this rabid europhile is not enough. To finish off this euro-wuzzie wet-dream, Ambrose recruits Giles Merritt, the head of Friends of Europe in Brussels, a temple of europhila if ever there was one. Predictably, he warns that EU leaders "could become vindictive if Britain's in/out referendum degenerates into a slanging match". "If British eurosceptics turn it into a sneering campaign against Europe, then the Europeans will play hardball", he says.

Well, you don't say. EU leaders vindictive? And this is a reason for staying in the EU.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: little change in the polls

2013-02-01T13:54:10.1035156+00:00

The Lord Ashcroft has made the Press Association with his commentary on the effect of the Cameron speech.

Based on a recent private poll, he concludes that the speech "has cheered Conservative supporters, but done little to improve the party's chances of success at the next general election". It has not, he says, "unleashed a desire for an overall Conservative majority".

Thus, Labour is still in the lead, on 38 percent, the Tories get 33 percent, the Lib-Dems 11 percent, UKIP nine and "others" nine. A small increase in the Tory vote is attributed to an increase in those who voted Conservative in 2010, coming back to the fold.

As regards "Europe", the noble Lord observes that the upsurge in debate about the EU in advance of the high-profile speech appears to have bolstered pro-European sentiments.

That conclusion is based on a question about sentiment on the EU, with 22 percent feeling "positive" about EU membership, up four points from the Populus poll in December 2012. Those who feel negative about EU membership, but feel we should remain in account for 19 percent (down one), and those who feel we are better off out score 26 percent (down eight). Those with no strong views either way account for 33 percent of the poll.

There is no question on renegotiation, but if one assumes that the first two categories would go for that option, we are looking at 41 percent – against 26 percent wanting out. That is not an untypical result, very close to the 42-34 percent finding in the July 2012 YouGov survey.

Why the speech should not have had more of an impact is perhaps explainable in terms of people simply not believing that the referendum promise is real, oir a feeling that it is completely undeliverable. We seem to have a perverse situation where, in order to enjoy a sustained surge in the polls, the Tories need already to be ahead, to give the promise credibility.

On the other hand, now that we are seeing an upsurge in europhile propaganda, the likelihood is that sentiment will harden against the "EU-out" proposition. And give also that the europhile attack is focused on the referendum itself, we may even see the strength behind calls for a referendum diminish.

Add to this the boundary vote, and the prospect of a Conservative win at the next election begins to look so unlikely that the referendum promise will have little immediate traction.

However, there is a wildcard here. Consistently, Cameron is scoring much higher in polls than is Miliband. If we see a firming up of the presidential-style of campaigning, we could have voters choosing between a (relatively) popular leader of an unpopular party, and an unpopular leader of a (relatively) popular party. In such circumstances, the polls may find it hard to predict a winner.

Nevertheless, if the Tories do drag themselves out of their mid-term rut and begin to show a lead, the referendum promise may start to have a real impact, reinforcing the lead. In those circumstances, Miliband may feel inclined to neutralise the effect, by also promising a referendum.

While it is thus difficult at this stage to see Cameron's promise materialising, we might not get any serious indicators until after the euro-elections next year. Certainly, the game is not yet over – and nor will it go away.

COMMENT THREAD

A wry smile

2013-02-01T20:03:42.1308594+00:00

This piece was brought to my attention, even though it is from a few weeks back. Says Vicky Woods: "The only person in government who I ever thought had an impressive grasp of defence procurement was Ann Winterton. Another Right-wing woman one had to hide one's admiration for".

Well, Ann was a Tory. Her party was in opposition, and she was a backbencher. To suggest she was "in government", therefore, is technically wrong. In an odd sort of a way, though, it is possibly closer to the truth than anyone can imagine. And, as any good politician will readily agree, they are as good as their advisors – which is no poor reflection on them. Good politicians hire good advisors, and know how to use them.

Those were good days.

COMMENT THREAD

UK politics: this explains a great deal

2013-02-01T21:17:47.7304688+00:00

We (or, at least, I) tended to think Mr Cameron was being deliberately untruthful (aka lying) when he so often claimed that government debt was going down. It never occurred to me that he really didn't understand the difference between debt, as in national debt, and deficit. He couldn't be that thick, could he?

Well, it seems I owe Mr Cameron an apology. He hasn't been lying. He really is that think, across a wide range of subjects. And, when you realise who writes his speeches, the (poor) quality of what he delivers should come as no surprise.

But then, bad politicians hire bad advisors, and cut themselves off from corrective sources. That is one of the reasons why Cameron makes so many mistakes, and will continue to make them.

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: a word on the beach

2013-02-02T12:04:54.8300782+00:00

A bizarrely complacent Nigel (now Lord) Lawson told the Financial Times last week that David Cameron's plan to negotiate a better deal with Europe was likely to fail and the British people would see through any "make believe" new settlement.

Quite reasonably, he observes that other EU member states would not reopen treaties because they feared that would lead to a fragmentation of the club. They would never reverse the EU's "theology" of ever closer union, he says.

But then Lawson goes on to express a belief that the British public would not fall for a minimal renegotiation of terms, similar to the limited concessions won by Harold Wilson before the 1975 referendum. "The British public is much more sceptical", he says. "I don't think they're going to be taken in by Wilsonian make-believe".

There lies the complacency, for the sham of the negotiations was as transparent then as any deal that might be offered in 2017, or some time never. But the fact of the transparency did not stop 249 Conservative MPs voting for the deal on 9 April 1975, as opposed to the eight who voted against, and the 18 who abstained.

I don't accept the comfortable fiction that people were somehow deceived into believing that this was about a trading arrangement. The above cartoon in the Guardian of the time (27 February 1975) perfectly illustrates the mood. People (and especially Conservative MPs) were believed what they wanted to believe, and "Europe" was seen as a refuge from otherwise unresolvable problems.

The capacity for self-delusion has by no means changed over time and if, in 2017 (or whenever) – with the whole of the establishment and the media urging acceptance of whatever "deal" is on offer – the British public will just as readily vote to hold onto nurse. Lawson drastically underestimates the electorate's fondness for make-believe.

Thus, in a competent piece on politics.co.uk we see its editor Ian Dunt argue that: "No real eurosceptic can support Cameron's referendum".

The premise here is that prime ministers only call referendums when they are fairly certain they will win. Cameron's course of action is aimed to keep us in the EU and, should he win – as he is most likely to, if there is ever a vote – it will kill off Britain's chances of leaving the EU for a generation.

That much would have been true, but increasingly it is looking uncertain that Mr Cameron and his Conservative Party will be elected to office at the next general election, in which case the prospect of referendum is remote. The chances of Ed Miliband offering us one is zero.

The more I think about this, though, the more I am drawn to my original view that an in-out referendum would be a bad idea, simply on the basis that, under any of the circumstances currently anticipated, I cannot see us winning it.

Developing the theme I was exploring earlier, one has to concede that a referendum alone is not enough. For us to have any reasonable chance if winning, we must also have the government enthusiastically supporting an exit, and prepared to campaign for it.

The essence here is that leaving the EU is not simply a matter of "tearing up our membership card", but of completely changing the way we are governed, and our direction of travel as a nation.

In exploring our transition from a post-war independent nation to a supplicant, seeking entry to the then EEC, the official historian Alan S. Milward writes of the "rise and fall of a national strategy". He thus points out that it was not until the existing strategy of maintaining independence collapsed that the government could countenance joining the European treaty organisation that was to become the EU.

Similarly, it is not until the current strategy of engagement within the EU collapses that we will see a successful attempt to leave. A change in strategy must come first – the action then follows. We must go through much more trauma before we get to that desirable situation.

Most of all, what we need is the vision of where we are going. The Guardian cartoon shows so aptly "Europe" as the safe haven for the survivors of the sinking ship "Commonwealth", but if we were now to show "Europe" as the foundering vessel, what word or words would be written on the beach?

Until we can answer that question convincingly, the terrors of leaving a sinking ship are as of nothing compared with fears and uncertainty of embarking on a journey into the unknown. There is our task: to put a different word on that beach.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker: MPs plumb new depths

2013-02-02T21:05:33.328125+00:00

I don't think anyone I've spoken to about that debate has been in the least bit impressed by the performance of our MPs. Witterings was so depressed that he had to take a break.

It is not surprising therefore, that Booker – in and amongst a nightmare week that had BT scrambling his telephone lines – should find space in his column to remark on the vacuity of our MPs.

His piece starts, however, with the Ken Clarke show on Radio 4's Today programme, a more vacuous item it is hard to recall. This was the 12-minute interview last Thursday in which that battered old Euromaniac was excitably egged on by John Humphrys to explain why it would be "a fatal mistake" for Britain to leave the EU.

Constantly talking over Clarke, Humphrys himself even went so far in betraying his bias as to compare those calling for a referendum to the "hangers and floggers" of yesteryear.

The most dismal consequence of David Cameron's promise that we might one day have an in-out referendum has been the eruption on all sides of Europhiles suggesting not just that it would be disastrous for Britain to leave the EU, but that even to talk of a referendum is creating such a miasma of fear and uncertainty that it is already imperilling the future of Britain's economy.

But the most dismal spectacle was the week in the House of Commons, writes Booker. This began on Monday with Speaker Bercow's support for the idea that MPs should get a 30 percent pay rise, just as the rest of us are facing years of austerity.

On Tuesday, we saw Nick Clegg's Lib Dems vengefully refusing to support those promised boundary changes that might give their Tory Coalition allies 20 more seats at the next election. This prompted that admirable parliamentary commentator Quentin Letts to a wonderfully contemptuous threnody on the depths to which, in the past 20 years, he has seen Parliament sink.

This was followed on Wednesday by a six-hour debate on "Europe" in which, without exception, MPs regurgitated to an often largely empty House nothing but equally empty cliches, most so ancient that they were already familiar decades ago.

Not a single MP, Europhile or Eurosceptic, seemed to have the slightest grasp of how the EU actually works or the rules it lives by. Not one knew enough to spell out why Mr Cameron’s proposals are no more than wishful thinking.

Not one, for instance, was aware that for Cameron to get his "re-negotiation" would, under the Lisbon Treaty, require a new treaty, involving procedures so lengthy that they would last way past his 2017 deadline.

The only way he could get the negotiations he says he wants would be to invoke Article 50 of the treaty, which not a single MP seemed aware of – and which Mr Cameron has already ruled out, because it would require him first to declare Britain’s intention to leave the EU.

Concludes Booker, one of the heaviest prices we have paid for handing over the running of our country to this system centred in Brussels is that our MPs have lost all ability to think for themselves, or to do enough homework to allow them to relate to the real world.

All these sad people can think about is how they should be given a pay rise, for serving us more lamentably than any MPs in history.

COMMENT THREAD

EU regulation: "uncertainty in the regulatory environment"

2013-02-03T11:44:01.2841797+00:00

In the days when newspapers had specialist agriculture correspondents, the news the German chemicals giant BASF had dropped attempts to market genetically modified potato varieties in Europe might have merited more than a passing reference in an obscure corner of the BBC website, under a trivialising headline.

And had such correspondents been active, and those self-same newspapers still took any interest at all in agriculture, more than just the Guardian might have reported on the Oxford Farming Conference back in early January, a political highlight of the farming year which used to be widely reported in the popular media.

With the two events in the public domain, one or other of the correspondents – having the time and background knowledge to explore such things – might have linked the two reports and noticed a startling incongruity which has profound implications for the current (albeit lacklustre) debate on the European Union.

Crucial to this is that the star speaker at the Oxford Conference was Defra Secretary of State Owen Paterson, his first address at the Conference in his elevated role. And the link which screams out when you put the Guardian report side-by-side with the BASF news is that, on the one hand, you have Mr Paterson actively promoting the use of GM while, almost exactly a month later, we get a major player pulling out a key developmental sector.

"The British public should be persuaded of the benefits of genetically modified food", the Guardian report had Mr Paterson saying, making his statement, "a key signal of the government's intent to expand agricultural biotechnology and [to] make the case for GM food in Europe".

Ostensibly, therefore, we have a classic example of the impotence of a British minister in the face of a multinational company reluctant to pursue the technology he favours. And the reason in this instance is, according to the lamentably inaccurate BBC, that: "The genetically modified potato project gained approval at EU level but was a commercial failure".

This BBC report (by environment correspondent Matt McGrath) does not even begin to do justice to the issue. It presents a grossly distorted account of the situation, having omitted the all-important sentence in the original BASF press release (dated 29 January). This reads:

The company will also discontinue the pursuit of regulatory approvals for the Fortuna, Amadea, and Modena potato projects in Europe because continued investment cannot be justified due to uncertainty in the regulatory environment and threats of field destructions (my emphasis).

Field destructions have certainly been a factor in the ongoing struggle to gain wider use of GM crops, but there can be no doubt where the emphasis lies in the BASF press release. The main reason for them pulling out is, quite simply: "uncertainty in the regulatory environment".

Regular readers of this blog – who are far better informed on such issues than those who rely on the pap dished out by the legacy media – will be aware that approval of GM crops is an exclusive EU competence. Therefore "uncertainty in the regulatory environment" relates exclusively to implementation of EU law.

Furthermore, readers will also be aware that, applications for marketing approval of GM foods, if contested by Member States, go through the comitology process and that one of the BASF potato products suffered from this process in 2006 before it was finally approved in March 2010, after a delay of 13 years.

But, since BASF seems to have mastered the approvals process, and has achieved some success in have one of only two products (the other being GM maize) gain market authorisation, one might ask why the company has thrown in the towel after so much time and expense.

Part of the reason is undoubtedly due to the European Commission failing to enforce its own legislation. A weak Commission has allowed Member States to conduct what amounts to a low-level guerrilla war against GM, in a bid to prevent such crops being sown in their territories. Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and Poland have all used loopholes in the law to block its exploitation.

The key, though, is in the comitology process itself, and in particular the amendments brought in with the Lisbon Treaty. In an attempt to "democratise" the process, Articles 290 and 291 gave powers to the European Parliament to block, under certain circumstances, comitology decisions.

As a general rule, the European Parliament tends to be hostile to GM crops and the additional hurdle of gaining approval from this institution has clearly proved to be the last straw for BASF, as the chances of gaining approval for any new product under the amended regime is next to nil.

Thus, BASF cannot justify the investment in new products if there is no certainty that, at the end of the long and expensive approval process, there is no reasonable expectation of being given a market authorisation. It is thus pulling out of the European market for these products altogether, and concentrating on the US – an ironic situation for a company founded – and still headquartered – in Germany.

The greater irony though is the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz telling us that the "EU needs to prove its own importance", arguing that the EU has to become "more democratic" , which "implies strengthening the European Parliament".

Under the original, "less democratic" comitology system, it was already virtually impossible for individual member states to influence the process, but under the new "democratic" system administered by an already strengthened European Parliament, it is beyond the reach of individual Member States – and reason.

Thus, we find that Owen Paterson, member of the British government, is powerless to intervene and promote the use of GM crops in the UK, even if that was the democratic will of the Westminster parliament and the entire nation. Still less is he able "to make the case for GM food in Europe". The Lisbon Treaty has put paid to that.

Piling irony on irony, however, latterly we have besieged by europhile scaremongering about the supposedly crippling "uncertainty" arising from Mr Cameron's referendum announcement, and its effect on the Single Market.

Yet the GM approval system is part of the Single Market, and it is the "uncertainty" in this regulatory environment that is causing a major player to desert Europe and concentrate on the United States. As so often, claimed effects and reality are opposites, not that you will ever learn this from the BBC.

COMMENT THREAD

Fisheries policy: amateurs' corner

2013-02-03T15:12:22.7236328+00:00

Send a badly-briefed girlie reporter, who did her basic training on the Hello Magazine, off to Reykjavik to cover an issue about which she clearly knows nothing, put the result in front of an ignorant editorial desk and the result is a badly-framed mish-mash, of which any reputable newspaper would be ashamed.

The lack of coherence, however, is not confined to the girlies, however, as the Sunday Express does just as badly, framing this as a biff-bam Iceland vs Britain story on the lines of the Cod War.

Thus to frame the story is completely to misunderstand what is going on. This is a four-way fight, between the EU and Norway on one side, and the Faroe Islands and Iceland on the other, with the EU and Norwegians having behaved in a disgusting fashion, having demanded 90 percent of a quote based on historic rights (track record), even though the fish had moved north into Faroese and Icelandic waters.

What we have, therefore, is a situation where the EU/Norwegian licensed fleet is continuing to fish in its traditional grounds within established national boundaries, without in any way encroaching on Faroese or Icelandic waters, effectively seeking to prohibit these two countries from fishing in their own waters.

The really interesting thing about the whole dispute, is what the ignorant hacks have completely missed. The UK – although having two dogs in the fight (holding 60 percent of the EU mackerel quota, while also processing fish from the Iceland and the Faroes) – has no seat at the table.

Negotiations are being carried out between parties to the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, of which we are no longer members, our seat having been taken up by the EU which negotiates in our place.

Thus, while girlie Harriet and her counterpart on the Express can go trotting off to Reykjavik to discuss matters with Iceland's chief negotiator Sigurgeir Thorgeirsson, that is the one thing that British ministers are not allowed to do. Negotiating rights are reserved to the Fisheries Commissioner, Maria Damanaki, a Greek leftie politician, who seems more concerned with propagandising than ending the problem. All the Brits can do is seek to "influence" the Commission is a so far vain attempt to resolve the dispute.

Despite this, the Espress consistently seeks to give the impression that British ministers are directly involved in negotiations, which they are not. Even the girlie is woefully behind the times. There is pressure, she chirps, "for the European Union to impose sanctions on Iceland – threatening to block imports of other fish – unless it dramatically scales back its catch of mackerel, in a variation of the infamous Cod Wars in which navies were summoned and fishing boats rammed".

Yet, as we saw from the Council meeting last week, the prospect of sanctions being imposed is romote. As we wrote at the time:

One of the conditions required is the obligation under WTO Rules for both parties to demonstrate that they are open to negotiation and their willingness to engage in "sustainable fishing". By claiming 90 percent of the stock (even if it is in the framework of an overall quota reduction), the EU does not really seem to be demonstrating a willingness to negotiate, and is on a perilously weak footing.

Despite this also, the Express, which bases its whole story on the prospect of sanctions, writes that "the mood among many fishermen is for tough sanctions now", with the paper not even beginning to explain why they are not going to happen.

If it was just the girlie getting it wrong, we might suggest she goes back to the Hello Magazine where she clearly belongs. But that would be unfair if we also left James Murray of the Express in place. Neither are use nor ornament, which just about sums up the legacy media which employs them.

I don't know how often we have to restate this, but here lies yet another example of the old adage: you may be uniformed if you don't read a newspaper (or a blog), but if you rely on a newspaper, you will end up misinformed.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: that Norwegian fax machine again

2013-02-03T22:15:52.0087891+00:00

Approval of those horrid GM crops is, as we saw earlier, is part of the Single Market acquis, which means that the EEA would appear to be involved – and indeed it is.

But, if legend has got it right, the moment that dreaded fax machine started chattering with the regulation approving BASF's Amflora GMO potato, all those little Vikings would instantly have been living in GM potato-land.

For some strange reason, though, nobody told the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management about this fabled "fax law". Thus, when it was told that the Amflora product had been given market authorisation, it rather irritatingly published a web page telling us that the EEA Agreement only obliges Norway to "consider" all GMOs authorised in the EU.

Being good little Norwegians, indeed, they have considered Amflora. And, having done so, the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management decided that "the cultivation and use of the genetically modified potato Amflora in feed and food should be prohibited in Norway".

That, it seems, is as far as they got. Unless you know different, the product was never approved for use in Norway and now that BASF have thrown in the towel, it does not look as if it ever will – all of which is rather strange, because Mr Cameron says that Norway "has no say at all in setting its rules: it just has to implement its directives".

And, as we all know, Mr Cameron is never wrong.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics

2013-02-03T22:38:33.8417969+00:00

The rationale for Europe is not peace … it is about power, says Tony Blair, who equates power with size of population. You would think, after all this time, this man would know something about the nature of power and its distribution. But, unless he is being deliberately disingenuous (which is quite possible), he clearly has learned very little from his experience as prime minister. COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: simply not true

2013-02-03T23:48:13.4990234+00:00

"Members of the European Parliament have paved the way for hundreds of millions of pounds of subsidies to go to Europe's tobacco farmers — even though Brussels spends huge amounts on anti-smoking campaigns", write Edward Malnick and Robert Mendick for the Sunday Telegraph.

However, this is a carry-over story froim last week, when Andrew Gilligan wrongly asserted that the European Parliament agriculture committee had "passed" reform provisions for the CAP – one of which was the restoration of tobacco subsidies.

This latter claim is being attributed to Owen Paterson, who is concerned that there is pressure in the Council of Ministers to reinstate production subsidies, reversing the so-called MacSharry reforms. He fears that, with the European Parliament offers amendments to like effect, a combination of Parliament and Council could overturn the Commission's proposals, and set the CAP back two decades.

He thus condemns the amendments as "disappointing, retrograde, backward-looking" and in some respects "ludicrous", but it is a very far cry from there, to claim, as Malnick and Mendick have done this week, that MEPs have "voted to amend changes in the Common Agricultural Policy".

To claim this is simply wrong, but that two weeks running the Sunday Telegraph has published exactly the same erroneous claim tells you a great deal about its journalists, their research capabilities and their concern for the truth.

What the journalists have done is mistake the procedural role of the European Parliament agricultural committee, where on behalf of the Conference of Presidents, it has approved the tabling of amendments to be considered and voted on by the full Parliament, in plenary session – probably some time in March.

There is a huge difference between this procedural function and the approval process. The committee itself has no powers to approve or reject amendments tabled. It simply acts as a processing body, to present them to the Plenary for a full vote. It is the full parliament that then approves or othewise the amendments and, as we pointed out ast week, there are still many hurdles before any amendment becomes policy.

In fact, most amendments are rejected at the first reading. As here, they are usually granstanding by MEPs for domestic purposes, to show their constituents that they have been active on their behalf. Each amendment is worth a press release, with the hope of favourable headlines back home.

With these proposals, though, there is an additional hurdle, the EU buget. With agreement still evading EU leaders, that is a considerable problem. If the finding is not there, the entire proposals will have to be withdrawn and rewritten by the European Commssion.

That deal has to be reached by Thursday, so we will know pretty soon whether there is another crisis in the offing.

In the meantime, the Sunday Telegraph insists on parading its ignorance with an editorial telling us that it is "puzzling" that "the EU's representatives should even be considering reintroducing financial support for the growing of tobacco, which was withdrawn in 2004".

Bizarrely, the editorial ventures that, "It is possible that the MEPs who voted in favour of the amendment were not fully aware of what they were doing", when in fact no MEPs have yet had an opportunity to vote on the amendment. The people who are not aware of what they are doing, it seems, are Telegraph journalists.

COMMENT THREAD

Huhne pleads guilty

2013-02-04T11:50:02.2822265+00:00

Presumably, they'll bang him up. The maximum fine for perverting the course of justice is life imprisonment, which is not long enough for this man. But then, this offence does not necessarily mean that the offender does time. A suspended sentence and community service is a possibility. COMMENT THREAD

Media: plumbing the depths

2013-02-04T14:57:47.1640625+00:00

Quite a jolly story about Richard III in the Daily Mail, but one is a little perturbed to find he was buried "in a grave around 680 metres (2,231 feet) below ground level". How on earth (to coin a phrase) did they find him?

Actually, I think this is the curse of metric again. The word "metres" seems to have the effect of switching off that part of the brain that records measurement, so that numbers become totally meaningless.

Interestingly, the Mail also runs a piece by the same author (Damien Gayle) about finding signs of life buried beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet. The depth is put at "HALF A MILE" (in caps), and is instantly recognisable.

If the other story had had Richard III buried half a mile deep (close), Gayle would instantly have seen it to have been nonsense. And, amusingly, in the same piece, he talks about water being blasted in at "fifty gallons a minute" – equivalent to 800 glasses of water. Clearly, Gayle needs to be sent to a re-education camp.

COMMENT THREAD

Fisheries policy: time to calm the rhetoric

2013-02-04T20:28:21.3974609+00:00

When Booker and I started working together back in 1992, we spent a lot of time on agriculture and fishing, these being the victims of the two most fully-developed EU policies – and the most catastrophic.

Part of our reasoning was that these industries were the "canaries down the mine". What happened to them could be taken as an example and a warning of what was to happen to the rest of us.

What I certainly didn't bargain for, more than 20 years later, was how completely the two industries would disappear from the popular media, so much so that the depredations of the EU would seem like history, unattached to current reality, while contemporary hacks and politicians would know next to nothing of the background.

Reflecting the almost complete lack of understanding of the fishing industry is the tendency in any fishing dispute to "fly the flag", as in the current "Mackeral War", supporting our own against the "johnny foreigner" - the Faroese and the Icelanders.

In so doing, however, this is standing up for the Scottish pelagic fleet which, contrary to the image of the hard-pressed, struggling fishermen, is a tiny exclusive "club" of multi-millionaire owners, running modern, 2,000-ton plus, super-trawlers, with starting prices of �20 million.

This is also an industry writ through with criminality, of which last year's "black fish scandal" is reckoned to be only the tip of the iceberg, where thousands of tons of illegally caught herring and mackerel were landed, at a value variously estimated at up to �100 million.

Then, 17 skippers, mostly from the Shetland island of Whalsey admitted to specimen charges, covering the landing of illegal catches worth �47.5 million, after living lives of luxury, splashing out on "holiday homes and flash cars".

This is an industry driven by greed, and one which, unlike the whitefish fleet, has profited hugely from the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Unsurprisingly the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen's Association (SPFA) with its 27 member vessels has been vocal in its support of the EU, even while the rest of the fleet has been driven into bankruptcy.

The pelagic industry generally has also been guilty of the notorious practice of high grading, discarding hundreds of thousands of tons of fish to optimise the value of the catches brought back to port.

But, despite landing record catches, with the value of fish landed in Shetland increasing to a new record of over �90 million during 2011 and records set in Peterhead, this is the industry which is the most voluble in demanding sanctions against the Faroe Islands and Iceland, despite the potential adverse effects on the British fish-processing industry.

In thrall to this tiny, but wealthy sector of the Scotish fishing industry, we have thus seen Scottish fisheries minister Richard Lochhead picking up the call for sanctions, even though the predatory behaviour of Norway and the EU renders their imposition problematical, to the point where they could hardly be applied.

One also needs to remember that, at the heart of the Mackerel dispute is the fact that these fish have moved north into Icelandic and Faroese waters. The effects of this have been spelt out yesterday in the Irish Times, where Sigurgeir Thorgeirsson, Iceland's chief fisheries negotiator spoke of some 1.5 million tons of mackerel moving into his country's waters last summer, consuming an estimated three million tons of food.

"We have quite a greedy guest in our coastal zone", says Thorgeirsson. "A six-year-old mackerel arrives weighing 300g and its weight rises to 500g from eating krill, crustacea, herring and even sand eel". The mackerel invasion is even being blamed for a marked decline in the number of seabirds, including the much-loved puffin.

Thus, the Icelandic and Faroese governments both maintain that catching mackerel in their coastal zones are vitally necessary to restore the ecological balance. But such is the greed of the Scottish pelagic fishermen that they would have these countries, which depend on their fishing industries, cut down their fishing so that they can maintain their own quotas.

From a broader perspective, in terms of jobs and value, the processing industry, with considerable capacity in Grimsby, is worth far boor to us than a few wealthy Scottish boat owners. But, if they need to keep up the repayments on their over-priced boats, the best option is for their beloved EU to negotiate a share of the Faroese and Icelandic quotas.

If they are to have any chance of that, however, ministers would be best off calming down their rhetoric, and recognising that the Scottish pelagic fleet is not the centre of the universe. The Faroese and Icelanders have right on their side – and their track-record should tell them that they do not give in to bullies.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: gay marriage – required by "Europe"

2013-02-05T15:01:03.1640625+00:00

Acute observers have noticed that David Cameron is not alone in his obsession with homosexual marriage, with the French National Assembly last week having approved the most important article of a bill to legalise same-sex marriage.

Same-sex marriage has already been legalised the Netherlands, by Norway and in Germany, where the constitutional court has recently strengthened the rights of homosexual couples, giving them a same tax benefit as heterosexual married couples. That country, rather like Britain, is currently "mired in an escalating debate on the status of homosexual partnerships".

Given the Europe-wide interest, which also includes Spain, it is not untoward to ask whether there is an EU dimension in all this. The answer is "not directly". There is, however, a very strong "European" dimension and a UK link. But to find it you have to go not to Brussels but to Strasbourg and the Council of Europe (CoE).

The clue is in the tidied-up screen grab above, where the Home Office tells us of the Council of Europe and its work, which "includes promoting gender equality and more recently lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGB&T) equality".

There also we find that United Kingdom assumed the Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for six months from 7 November 2011 to 14 May 2012, whence we cut to the statement of priorities for the UK chairmanship, in which Minister for Europe David Lidington declares:

… the Government has repeatedly made it clear that human rights are central to its foreign policy. We aim to be an example of a society that upholds human rights and democracy, and we are committed to strengthening the rules based international system.

For the detail of those fine aspirations, one has to go to the formal statement, where the preamble tells us:

The United Kingdom is proud to be assuming the Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe from 7 November 2011. As a founder member of the organisation and the first country to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights, the UK takes the responsibility of the Chairmanship, which it last held in 1993, very seriously. We see it as an opportunity for the UK to play a leading role in the vital work of the Council of Europe in promoting rights, democracy and rule of law across the continent.

Within this, we then find that the "overarching theme" of the Chairmanship was "the promotion and protection of human rights", with a "particular focus" on developing practical measures in a number of areas, one of which (of six) was, "combating discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity".

Meanwhile, things had already been warming up in Strasbourg, which now has its own dedicated LGBT project which on 31 March 2010 got accepted Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on measures to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity".

This, amongst other things, referred to ECHR and "other international jurisdictions", which "consider sexual orientation a prohibited ground for discrimination and have contributed to the advancement of the protection of the rights of transgender persons", and then recommended members (including the UK) to:

1. examine existing legislative and other measures, keep them under review, and collect and analyse relevant data, in order to monitor and redress any direct or indirect discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity; and

2. ensure that legislative and other measures are adopted and effectively implemented to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity, to ensure respect for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons and to promote tolerance towards them;

This is not quite the smoking gun, but this is to be found in the same document, viz:

23. Where national legislation confers rights and obligations on unmarried couples, member states should ensure that it applies in a non-discriminatory way to both same-sex and different-sex couples, including with respect to survivor's pension benefits and tenancy rights.

24. Where national legislation recognises registered same-sex partnerships, member states should seek to ensure that their legal status and their rights and obligations are equivalent to those of heterosexual couples in a comparable situation.

Although these are framed as "recommendations", they are headed "Right to respect for private and family life", which makes them, effectively, the CoE official interpretation of Article 8 of the ECHR. To all intents and purposes, it has the effect of treaty law – certainly as far as the UK is concerned.

The LGBT lobby in the Council of Europe, however – which has acquired its own website is also able to invoke Protocol 12, explained in detail here, which sets out in Article 1&2, that:

1 The enjoyment of any right set forth by law shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.

2 No one shall be discriminated against by any public authority on any ground such as those mentioned in paragraph 1.

This effectively, by solemn international treaty, requires parties to permit same-sex marriage, with all the attendant legal rights afforded to heterosexual couples.

On the UK front, in anticipation of the UK's Chairmanship of the CoE in November 2011, HM Government in March 2011 published a report, "Working for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality: Moving Forward".

There, on page 12, doffing a cap at Protocol 12 and, specifically, to implement Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5, was a commitment to, "work with all those who have an interest in equal civil marriage and partnerships, on how legislation can develop". The actual "smoking gun" was on Page 14, with a commitment to:

Work towards the full implementation in the UK and across Europe of the Council of Europe's recommendations 'Measures to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity' including by using our Chairmanship of the Council of Europe from November 2011 to review progress.

This, naked in tooth and claw (to coin a phrase) is Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 and the timetable set for "full implementation" in June 2013, with responsibility delegated jointly to the Foreign Office and Government Equalities Offices (see below). And why is the FCO involved? That is because it involves international commitments.

And that is the real reason as to why Mr Cameron has invested so much political capital in the cause of "gay marriage". Although we have not ratified Protocol 12, we have accepted unconditionally Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5, and undertaken to implement it by June 2013.

Having made that commitment for the Chairmanship of the CoE, Mr Cameron has no choice but to see it through. In June, there is another Committee of Ministers to consider a report on the implementation of the Recommendation, when he is to be called to account for his earlier commitment.

Mr Cameron has no intention of disappointing his LGBT colleagues in Europe. He will do what it takes to get his Bill through Westminister.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: back to Brussels where "real" men and women are

2013-02-05T23:34:12.4238281+00:00

While most of the British legacy covers the mighty British Parliament descending to the level of considering whether persons of the same sex can call themselves "married", papers such as the New York Times are covering other aspects of the British decline.

To be fair – although I don't see why - the loss-making Guardian is also covering the territory, telling us that French President Fran�ois Hollande is doing what French presidents do best – making life impossible for the Rosbifs over the EU budget.

Actually, one need not get too excited about this. Hollande was in Strasbourg speaking to the European Parliament on his home turf – and it would be too much to allow a little thing like an impending European Council to have a dampening effect on his speeches. "Diplomacy", it appears, is for little people.

For what it is worth, Hollande is playing his usual tune: the EU "is more than a marketplace" and France would oppose British proposals for deep cuts to the budget, as he doesn't want his farmers rioting in the streets of Paris (I made that last bit up, of course).

Meanwhile, some Dutch MPs are getting deliciously uppity, with CDA leader Sybrand Buma demanding of Prime Minister Rutte that his government claw back some powers from Brussels.

To judge from Burma's list, he's just as clueless as Cameron – but perhaps also more realistic. He's purely for the repeal of modification of some directives, which would not need treaty revision. But some of the legislation is implementing international standards, so he's barking up the wrong tree.

All this, though, is only "noises off", with the main action reserved for Thursday when Van Rompuy reveals his very bestist and absolutely final master plan which is going miraculously to break the logjam and have the "colleagues" leaping to their feet in admiration, and breaking into a rendition of "Ode to Joy".

Failing that, Mr Hollande's farm subsidies are toast, which means he probably will be as well, which mean that he had to get is barbs into the Robifs just to cover his back.

Perhaps if our MPs could tear themselves away from "gay marriage" for a few moments, they might actually notice something of what is going on, but since they can't do anything about it anyway, they might just as well make long speeches about gays bedding each other, and let the grown-ups get on with the real work.

The big joke, of course, was that the grown-ups weren't at work today anyway. Staff of the EU institutions were on strike yesterday over proposed cuts in pay and conditions. The aim of the strike, we were told, was to send a message to the heads of state and government that "real" men and women work for the EU.

That, at least, is some relief. Presumably, we can assume that there will be no pressure for gay marriages in the European Quarter of Brussels.

COMMENT THREAD

UK politics: a contrast in priorities

2013-02-06T08:33:12.0107422+00:00

Last month's debate on "Europe", led by William Hague, seen addressing the opposition benches.

Last night's debates on "gays" ... the difference being, of course, that there was a vote. MPs are allowed (nay, encouraged) to vote on whether homosexuals can call themselves married, but not on who governs us - any such debate being actively discouraged for causing "uncertainty".

Little did they know it though, the MPs were actually voting to implement Council of Europe Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5, to fulfil a commitment made by HM Government last year, while holding the Chairmanship of the Council of Ministers.

Completely unaware of the real reason for their present, they were led by the nose, oblivious to the fact that the same "debates" have been taking place all over Europe, to exactly the same agenda.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: the soft centre at the heart of darkness

2013-02-06T13:54:14.1542968+00:00

Yesterday's vote on gay marriage brings to light to the knowledgeable (which excludes the majority of MPs) the extraordinary role of that little-known institution, the Council of Europe (CoE), and the role of a scarcely known mechanism known generically as "soft law".

Looking briefly at the CoE, this is based in Strasbourg, and even to visitors, if often attracts little attention. Apart from the fact that it has a better staff restaurant – and some useful overspill facilities, we didn't take a great deal of notice of the when we were in Strasbourg. Even though it was connected to the European Parliament by a bridge, and we often passed through it on the way to our offices, it was just "there", a relic of the past, of little importance.

To look at it in that way was and in a mistake. The Council of Europe (CoE), bearing the same ring of stars which was later stolen from it by the European Union, is a powerful institution in its own right. Its problem is that it is entirely under the shadow of the EU, but it should not be underestimated. It acts in a very different and much more subtle (i.e., less visible) way.

For a start, the Council of Europe, itself a treaty organisation, is a treaty factory, having brokered 214 treaties including its founding statute which came into force on 3 August 1949.

What might surprise people, as well as the sheer number, is the breadth of these treaties. In additional to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms – to give it its full title - (and its various protocols) we have such things as the European Convention on Social and Medical Assistance and the European Agreement on the Abolition of Visas for Refugees.

We also have the European Social Charter, the European Convention on the Control of the Acquisition and Possession of Firearms by Individuals, the European Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter, and even the European Agreement on the Restriction of the Use of certain Detergents in Washing and Cleaning Products.

More recently, we have the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism, the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, the Council of Europe Convention on the counterfeiting of medical products and similar crimes involving threats to public health, and the European Landscape Convention.

Careful study of the list, and an examination of the recitals of many EU directives indicates that much of the EU law, about which we and our politician complain, owes its origin to Council of Europe treaties and their protocols. Perversely, even if we left the EU, we would be bound by many provisions which cause friction, unless we also abrogated many of the CoE treaties.

But, to cast the reach of the CoE (or the EU for that matter) simply in terms of its treaties and (in the case of the EU) its formal laws, is entirely to miscast the way the international system works. What is emerging as the system matures and become more complex is a phenomenon – well known to international lawyers as "soft law", which is increasingly dominating our lives.

The EU agency Eurofound defines soft law as is "the term applied to EU measures, such as guidelines, declarations and opinions, which, in contrast to directives, regulations and decisions, are not binding on those to whom they are addressed"..

Despite that lack of legally binding effect, says Eurofound, soft law may impact on policy development and practice precisely by reason of its lack of legal effect – rather, because it exercises an informal "soft" influence. Member States and other actors may undertake voluntarily to do what they are less willing to do if legally obligated. Soft law, therefore, is sometimes presented as a more flexible instrument in achieving policy objectives.

In the CoE context, it was Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 which has cast as "soft law" by the European Parliament Directorate-General for Internal Policies, which nevertheless called it "a significant soft law commitment on rights of LGBT persons". The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) thought the recommendation provided "useful guidance" to EU Member States for improving the respect, protection and promotion of LGBT rights.

While soft law may not be legally binding, it often creates powerful political pressure, to the extent that it can become politically binding, in a sense. To read through the background to Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 tells its own story, giving a strong impression of this being the tip of the spear, with a huge momentum behind it. .

As to its effect on Mr Cameron, I am warming to the view that the Recommendation was indeed pivotal in bringing the gay marriage to Parliament yesterday. .

Looking at the sequence of events, we have already established that there was no intent to introduce homosexual marriage in the coalition work programme of June 2010 and we can see from the media record that, as late as September 2010, Cameron was in talks with his deputy prime minister, having refused to consider same-sex marriages.

Then, in December 2010, we see new that gay rights campaigners are planning to file a case with the European Court of Human Rights as part of an "Equal Love campaign", arguing that they are being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. .

Then, strengthening the effect of Recommendation CM/Rec(2010), we start seeing numerous instances throughout Europe where it is being considered an exemplar or amplifier of Article 8 of the ECHR (right to a family life).

Politically, this placed Mr Cameron in an incredibly weak position, as he had committed in opposition to scrapping the Human Rights Act. Now, potentially, he was facing an dangerous challenge from the ECHR which could force him to overturn his policy on gay marriage. The political effects of that could have been devastating.

Thus we see, in March 2011 the government for the first time giving a commitment to implementing Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5, the outcome of which meant that Cameron had to introduce homosexual marriage.

Making a virtue out of a necessity, he thus make implementing the Recommendation the centrepiece of the British Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers, at the Council of Europe. And the rest, as they say, is history .

In all this of course, no one can put their hand on a law or other directive, which forced Mr Cameron to introduce homosexual marriage. But the sequence of events, and the circumstances, provide powerful evidence that the "soft law" of Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 was indeed the "tip of the spear" which backed him into a corner, driving him to put his signature on a new Bill.

Soft law indeed it may be, the soft centre at the heart of darkness, but just because it is "soft" doesn't mean it doesn't work. A smothering pillow is soft, especially when compared with the casing of a bullet, but it can be just as deadly.

COMMENT: "GAY MARRIAGE" THREAD

Fisheries policy: widening the circle of ignorance

2013-02-06T21:40:37.6269531+00:00

The European Parliament yesterday voted for its "common position" on the European Commission's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reform proposals, adopting an agreed text by 502 votes to 137.

This is a terribly boring way of putting something that has the BBC proclaiming: "Euro MPs back large-scale fishing reform to save stocks", which may be (almost literally) correct, but not technically so.

This is the first of the first. It is the first time MEPs have been allowed to vote on the CFP, after it was converted to "co-decision" (now known as the ordinary legislative procedure) by the Lisbon Treaty. With that, approval become a joint responsibility of the European Parliament and the Council.

It is also first reading, which has been followed by a vote, but the MEPs have not approved "the package" as the BBC puts it. They have actually agreed a 336-page report which includes 60 substantive amendments, amounting to nearly 180 pages of text.

It is this which forms the Parliament's "position" and separately, as can be seen from the legislative observatory, the Council has also conducted its own debates, and will have produced its own "position".

The detail is necessary here, in order to be able to understand the greater drama to come, as the two "positions" must now be reconciled by through a series of negotiations (called trilogues), to produce a draft "common position", jointly agreed by the two institutions, but not deviating so far from the original proposals that the Commission decides to pull them.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. There are so many amendments, and substantive differences between the Parliament and the Council that it is very hard to see how the two sides are going to be reconciled.

Both sides are going to have to compromise, and we have no track record on which to base assumptions. This could go through smoothly, or it could end up in a cat fight, with the draft legislation failing to become law. All that fun is to come.

However, if the proposals pass in their current (or any) form, they will presage another long-term disaster, to add to the long-running train wreck which is the CFP. Despite glad claims that the aim is to "restore fish stocks and return profitability to fishing communities", it will do neither – even though the headline issue of "discards" is tackled, preventing in due course unwanted fish being thrown back into the sea.

The big problem is not so much the discards, but the system of quotas that produces them. If the fishermen have quotas for different species in a mixed fishery, and they bring up fish for which they have no quota when fishing for another species, then they cannot exploit the over-quota fish commercially. They must be discarded, whether at sea or once they have been landed.

Here, there is no relief in sight for, while there is to be a different way of calculating the quotas, which are to be based on http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/reform/docs/msy_en.pdf (MSY), rather than the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) the difference is more cosmetic than real. Both are still systems of limiting fishing effort based on imposing pre-emptive tonnage limits on the target fish species.

In fact, rather than fixed MSYs that will be imposed, actual yields are infinitely variable. In any properly managed fishery, MSYs are far too insensitive tool by which to control the fishing effort. Specifically, the capacity of a fishery is primarily determined by the food supply, and the more sensitive regimes rely on a series of techniques to keep fish stocks and food supply in balance.

Such regimes do not rely on laborious annual sampling of fish populations (which are notoriously inaccurate, and often out-of-date by the time the data are collected and processed), and contentious methods of stock estimations.

Instead, one sees a great reliance on real-time monitoring, including continuous measurements of food stocks, fish condition and population structures, backed by extremely flexible and rapid programmes of fisheries closures, were stocks fall outside acceptable parameters.

On the other hand, in a marker divergence from EU-based regimes, when food is short, the fishing effort is increased to keep the population in balance with the food supply, maintaining a smaller, healthy population, rather than larger numbers, struggling to survive. Similarly, when the population structure becomes unbalanced, juveniles may be specifically targeted.

What we found when we studied such things is that, when employing the wide range of tools needed for effective fisheries management, use has to be tailored specifically to the conditions of each fishery. The effect is then to end up with a series of management regimes, unique to the geography and biology of their regions, each tailored specifically to the conditions in the water.

In our researches, however, I interviewed senior Commission officials responsible for fisheries policy. Quite candidly – albeit in private – they admitted that their centralised system simply does not have the legislative and administrative capability to devise tailored regimes for each fishery, and then to monitor and regulate them.

Furthermore, any such decentralised scheme would confound the very concept of a common fisheries policy. In European Union terms, this would be politically unacceptable. The Commission must work on the basis on centrally dictated fishing effort, which necessarily requires a quota system. The politics come before performance.

For sure, the current system can be better-managed, and there are some attempts to ensure that this is the case, but these are superficial "tweaks" compared with the fundamental flaws which remain in the system, unchanged.

Needless to say, Roger Harrabin, "environment analyst" for the BBC, sees things differently. He says the vote yesterday was "something of a victory for citizen power, following organised lobbying of MEPs by ordinary people, as well as by high-profile celebrity chefs and environmentalists".

In fact, it was no such thing. Instead of being managed by the Council, where the ignorance about effective fisheries management was confined to a small group of Commission and Council officials, with national ministers let in to play once a year, the net effect of the changes is to given more players in setting a fundamentally unsound policy. All the EU has achieved is to widen the circle of ignorance.

Sadly, however, they have also bought themselves time. With the full changes – if they are finally approved – not to be implemented until 2020, it will then take time to assess the effects. By the time it is realised that nothing very much has changed, and the CFP is still a train-wreck, new players will be in the field, and the Commission can start all over again.

For the time being, though, they can revel in laudatory headlines from idiot chefs (one pictured above), who will be long gone be the time the effects of their stupidity become apparent.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: muddying the big picture

2013-02-07T12:18:52.4882813+00:00

UKIP has made an interesting contribution to our understanding of the European dimension of homosexual marriage – and thus to the way we are governed - with a press release headed "EU proposal is behind same-sex marriage furore" (illustrated above).

Rightly, they draw attention to the cross-border anomalies – specifically in terms of freedom of movement and the recognition of "civil status" documents – which has been the subject of considerable exploration in the European Parliament (where two detailed reports have been drawn up by the services, one in 2010 and another in 2012 - all on the back of the so-called "Stockholm Programme".

However, it is perhaps going a little too far for Nigel Farage to assert via his party's press release that a particular report, which he identifies as the Berlinguer Report, is driving Mr Cameron's "controversial" same-sex marriage legislation.

According to UKIP, this "EU proposal" is due to be voted through the EU Parliament this November and is set to become law later this year, making all marriages and civil contracts conducted in any EU country legally binding in all other member states.

Paragraph 40 of the Report, we are told, would mean that any member state would have to grant "all social benefits and other legal effects" such as legal recognition, tax breaks and benefit entitlements to a married couple, even if such a marriage did not exist in their own legal system.

Says Mr Farage: "Now we know why David Cameron has launched this highly contentious and disruptive legislation, apparently out of the blue". He adds:

If a couple were to marry in Belgium, Spain, Portugal or Sweden where same-sex marriage is possible, the EU will say that they have to be given the same legal rights in whichever member state they then chose to live – even if that state itself opposes the introduction of same-sex marriage. In essence the Berlinguer Report seeks to establish an EU-wide right to same-sex marriage.

Farage then goes on to say:

It's no surprise that the Prime Minister has kept quiet about this, even at the expense of cohesion in his own party. He has a hard enough time trying to force his own backbenchers to swallow both his dedication to keeping Britain in the EU and his wish for the state to interfere in the definiton (sic) of marriage. To suggest that the two issues are in fact interconnected would have caused complete uproar.

Although this press release is repeated verbatim by Roger Helmer on his blog, and accepted uncritically by some of his followers, sadly, there are a few slight problems with citing the Berlinguer Report as the "smoking gun".

Firstly, it is a European Parliament "own initiative" report, which means it has no legislative status, as Helmer (and UKIP) might have realised had they looked it up on the Legislative Observatory. There also, they would have found that it was responding to a European Commission Communication COM(2010) 171 final on "Delivering an area of freedom, security and justice for Europe's citizens".

This, we are told, is the "Action Plan Implementing the Stockholm Programme". The clue to its status is fairly easy to decipher. It is described as a: "non-legislative basic document".

Another possible problem with suggesting that the Berlinguer Report "proposal" is "is due to be voted through the EU Parliament this November and is set to become law later this year" is that it was actually published in September 2010 and was actually voted through in the European Parliament on 23 November 2010 - i.e., over two years ago.

Despite this, the theme is picked up by Cranmer, who is cautious enough to ask the question, without jumping down from the fence. Strangely, to what he claims is the report, he sends us to a Commission document which turns out to be a "roadmap" setting out an indicative timetable for a "Legislative proposal on mutual recognition of the effects of certain civil status documents".

This sets out a "expected date of adoption", which of course refers to the date the Commission might adopt a legislative proposal – the start of the process, not the end of it.

As to the fabled "paragraph 40", this was highlighted by European Dignity Watch on 12 November 2010, which seems to have "inspired" the UKIP press release. Here we have Dignity Watch state:

Paragraph 40 wants to give civil documents, including marriage, to be given de facto legal effect throughout the EU by requiring Member States to grant "all social benefits and other legal effects attached to it". This could mean that Member States would be forced to indirectly recognize same-sex unions as equal to marriage even if such recognition does not exist in the respective country's legal system.

UKIP thus states:

Paragraph 40 of the Report would mean that any member state would have to grant "all social benefits and other legal effects" such as legal recognition, tax breaks and benefit entitlements to a married couple, even if such a marriage did not exist in their own legal system.

The actual Paragraph 40, however, does provide some credence to the two-year-old Dignity Watch assertion, for it "stresses the need to ensure mutual recognition of official documents issued by national administrations", and "strongly supports plans to enable the mutual recognition of the effects of civil status documents" (my emphasis).

That really is the interesting bit. It seems that – should legislation ever be issued to that effect - the UK would have to pay qualifying couples relevant benefits, even if they were same-sex married couples, if the marriage took place in another EU member state which recognised the status.

While this thus illustrates the way the EU can ramp up the pressure towards homogeneity in social affairs, even where it has no direct legislative competence, plans do not as yet exist as a legislative proposal. Nor is there any indication that the precise issue of benefits will be included in any proposal that does emerge.

This, then, is not something which is going to get Mr Cameron storming the ramparts to get same-sex marriage through the Westminster Parliament so quickly. The UKIP scenario is far too tentative to be a "smoking gun".

Real life is far more complex, as we see from our own pieces. The place to start looking is the Council of Europe, although, as UKIP indicates, it is the concert of the different bodies which has the final effect.

COMMENT: "GAY MARRIAGE" THREAD

EU budget: the theatre comes to town

2013-02-07T22:38:37.3535156+00:00

The British media, as usual, are planting a flag on the story, the journos attempting in their tediously superficial way turn it into a biff-bam story that their editors back home can understand.

David Cameron is being set up to be the hero of the hour, girding his loins to case another of his famous vetoes. With Hollande cast the Bad Guy. Interestingly, the German media focus in on European Council President, Herman Van Rompuy.

With Mr Cameron prattling about "cuts or veto", it must be remebered that there is another party to these negotiations – the European Parliament. Die Welt understands this, referring to it as the "invisible partner" – brought in by the Lisbon Treaty.

This, while the pics are of Merkel, Cameron and the other EU "leaders", the man once dubbed as a Concentration Camp guard, President Martin Schulz, is the man with the final say. It doesn't matter what the "leaders" decide, if Schulz is against the deal, Parliament will most likely reject it.

As it stands, Schultz and many of the "colleagues" would prefer a breakdown, to a Cameron-type deal where the Council agrees substantial cuts. In the event of a breakdown, a default budget kicks in – based on the previous year's funding plus inflation.

Since that is more than Mr Cameron might be prepared tp accept in an agreed deal, he may well get his veto, leaving the "collegaues to manage the funding on a year-by-year basis, foregoing some of the multi-annual programmes.

This is certainly what the French seem to be predicting and would go for, as it would protect CAP speding at the expense of programmes such as research.

It is not beyond the realms of probability, therefore, that Hollande is deliberately provoking Cameron, in the hope that a rejection will be in the offing. Some of the more sanguine players might push for a settlement, though, if only to deprive Mr Cameron of his glory, in the certain expectation that the deal will be unpicked by the Parliament.

With these additional possiblities thrown into the mix, this makes the theatre all the more enteraining, but no more informative. Whatever the deal, it isn't a deal until Mr Schulz say "yes" – and that might take some time.

COMMENT THREAD

EU regulation: let them eat horse

2013-02-08T12:37:43.8691406+00:00

As the horsemeat scandal enters its second month, and seems to be intensifying rather than fading, not a few people are asking how it is possible that such huge quantities of burgers and other meat products could end up contaminated. After all, horse meat has a very obvious smell, different colouration and fat conformation, and surely would be recognisable to anyone making the products.

While this would most certainly be true in the domestic kitchen, what people do not always appreciate is that things are very different on the industrial scale. The quantities are so huge and the speed of processing so high, that it is impossible to check all the ingredients going through the system.

What is more, even lines which predominantly use chilled meat will also use a proportion of frozen blocks, at anything up to 25kg weight, which - as graphically illustrated by the video above - is used without defrosting. And in that state, the people handling it will have no idea what it actually is.

The insertion of frozen meat into the process is in fact vital to keep the mix temperature down – otherwise, the cutting, grinding and mixing will overheat the meat and lead to undesirable changes. Thus insisting only on the use of chilled meat, and perhaps running an inspection belt, is not a practical option.

Thus, the detection of product contamination, especially cross-species substitution (either accidental or by way of deliberate fraud), requires a pre-production checking regime, possibly augmented by post-production sampling, at the pre-delivery stage and throughout the distribution chain, right up to point of sale, with laboratory testing for rogue proteins.

However, since the food scares of the late 1980s and '90s, we have seen a sea-change in regulation, both in scale and type, with the introduction of predictive control system, known generically as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) and paperwork auditing.

HACCP in particular, has been adopted with enthusiasm by the EU and incorporated into basic Food Safety Regulations, as the primary mechanism of control.

The knock-on effect of this is that both physical checks during processing have been scaled down, with greater reliance of the paperwork trail, while regulatory visits tend to focus more on determining whether HACCP regimes are in place, with extensive paperwork audits, rather then on physical inspections.

Under these regimes, it is not unknown for official inspectors to carry out their work without ever leaving the offices of the companies they are visiting, while end product also has been progressively abandoned, in favour of cheaper paperwork audits. That has been matched by progressive reductions in regulatory manpower.

Another development has been the introduction of the "Due Diligence" defence into food law, where retailer can claim immunity from prosecution provided they can show they have taken "reasonable precautions" to ensure the safety of the food and its conformity with relevant standards.

This is achieved by insisting on a rigorous paper-chain from their suppliers, all attesting that necessary checks have been made, and systems maintained. When it comes to packaged, processed products such as frozen burgers, the supermarkets have used this to such effect that they can effectively absolve themselves of any responsibility for food standards.

However, no one with any deep knowledge in the system can have any confidence in it. Paperwork and sundry records – and even official stamps, so beloved of the EU – can easily be forged or doctored, more so since the advent of computers and high-tech printers.

And, where the value of a product is entirely dependent on its labelling and its paperwork, fraud is an inevitable consequence. That is why, to this day, there is more home-grown organic chicken sold in London than is produced in the entire UK.

Here lies the central deception in the system. Most people in the business know it is flawed, but no one will rock the boat. The supermarkets operate a system of "plausible deniability". As long as they have the paperwork to say they are in the clear, they are happy. And if the supermarkets are happy, everybody else is happy.

But it is into this uncontrolled space that it appears the criminals have moved in. Actually, the criminals were always there, but with the centralisation of the meat inspection service, and its detachment from the local authority base, the intelligence network has broken down, the marking the final degradation of the food surveillance system.

As a result, in the early 21st Century, food standards are probably less well-policed than they have been for the bulk of the second half of the last century. And, since food safety and food standards are exclusive EU competences, there is no immediate (or any) chance of improvement.

There are too many vested interests to permit change, and the last thing the EU is ever going to do is admit that it got it wrong. Thus, for us mere plebs, the word from Brussels is stark and simple: "let them eat horse".

COMMENT THREAD

EU regulation: criminal negligence

2013-02-08T14:14:35.8818359+00:00

With the latest developments, the FSA reports that it has "already involved the police, both here and in Europe".

That is an explicit admission that imported meat is involved – which we already know, because produce of Irish and Polish origin has already been mentioned in media reports.

What is not mentioned is the elephant in the room – the EU. The whole of the meat chain, from farm to store, is regulated by EU law, with meat and meat products subject to a stringent and expensive regulatory regime which replaced the British system.

But what also goes with the territory are the Single Market rules. Produce from an EEA member, with paperwork that conforms with EU requirements, cannot be checked at port of entry.

Neither, without firm evidence of a problem, are we allowed to check imported meat at the point of sale (or at any point in between, during processing and distribution) on a scale greater than we do meat of domestic origin. This is prohibited under EU law, as discrimination on the ground of nationality.

Therefore, our system is entirely dependent on the good faith and efficiency of EU member states in policing food standards, to make sure that what is in the boxes is what is on the EU-regulated label.

Of course, the system does not work, and will never work without the back-up of routine regulatory spot-checks, with special emphasis on imported goods, which are most likely to be substandard. That deterrent effect is lacking in the current system – the crooks know there will never be any checks until it is too late.

But, not only are we not allowed to do this, we are not allowed to know that we are no allowed to do this. The FSA is utterly silent on the root cause of the problem. But this, as with the breast implants, and the hip-joint replacements, is another good example of an EU regulatory failure.

But if we are never told of it, how will we ever know? The criminal negligence here is in a criminally inadequate regulatory system, one imposed for political expediency rather than efficacy.

COMMENT: "LET THEM EAT HORSE" THREAD

EU budget: not a foregone conclusion

2013-02-08T23:19:27.6953125+00:00

Strictly speaking, all the European Council has done is agree a "common position" on the multi-annual budget. There is no "historic budget deal". There is no EU agreement.

Says Mary Ellen Synon , Spiegel and many others, battle is not over. The European Parliament must still approve it, and that is not a foregone conclusion.

One needs to repeat this. It is not a foregone conclusion. We are told that Joseph Daul, chairman of the European People's Party parliamentary group, which represents the Continent's Christian Democrats, says a budget of €960 billion would be unacceptable.

"These proposals are going in the wrong direction, attacking one of our best tools to generate growth - the European budget - of which 94 percent goes back to the member states. The proposal we have today is a political capitulation and we are going to reject it," he says.

Synon is even more robust on this, making talks of "victory" extremely premature. One wonders, though, whether Mr Cameron has really registered what is going on, but then this is a man who confused "debt" with "deficit" and believes that Norway has "no influence at all" over EU regulation.

That said, the media, as in the loss-making Guardian here have no excuse for their headlines. They are badly misrepresenting the situation.

Then, we've seen a lot of that lately, on fishing and the CAP. The British media really doesn't "get" the European Parliament, any more than it does the EU generally.

If Mr Shulz, has his way, though, Mr Cameron's "victory" will not be lasting very long. Then, perhaps, the media might wake up to what is happening, but I somehow doubt it.

COMMENT: "THEATRE" THREAD

EU regulation: a porous network

2013-02-09T09:11:02.2871094+00:00

The horsemeat "scandal" grumbles on, with the media not even beginning to get to grips with the issue and its implications. Thus, we have Owen Paterson talking to a confused BBC, with the presenter trying, but failing, to make sense of it.

One of our own forum members (a retired policemen) puts his finger on it. He observes that the media wrongly refer to the supply system as "a food chain". It is not a chain. It is a network and like a network, the internet for example, when one or a number of hubs go down another route is quickly found and the whole thing carries on as before. If, as is suspected, criminality is involved, the crooks will always be at least one step ahead of enforcement agencies.

I'd never thought of it so clearly in those terms ... one falls so easily into the "food chain" jargon. But he is absolutely right. The "network" is a much better way of describing it. And it is also a very porous network, with multiple entry points. The regulatory idea is that all the entry points (slaughterhouses) are policed. Everything passing down the chain is then recorded, so that what comes out at the other end is, theoretically, the same standard as what went in.

Hence, as always the regulatory system is based on a false premise. The "network" is worldwide and impossible to police. No wonder the criminals are prospering. All they have to do is gain access to the "network". Once the meat is in the system, it is accepted at face value and no more checks are made. By the time the problem is discovered, they are long gone.

It is also germane to remember that these frozen blocks of meat have a notional shelf-life of a year in normal commercial freezers. But in strategic storage at -40�C - they can be thirty years old without any noticeable deterioration in quality. The meat could even be old, Soviet era strategic stocks that have been repackaged several times for all we know. Or the Mafia could be behind it. Italy is the biggest horsemeat producer in Europe.

The meat could also be Mexican (slaughtered). There is a huge horsemeat trade in that country, where they also deal with US horses. Loads are shipped over to Europe, sometimes to provide cover for drug shipments. The drugs are put into distribution but the meat, which has no immediate buyer, is then held in cold stores and dribbled into the system, so as not to give the game away.

What must be considered is that this stuff has been in the system many years, and has gone through multiple repackaging, so that its original identity has long been lost. If that is the case, it will be very difficult if not impossible to trace. However, there are only a limited number of strategic cold stores. In the UK, most will be known to the authorities as they are very difficult to hide. But stocks could be anywhere in Europe, or even Russia.

Often being drug-related, the illegal meat industry is also well-organised – and ruthless. In investigations I carried out for television programmes (never broadcast), we took testimony from owners of slaughterhouses and cutting plants, on how it operates.

Most significant of the many lines we followed up, one cutting premises owner told of getting "a phone call" telling him he would receive a truck-load of meat. It was to be repackaged and relabelled to a certain specification.

And it was made very clear what would happen if the work was not done. This was not a request. You do not mess with these people. On the day, the truck arrives. The labels are supplied, complete with official stamps, and the work is done. Another truck arrives. Cash changes hands, the load is collected and that is the last of it, until the next one. The meat can then turn up anywhere in the world.

This is the criminal underbelly of the meat trade, and there are many variations. There is a huge amount of money in it, with just one container-load turning in over �100,000 profit. What we are seeing, therefore, could well (and almost certainly is) be the tip of an iceberg.

No one has yet addressed it – it turned out to be too dangerous to research for a television programme. But we are now seeing the effects.

COMMENT: "LET THEM EAT HORSE" THREAD

Local authorities: hiding the rise

2013-02-09T13:28:33.9355469+00:00

On top of everything else these week (watch for the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow, we've been working on a piece for the Daily Mail, which has gone into the paper today under Booker's name. There was a time when it would have had both our names on, but not any more.

The article is loosely based on this, which a wrote back in October 2011, pointing up a major structural change in the way local government is funded, with a gradual shift from Council Tax to fees and changes, so much so that this source of income now exceeds the headline income from Council Tax.

Overall, we then see that, despite the rhetoric on "cuts", in the past six years, despite the recession, local government spending in England alone has risen by more than 25 percent to an all-time record of more than �170 billion. The freeze on Council Tax rates is so much window dressing.

The fact is, writes Booker, that our bloated local authorities, with so many of their senior officials now being paid far more than the Prime Minister, have been cunningly devising every kind of new way to take money off us.

It is one of the best-kept secrets in British politics, he says, costing us all ever-more billions of pounds every year. Yet we are scarcely aware of what a revolution it represents in the way we are governed. The truth is that these new money-grabbing ploys earn councils as much every year as they get from council tax itself.

Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this "smoke and mirror" financing, Booker writes, are all are those who, for one reason or another, take early retirement, such as the Cumbria CEO who walked off with �464,000, or the South Somerset CEO who left early with a pay-off of �570,000, or the controversial CEO of Suffolk who stepped down at a cost to the taxpayers of �350,000, plus another �115,000 to pay for an investigation into her "domineering management style".

How telling that it should be these self-same people who are still presiding over the greatest explosion of local authority spending in Britain's history - and how clever they have been to hide the way they are extorting that avalanche of money from the rest of us.

This is what the Harrogate Agenda is about. It is all very well Pickles having his silly little referendums if local authorities want to raise Council Tax by more than two percent, but while we are watching the front door, the officials are creeping round the back and raising income anyway, but under different categories.

Thus, the only way to control the local authorities is to bring the entire budgets under public control, and put them annually to a referendum. Instead of focusing on just a tiny part of the budget, we need to be looking at the whole thing.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker: "gay marriage" and the Council of Europe

2013-02-09T22:30:21.3691407+00:00

Under an absurd headline, Booker this week tackles the role of the Council of Europe in the "gay marriage" furore, trying to set out, and why this issue suddenly erupted from nowhere to the top of the political agenda.

In the incredibly limited space allowed him, he starts in 2010 with three main players, the Home Secretary Theresa May, our former Lib Dem equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, and that shadowy institution, the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, with its controversial adjunct, the European Court of Human Rights.

In March 2010, ministers from the 47 countries represented in the Council of Europe agreed a "Recommendation" on "measures to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity".

Section IV focused on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, guaranteeing "respect for family life". It proposed that where national legislation recognised same-sex partnerships, these should be given the same legal status as those between heterosexuals.

There was no mention of marriage as yet, except in a proposal that "transgender persons" should be entitled to "marry a person of the sex opposite to their reassigned sex".

Four days before the 2010 general election, the Tory party issued a pamphlet, signed by Theresa May, in which a section on "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender [LGBT] issues" promised that the party would "consider the case for changing the law to allow civil partnerships to be called and classified as marriage". But this was not in the manifesto, nor, after the election, in the Coalition Agreement.

In June that year, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that, though there was no obligation on countries to recognise same-sex partnerships, Article 8 did not specify that the right to enjoy family life applied only to couples of different sexes, it could be taken as equally applying to same-sex couples.

Crucially, the court proposed that, when a "consensus" emerged among the member states, this could allow the right to same-sex marriages to be recognised under the convention.

Shortly afterwards, Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister, set out new guidelines allowing "religious music" to be used in civil partnership ceremonies. She suggested that this should be regarded as a step towards allowing gay marriages. In September, the Lib Dem party conference backed her call for same-sex marriages to be legalised.

Then, in December a campaign group, Equal Love, helped a group of British same-sex couples to launch an action in the ECHR asking for civil partnerships to be given full marriage status. They were supported by Peter Tatchell, who told the BBC that banning gay people from marriage sent "a signal that we are regarded as socially and legally inferior".

The campaign – with much conferring behind the scenes between ministers and gay lobby groups – was under way. In March 2011, May and Featherstone issued an official work programme, "Working for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality: Moving Forward".

It committed the Government to work "with all those who have an interest in equal civil marriage" on how "legislation can develop". Furthermore, it committed the Foreign Office and the new Gender Equality Office to work for "full implementation" of the Council of Europe’s 2010 Recommendation, with a target date of June 2013.

In November 2011, when Britain took over the six-monthly chairmanship of the Council of Europe, it put this at the top of the agenda. Featherstone had already committed �100,000 of government money to creating an LGBT unit in Strasbourg to plan implementation of the policy, which she formalised in a grand signing ceremony with Thorbj�rn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, on 27 March last year.

That same date, the UK's representation in Strasbourg organised the Council's first "closed conference" (ie, public not admitted), to agree detailed plans for the June 2013 implementation, with a keynote address from Featherstone.

A speech by the British judge, Sir Nicolas Bratza, then head of the European Court of Human Rights, signalled that the court was ready to declare same-sex marriage a "human right", as soon as enough countries fell into line.

The court, he said, had found that "the recognition in national law of same-sex relationships had, by our present day, reached a degree that justified a broader understanding of family life as that term is used in Article 8 of the Convention".

Such are the real reasons that our Government needed to rush through last week's vote on gay marriage. We are committed to "full implementation" of the Council of Europe's policy no later than this June (and hence the similar law now being rushed through in France).

It had been a brilliant political coup by the gay lobby, aided by Featherstone, May and those shadowy European bodies that, in so many ways, now rule our lives.

In a mischievous conclusion, Booker asks what we weren't told more honestly and openly why this had all happened, but even then the reasoning does need spelling out.

For that, we have to go back TEXTto 2009 when, in opposition, Mr Cameron had pledged to repeal the Human Rights Act. This "cast iron promise" had gone the same way as his Lisbon Treaty referendum promise, leaving him politically vulnerable every time the ECHR made a judgement that adversely affected the UK.

With Tatchell engineering a case in the ECHR, and the Council of Europe Recommendation adding to the corpus of opinion that was signalling to the court that member states were prepared to accept gay marriage, it must have been obvious that the Court was gearing up to rule in favour of the LGBT lobby.

The timing of any judgement would have been close to the 2015 general election, putting Cameron in the embarrassing position of having to conform to a highly contentious judgement at the same time he was seeking re-election.

Thus, if it was going to happen better it was to do it early, mid-term, and get it out of the way. Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 was the tip of the spear, and triggered Cameron's action. This was "soft law" in action, exerting its effect. It swung the balance of convenience and made something that was probably going to happen anyway happen that bit quicker.

COMMENT THREAD

Media: no wonder we have a problem

2013-02-10T13:32:14.3300782+00:00

According to the skilled and dedicated journos of The Sunday Telegraph, Romania exported nearly seven BILLION tons of horsemeat to EU member states in 2011. At current prices, that would work out at a value of about €20 trillion.

We now have an explanation not only for the horsemeat crisis, but also the economic crisis. Europe is drowning in horsemeat.

COMMENT THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: ostrich sandwiches

2013-02-10T14:31:05.2050782+00:00

For newspaper editorial writers, and journalists generally, knowing next to nothing about a subject is an asset. In fact, combined with a mind which rigorously filters discordant material, this seems to be an essential qualification. And the two attributes combine in a perfect storm of ignorance in The Observer editorial, where the paper demands "more food regulation, not less".

We should focus, it pontificates, "on the mass retailers and the light-touch regulatory regime under which they operate", then turning on Owen Paterson's observation that those retailers had "ultimate responsibility" for what they sold. This, the newspaper concludes, "suggests that regime is unlikely to be beefed up in the near future".

One staggers at the assertion that the "mass retailers" (aka supermarkets) are subject to a "light-touch regulatory regime". No one who had the slightest knowledge of food law in general and food safety law in particular could begin to make such a jaw-dropping assertion.

But the demand for "more regulation" belies not only the current state, but it also ignores the source of regulation in a field which is an exclusive EU competence. Calls for more regulation should be addressed to the European Commission, not Owen Paterson – who has been quite open in stating that food law is precisely that, an exclusive EU competence.

But the ultimate irony, from a newspaper that is so enthusiastically pro-EU is that, in stating that the "ultimate responsibility" rests with retailers, the eurosceptic Paterson is doing no more than re-stating EU law.

This is set out in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 "laying down the general principles and requirements of food law, establishing the European Food Safety Authority and laying down procedures in matters of food safety", where Recital 30 declares:

A food business operator is best placed to devise a safe system for supplying food and ensuring that the food it supplies is safe; thus, it should have primary legal responsibility for ensuring food safety. Although this principle exists in some Member States and areas of food law, in other areas this is either not explicit or else responsibility is assumed by the competent authorities of the Member State through the control activities they carry out. Such disparities are liable to create barriers to trade and distort competition between food business operators in different Member States.

Presumably, The Observer would not want to see Mr Paterson breaching fundamental principles of EU law although, from the tone of its editorial, it clearly seeks that outcome. One can only concluded, therefore, that the newspaper's understanding of the law is slight, to non-existent.

On this subject, we have so far written three pieces: Let them eat horse; criminal negligence; and a porous network - this is the fourth.

A constant theme of these pieces is that this horse meat scandal represents an egregious failure of the EU system of regulation, and it is to this that The Observer should be looking – not at the scale of regulation, but the type, which is designed to secure the free circulation of goods within the internal market.

Separately, though, the newspaper reports on "international fraud by mafia gangs", but that situation is an inevitable consequence of the EU regimes.

When, on the one hand, the food industry is mandated, by way of regulation, to adopt a paper-based system of control and, on the other, to work within an international environment where border checks have been abolished, and then the national authorities are required to vest "ultimate responsibility" for food controls with the food businesses, the system is wide open for exploitation by criminals.

The trouble is that this europhile newspaper seems to want it both ways. It is happy to see the European Union take over the power from member states to make food regulation, but when the system goes "catastrophically wrong", as Labour's Mary Creagh put it today, it goes bleating to the national government demanding that things are put right.

This hypocrisy, born of ignorance, blights the entire EU debate. With very few exceptions, even eurosceptics are failing to see the links between the EU and the horsemeat scandal. But, if national governments are blamed every time an EU system goes wrong, to will never get any further in beating the monster.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Media: the "incompetence" of the Times

2013-02-10T19:25:18.2314453+00:00

If ministers did their jobs as badly as the media seem to be doing on the horse meat "scandal", then we would be in real trouble. And, it seems, there is no end to the ability of the fourth estate to mess it up.

Thus, when Owen Paterson tells Andrew Niel that he can't ban imports because this is an "EU competence", the lowly Scottish Herald manages to get it right, but not the mighty Times. There, reporter Sadie Gray manages to translate Paterson's words into "European Union incompetence".

Now, it is certainly true that the EU is incompetent, certainly in devising effective food law, but that is not what Paterson said. And while we would like to think that the error is a slip of the finger (it happens), we suspect it is not.

Rather, it points up the growing difficulties experienced in communicating with the media. Their understanding of things EU is so basic, that it is almost impossible to find a low enough level at which facts can be communicated with any certainty that they will be understood and communicated correctly.

Thus, while the EU has its competences, the media increasingly can only offer incompetences. No wonder it is a dying industry.

COMMENT: "MEDIA" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: in for a torrid time?

2013-02-11T01:22:10.1933594+00:00

A film on Sky News has a lorry driver who delivers meat has revealing "serious breaches of food safety regulations that he sees every day". There is a lot in this recognisable from my earlier piece, underlining the fact that much of the food safety system is a sham.

Meanwhile, from Le Monde on the one hand, and the Mirror on the other, there are suggestions that Romanian horsemeat is produced legitimately, and properly labelled.

The president of the FSIA union in Romania, Dragos Frumosu, tells le Monde that it is hard to believe that a Romanian slaughterhouse could produce horsemeat and label it beef. French importers, he says, might be complicit with the Romanian producer, changing the labels after delivery.

More or less corroborating this, The Mirror has a source speaking of a "large French supplier" which buys cheap horse meat from the Romanian abattoirs and mixes it with meat bought from legitimate suppliers, selling it on up the supply chain as organic.

However, the Romanian link is not the only problem. There is a definite report from Ireland, from two days ago, implicating "frozen beef products" containing 38 percent unlabelled horse meat.

Here also, there is a "suspicion of fraud", which is strengthening Owen Paterson's contention that we are dealing with a criminal conspiracy of considerable proportions.

With six French supermarket chains also withdrawing frozen beef products sold under the Findus brand, and dealers from Holland and Cyprus being implicated, the idea of there being a vast criminal network is gaining ground.

But, with the inadequacies in the food control system showing up, and now with a suggestion that drug residues could be harmful, this could be a scare ready to take off onto a higher plane.

It is a while since we had a full-blow food scare, so the media might just be ready for one. And, with Labour politicians intent on making mischief, this could run for some time.

It is worth remembering though, that such scares tend to be media events. In both the egg and BSE scares, consumer buying patterns were very quickly restored after the initial shocks. The scares then became closed loops between the media and the politicians, feeding off each other, while for the public they became a spectator sport.

Much the same seems to be happening here, with processed food sales largely unaffected by the adverse publicity. As before, only the politicians and the media are getting worked up. But if the public start to see a real threat, this could be the turning point, where we see the scare escalate.

The Irish Times outs it well. Any further breaches of confidence could be extremely costly. The paper adds that, if a controversy lasts for more than two weekends, then the problem is really serious. At this stage, the horse meat issue has gone on for four weeks.

We could be in for a torrid few weeks.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

RSS Date validation test

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:26:34 +0000

Testing a bugfix

Horsemeat scandal: endemic fraud

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:52:30 +0000

As former chairman of Northern Foods – one of the biggest suppliers of processed foods to the retail trade – Haskins does know a thing or two about the system. Thus, when he says there is endemic fraud in the industry, he is most certainly in a position to know.

Since this is no more than we have been saying, in recent posts, we could not disagree with his observations. "You can’t get away from the odd cheat or the odd failure, but this is so widespread, it’s endemic, it’s institutional fraud right across the piece", says the noble Lord. "Thousands of people must be aware of what’s going on".

Actually, although this is headed up by the Telegraph, it comes from the BBC Radio 4 Today Prograame (07:51 am). The chain is far more complicated than it should be, says Haskins, talking of the "shadowy guys" in the trade.

Then, for me, comes the bombshell. "There's a huge amount of form-filling going on by the way", he says, "everybody fills in forms to say they are doing the right thing but they don't actually go and look at the factory to see what is happening inside the factory".

The Telegraph however, doesn't understand the significance of this assertion and doesn't print it. And neither does the Today Programme follow through. Yet this is the crux of the whole problem. The entire food control relies on paper (the HACCP regime) and real-life checks have been removed from the process.

Ironically, Haskins is a life-long europhile, so he omits to tell us that this is an EU-mandated system which has effectively wrecked the traditional basis of food control. His darling EU is at the heart of the problem.

About this, I spoke to a senior consultant in the food industry this morning. He told me that the effect of the system is to "hammer the good guys" while the crooks easily find their way around it. This is the classic sledgehammer to miss the nut.

Thus we have Owen Paterson today reiterating that this "is a case of fraud and a conspiracy against the public, this is a criminal action, substituting one material for another".

The longer-term problem though is that the EU system of food control is not capable of detecting fraud in the system. It is based on the assumption that the operators are honest, and access to the food network can be controlled. The assumptions are flawed. The system is not fit for purpose.

Thus, one of the tasks facing Mr Paterson is to look at the food control system as a whole, and to re-think the basic assumptions. This, doubtless, will bring him into conflict with the "colleagues", who will not be willing to admit the flaws they have introduced. On past form, they will instead be calling for "more Europe".

The battle lines, are beginning to be drawn. It will be interesting to see how the fight shapes up.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: endemic fraud

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:27:22 +0000

As former chairman of Northern Foods – one of the biggest suppliers of processed foods to the retail trade – Haskins does know a thing or two about the system. Thus, when he says there is endemic fraud in the industry, he is most certainly in a position to know.

Since this is no more than we have been saying, in recent posts, we could not disagree with his observations. "You can't get away from the odd cheat or the odd failure, but this is so widespread, it's endemic, it's institutional fraud right across the piece", says the noble Lord. "Thousands of people must be aware of what’s going on". And, of course, that is precisely the point. Thousands of people are aware and have been aware that the system itself is a fraud.

Actually, although this is headed up by the Telegraph, it comes from the BBC Radio 4 Today Prograame (07:51 am). The chain is far more complicated than it should be, says Haskins, talking of the "shadowy guys" in the trade.

Then, for me, comes the second bombshell. "There's a huge amount of form-filling going on by the way", he says, "everybody fills in forms to say they are doing the right thing but they don't actually go and look at the factory to see what is happening inside the factory".

The Telegraph however, doesn't understand the significance of this assertion and doesn't print it. And neither does the Today Programme follow through. Yet this is the crux of the whole problem. The entire food control relies on paper (the HACCP regime) and real-life checks have been removed from the process.

Ironically, Haskins is a life-long europhile, so he omits to tell us that this is an EU-mandated system which has effectively wrecked the traditional basis of food control. His darling EU is at the heart of the problem, so he can't bring himself to say so.

About this, I spoke to a senior consultant in the food industry this morning. He told me that the effect of the system is to "hammer the good guys" while the crooks easily find their way around it. This is the classic sledgehammer to miss the nut.

Thus we have Owen Paterson today reiterating that this "is a case of fraud and a conspiracy against the public, this is a criminal action, substituting one material for another".

The longer-term problem though is that the EU system of food control is not capable of detecting fraud. It is based on the assumption that the operators are honest, and access to the food network can be controlled. The assumptions are flawed. The system is not fit for purpose.

Thus, one of the tasks facing Mr Paterson is to look at the food control system as a whole, and to re-think the basic assumptions. This, doubtless, will bring him into conflict with the "colleagues", who will not be willing to admit the flaws they have introduced. On past form, they will instead be calling for "more Europe".

The battle lines, are beginning to be drawn. It will be interesting to see how the fight shapes up.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: forget the abattoirs

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:36:37 +0000

Catching up on the stuff we were writing overnight, the BBC is retailing denials from the Romanian prime minister that his country's abattoirs are involved in the horsemeat scandal.

This is Victor Ponta, who, expressing anger that his country had been blamed, says, "From all the data we have at the moment, there is no breach of European rules committed by companies from Romania or on Romanian territory".

Without even having to check this, there is good reason for accepting this statement at face value. As we pointed out earlier, the false labelling scam does not work that way. Most often, meat is legitimately produced and only downstream does it acquire a new identity.

The difficulty for investigators is that, if the labels are fraudulent, and the meat has undergone an identity change, the actual indications of origin may be false. Just because either labelling or invoices say the product is Romanian does not mean that is the place of slaughter.

Even then, slaughtered animals loose their identity once they are butchered in cutting premises, acquiring the "establishment number" of the premises in which the meat is packaged. At that stage, the meat could be from anywhere, even imported from third countries.

But even then, that is not the whole of it. As this report indicates, processed horsemeat products are sold quite legitimately in Continental supermarkets, which means that horsemeat will be legally held in many processing plants.

There is always the possibility, therefore, that substitution occurred in the processing plants themselves, with the paperwork doctored to suit. As we illustrated in our first piece, process workers would have no idea what type of meat they were handling. In fact, a process one day could be legitimate, and the next day not, depending on the labelling applied to the end product.

The complexities, though, are beginning to show with the Irish end of the horsemeat scandal, where the Irish authorities pinned the problem on Poland, yet the Polish authorities are denying involvement. Thus, both countries (Romania and Poland) fingered as the source of illicit horsemeat are denying their involvement.

As regards Ireland, there is even some suggestion that Ulster gangs could be involved, putting abandoned horses that are unfit for human consumption into the food chain. And, although this has been dismissed as speculation, putting Polish labels on the meat would be a good way of throwing investigators off the scent.

Anyone with any real knowledge of the system will understand these complexities. Traceabilty for a whole range of foods, and especially high-value products such as meat, is a joke. Thus to suggest that you can police the internal market on the basis of a paperwork trail is a very bad joke.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: a statement to the House

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:07:01 +0000

At 5.35 pm yesterday, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Owen Paterson, stood up to make a statement to MPs on "developments with regard to horsemeat and food fraud".

Obligingly, the Pope decided to resign at the same time, to take the heat out of the issue, although Tesco went and spoiled it all by reporting that the meat in some of its "value" spaghetti bolognese comprised more than 60 percent horsemeat.

As an aside, I'm a little bit suspicious of these high-level DNA reports. They have all been found in cooked products and heat degrades DNA, making species differentiation more difficult. But, for technical reasons, horse DNA might better survive the cooking process, thus skewing the results.

Anyhow, said Mr Paterson, the ultimate source of these incidents is still being investigated, but "it is already clear that we are dealing with Europe-wide supply networks".

Now, the great eurosceptic Paterson is in the delicious position of liaising with the European Commission and other member states. He has been in touch with Irish Minister Simon Coveney on several occasions since 28 January, he spoke twice to him yesterday, and has spoken to European Commissioner Borg, the French Minister St�phane Le Foll and Romanian Minister Daniel Constantin.

The next step is that, on Wednesday there will be an urgent meeting in Brussels with Commissioner Borg and the Ministers from the member states affected. In addition, it has been agreed that this issue will be on the agenda of the Agriculture Council on 25 February.

Once the full facts of the current incidents have been established, and the areas identified where enforcement action can be taken, Paterson will be wanting to "look at the lessons to be learned". He will make a further statement about that "in due course".

Paterson, however, then lobbed in his grenade which so infuriates the opposition. While the statists wanted the Secretary of State to take charge, he bluntly told them that the prime responsibility for dealing with the problems lay with retailers and food producers. It was they who needed to demonstrate that they had taken all necessary actions to ensure the integrity of the food chain in this country.

This was not what the ghastly Mary Creagh, shadow Secretary wanted to hear. Screeching about "this incompetent Secretary of State", she complained that he had the temerity to go home on the Friday last, not perhaps understanding that iPads and telephones exist, which allow tech-savvy politicians to work away from base.

Nor did she seem to understand that, that this was a low-level issue and the crisis it really only took off once reports of high-level adulteration started emerging on the Thursday. That Paterson managed personally to get together retailers and industry leaders for a meeting by the Saturday, when the FSA had not thought it possible to call them in at such short notice, was not good enough for Creagh.

But what must really rankle is that Paterson is so blithely acknowledging that food regulation "is an area of European competence" and that under the European legal framework, main responsibility for the safety and authenticity of food lies with those who produce, sell or provide it to the customer.

It is also difficult Mary Creagh to deal with the fact that the Food Standards Agency, which Paterson is working with, was set up by the previous Labour Government as an independent agency, and that he is respecting its independence, allowing it to get on with its job and make its own mistakes.

The whole idea of the FSA was to take the party politics our of food safety, so that the agency leads the operational response to problems, not the politicians. Yet, the old-fashioned Mary Creagh would have it that "the food industry, and No 10 it is rapidly losing faith in this Secretary of State's ability to lead them through this crisis".

Yet, it was Paterson who emerged smiling from No 10 yesterday morning, still in office after an impromptu emergency Cabinet meeting headed by David Cameron, then to take on Creagh's spiteful little complaints. Only later, did No 10, partly on the basis of Paterson's briefing, inform the media that there was no evidence of a health risk from consuming horsemeat.

Creagh is echoed in nastiness by the Mirror which is also behind the curve, writing of "Food Secretary Owen Paterson" being "slapped down for failing to get a grip on the crisis".

This was the Secretary of State that spoke in the House of trying to get away from the expression "food chain", talking of an "extraordinary network" - an amazing kaleidoscopic variety of factories and suppliers all working together.

It is a real network, said Paterson, and what is quite clear in this case is that there has to be more rigorous and more random testing. I have faith in the advice of the independent Food Standards Agency, but down the road, I would like to see more random testing.

Then to get all the players on a Europe-wide basis together for Wednesday is something of a coup. He has got Commissioner Borg to accept that there must be changes to the control regime, and has his agreement that more hands-on testing across the board.

This is not a man failing to get grip. Rather, Paterson is turning Hague's little slogan on its head. For the moment, we seem to be in Europe and ruling Europe. Even the French are being helpful and friendly.

This surely cannot last but we should savour the moment, especially as the Independent hates it so much it has its own Donald Macintyre spitting with fury. Whatever else, to have the press on the "left" so hostile is surely an achievement.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

EU regulation: food fraud and the EU

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:43:46 +0000

Inadvertently, the perpetrators of the beef adulteration with horsemeat have brought into high profile the issue of food fraud, which is shortly to be discussed further in the House of Commons.

What is not generally appreciated is the scale of the problem, illustrated by a recent question in the European Parliament, which noted that the FBI and the World Customs Institute had dubbed food fraud "the crime of the century", earning perpetrators $49 billion annually.

It was noted that Michigan State University had suggested that problem will therefore persist and grow, with the demand for cheap, mass-produced food.

And, as an indication of the breadth of the problem, we are referred to a recent Irish study carried out by University College Dublin, which found that that 82 percent of fish such as pollock and whiting sold on the Dublin Market was fraudulently mislabelled as other more valuable species such as cod.

The British FSA, which has set up a Food Fraud Task Force, has reported examples of condemned, diseased poultry being bleached and diverted back into the food chain and a case in Northern Ireland where beef and poultry of unknown origin were illegally repackaged and placed on the market for human consumption.

The scale of food fraud can be huge, viz a report in 2008 of a massive fraud involving the illegal import of huge quantities of Chinese Rabbit meat into Bulgaria. This was repacked and sold using falsified Argentinean health certificates. The sum involved was said to be €18 million.

I shall be watching the debate to see what develops, as the EU implications are profound, and will add to this piece here.

EU regulation: food fraud and the EU

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:43:48 +0000

EU regulation: food fraud and the EU

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:56:52 +0000

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:23:15 +0000

Local media and others, including the BBC are reporting that a slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, has been raided by FSA officials, accompanied by police, as part of the ongoing investigation into horsemeat in processed foods.

This is the Cross Stone Abattoir, licensed to Peter Boddy, which was raided simultaneously with a licensed cutting plant in Dyfd, trading under the name Farmbox Meats Ltd, owned by sole shareholder Dafydd Raw-Rees, who is had been supplied with horse carcases by Boddy. Dyfed-Powys police entered the cutting plant with FSA officials.

Operations at both units have been suspended while investigations continue. All meat found has been detained and paperwork has bee seized, including customer lists from the two companies.

The raids came after FSA director of operation Andrew Rhodes had ordered an audit of all horse-producing abattoirs in the UK, after the news of horsemeat adulteration first broke. He says he was shocked to uncover what appears to be a blatant misleading of consumers.

Rhodes may well be shocked, as the abattoir is subject to full-time supervision by FSA inspectors, while the cutting plant is also subject to routine inspections. Both are licensed by the FSA. It is not only consumers who have been mislead, it would appear.

After all the focus on Romanian slaughterhouses, especially by The Daily Mail which has keen to pin the blame on "zee feelthy foreigners", there should be same red faces around.

One of those should be Conservative MP Mark Spencer, who in today's debate discounted the possibility of meat substitution in the UK, saying: "Frankly, that could not happen in the UK because environmental health officers and trading standards officers are checking a paper trail that goes right back".

"Given the traceability in the UK industry", he said, "the opportunity to change those labels is simply not there. Registered vets in every abattoir in the United Kingdom are watching the line and checking that the carcases are stamped and marked. They cannot be changed. When one buys what is basically a block of frozen meat from an international buyer, it is easy to pull off the label that says 'beef' and slap on one that says something else, or reverse that process. That is a sad state of affairs".

The finding of horsemeat in British premises is potentially a game-changer, as it confirms the widespread nature of the food adulteration. Rhodes confirms that the horsemeat has been used in burgers and kebabs, adding an entirely new dimension to the current scandal, which so far has involved only imported food.

Speaking personally, I am not at all surprised, having seen evidence personally of deliberate mislabelling in British premises, and taken evidence from British plant operators that have done it. The BBC interviewer asks whether adulteration has been "going on for years", and the answer is, of course, yes.

Rhodes is seeking to cover his back, arguing that we have a "very robust" system of control, but then it never was. The trade has always run rings round the flat-footed FSA inspectorate. Nothing has changed, and nothing will change until these people learn something of how to police the food industry, a skill they have never learned.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:24:39 +0000

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:25:36 +0000

Horsemeat scandal: chickens home to Yorkshire

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:29:28 +0000

Local media and others, including the BBC are reporting that a slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, has been raided by FSA officials, accompanied by police, as part of the ongoing investigation into horsemeat in processed foods.

This is the Cross Stone Abattoir, licensed to Peter Boddy, which was raided simultaneously with a licensed cutting plant in Dyfd, trading under the name Farmbox Meats Ltd, owned by sole shareholder Dafydd Raw-Rees, who is had been supplied with horse carcases by Boddy. Dyfed-Powys police entered the cutting plant with FSA officials.

Operations at both units have been suspended while investigations continue. All meat found has been detained and paperwork has been seized, including customer lists from the two companies.

The raids came after FSA director of operation Andrew Rhodes had ordered an audit of all horse-producing abattoirs in the UK, after the news of horsemeat adulteration first broke. He says he was shocked to uncover what appears to be a blatant misleading of consumers.

Rhodes may well be shocked, as the abattoir is subject to full-time supervision by FSA inspectors, while the cutting plant is also subject to routine inspections. Both are licensed by the FSA. It is not only consumers who have been mislead, it would appear.

After all the focus on Romanian slaughterhouses, especially by The Daily Mail which has keen to pin the blame on "zee feelthy foreigners", there should be same red faces around.

One of those should be Conservative MP Mark Spencer, who in today's debate discounted the possibility of meat substitution in the UK, saying: "Frankly, that could not happen in the UK because environmental health officers and trading standards officers are checking a paper trail that goes right back".

"Given the traceability in the UK industry", he said, "the opportunity to change those labels is simply not there. Registered vets in every abattoir in the United Kingdom are watching the line and checking that the carcases are stamped and marked. They cannot be changed. When one buys what is basically a block of frozen meat from an international buyer, it is easy to pull off the label that says 'beef' and slap on one that says something else, or reverse that process. That is a sad state of affairs".

Horsemeat scandal: chickens home to Yorkshire

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:33:09 +0000

Local media and others, including the BBC are reporting that a slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, has been raided by FSA officials, accompanied by police, as part of the ongoing investigation into horsemeat in processed foods.

This is the Cross Stone Abattoir, licensed to Peter Boddy, which was raided simultaneously with a licensed cutting plant in Dyfd, trading under the name Farmbox Meats Ltd, owned by sole shareholder Dafydd Raw-Rees, who is had been supplied with horse carcases by Boddy. Dyfed-Powys police entered the cutting plant with FSA officials.

Operations at both units have been suspended while investigations continue. All meat found has been detained and paperwork has been seized, including customer lists from the two companies.

The raids came after FSA director of operation Andrew Rhodes had ordered an audit of all horse-producing abattoirs in the UK, after the news of horsemeat adulteration first broke. He says he was shocked to uncover what appears to be a blatant misleading of consumers.

Rhodes may well be shocked, as the abattoir is subject to full-time supervision by FSA inspectors, while the cutting plant is also subject to routine inspections. Both are licensed by the FSA. It is not only consumers who have been mislead, it would appear.

After all the focus on Romanian slaughterhouses, especially by The Daily Mail which has keen to pin the blame on "zee feelthy foreigners", there should be same red faces around.

One of those should be Conservative MP Mark Spencer, who in today's debate discounted the possibility of meat substitution in the UK, saying: "Frankly, that could not happen in the UK because environmental health officers and trading standards officers are checking a paper trail that goes right back".

"Given the traceability in the UK industry", he said, "the opportunity to change those labels is simply not there. Registered vets in every abattoir in the United Kingdom are watching the line and checking that the carcases are stamped and marked. They cannot be changed. When one buys what is basically a block of frozen meat from an international buyer, it is easy to pull off the label that says 'beef' and slap on one that says something else, or reverse that process. That is a sad state of affairs".

Horsemeat scandal: the Welsh connection

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:03:18 +0000

The high-profile action by the FSA in targeting a Yorkshire abattoir and a Welsh cutting plant could already be unravelling - in part – despite multiple front-page headlines in today's press.

Peter Boddy, owner of Cross Stone, the Todmorden abattoir implicated in the latest round of meat adulteration, has not been directly in touch but, according to The Daily Telegraph, his son is denying that his father's business is involved in selling horsemeat to the Welsh cutting plant, Farmbox Ltd.

Boddy himself is insisting that he will co-operate with FSA officers, denying they had "raided" his site. "It was not a raid", he saud. "They are welcome to visit whenever they want, they just wanted to see my records, which I will be showing them".

At the other end, Farmbox denies having been supplied by Stone Cross, and although they admit to handling horsemeat, this is claimed to have been for a contract in Belgium. Whatever the exact situation, an offence need not have been committed by either operation. It is perfectly legal to trade in horsemeat, and any supply could have been perfectly legitimate at the time it left the premises. No offence is committed meat is falsely passed off.

At the Farmbox end, however, things are a little murkier. Its Tyn Parc plant, at Llandre, Ceredigion (pictured above and below) has something of an interesting history. Owned by businessman Dafydd Raw-Rees – who is also a director of the local Borth and Ynyslas Golf Club – the "manager" or operator is one Colin Patterson.

It is Patterson who has an interesting background. In 2002, he was alleged to have been holding illegally slaughtered meat after a raid on Tyn Parc by Ceredigion officials. They had discovered 1,100 boxes belonging to Patterson, inside the cutting plant, each containing one butchered sheep. The consignment was valued at �35,000.

He, with farmer Carmello Gale, 47, of Llandysul, and one of the Ceredigion's own meat inspectors, Peter Maguigan, had been charged with conspiring to supply unfit meat. Two years later, though, the case was abandoned after evidence was given by plant manager Paul Edwards of the Oriel Jones slaughterhouse, also in Llandysul, that the sheep had been slaughtered in his plant.

Patterson in 2004 was said to have emigrated to Buenos Aires to work in the meat industry, but not so his co-defendant Carmello Gale. In 2003, with Mohammad Kahn, from Haringey, London, he had been convicted of transporting illegally slaughtered meat, after the van they were travelling in had crashed into a police vehicle at Bronwydd, near Carmarthen. Officers had found 124 illegally slaughtered sheep carcasses in the back.

Gale was supplying the notorious "smokie" trade, and was in June 2004 found guilty of operating an unlawful slaughterhouse at Penclawdd Uchaf farm, near Llandysul, owned by Joseph Hughes Owens.

Carmarthenshire County Council officers on 12 December 2001 had raided Penclawdd Uchaf and found Gale and three other men. Accord to contemporary accounts, "it was semi-darkness and the police shouted for anyone inside to stay still". One officer shone a torch and had found a bloodstained knife, a number of sheep, both dead and alive, a blow torch and a gas cylinder. "There were also piles of sheep innards and skins," he said.

Gale, "through fear", refused to name others involved. Those inside the barn were arrested but prosecution was not continued. Gale was said to be �80,000 in debt and still to owe �4,000 from previous fines imposed for contraventions of food hygiene laws.

Judge Keith Thomas, presiding over his case, said he had substantial assets and ordered a financial inquiry before deciding how much he should pay. Gale was described as a "tenant farmer" who worked a flock of 1,300 sheep on a 500-acre farm.

When Gale was jailed for six months, with costs awarded against him, he appealed his sentence on the grounds that the officers were out of time, when they had charged him a year later. However, in February 2005 he lost his case.

Patterson was apparently back in business in Wales in 2005 through to 2008, when he was described as a meat dealer living near Llandysul. Thus, we have a known associate of illegal slaughterer Gale, who also lived in Llandysul, living close by.

Patterson, in fact, was a partner with Carmelo Gale in a company called West Wales Halal Meat Limited, with a company address of 234 Upper Tooting Road, London SW17, although the company was dissolved in 2004.

In fact, Patterson, born in 1970, has a history of dissolved companies, having been a director of three other dissolved companies, Euro Meat Trading Ltd, Euro Meat Packers Ltd, and Celtic Imports Ltd. The latest to be dissolved was Euro Meat Packers, with a trading address in Queen Street Aberystwyth. He also seems to have had a company called Halal Meat and Poultry (Wales) Ltd.

That Mr Patterson now seems to be trading in horsemeat does not, of course, make him a criminal, but it would appear that he is going to give the FSA an interesting time in unravelling his business interests.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: they've noticed – at last!

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:37:53 +0000

After a week or so of Owen Paterson telling everybody who would listen that food safety is an EU competence, the Daily Express has finally woken up to the fact that food safety is er … an EU competence.

The most worrying part of the whole [horsemeat] furore, it laments, "is what it reveals about the powerlessness of those to whom we grant a mandate to run the country".

"We are unable to hold our elected representatives to account for the horsemeat scandal because they have passed responsibility over to officials at the European Commission", it wails. "There is no point in urging Environment Secretary Owen Paterson to 'get a grip' because he is not the person in charge".

But if this newspaper has finally got the message, not so opposition MPs. Yesterday in the Commons debate, we had the ghastly Mary Creagh complaining that the Secretary of State "laid the responsibility for food safety squarely on other people’s shoulders". Thus, it was for Owen Paterson to say once again:

I shall repeat myself, because it is important that Opposition Members understand this: overall, food safety is a European competence. Council regulation 178/2002 confirms that food operators have primary responsibility for food safety and quality. In the UK, under the system this Government inherited, the independent Food Standards Agency is the lead enforcement authority for food safety and authenticity.

The "independent" Food Standards Agency is, of course, a creature of Brussels, the UK branch office of the European Food Safety Authority, its task mainly to implement EU regulations.

Pity the corpulent Diane Abbott, suffering no food shortage herself, asserting that "this horsemeat scandal has clear public health implications - possible implications, but implications none the less. There is a public health dimension, so responsibility falls fairly and squarely on Government".

"For Ministers to say that the ultimate responsibility lies somewhere else is not something that the British public accept or believe for a second", she wailed. "The Government should not be hiding behind civil servants or quangos. They must accept their moral responsibility for the quality of the food that our people purchase in the shops, and for any possible threat to public health".

Kerry McCarthy similarly had trouble accepting the reality. "All food should be of a decent quality, and all consumers should know what is in their food", she declared, then proclaiming:

That is the Government’s responsibility, and I was shocked by the Secretary of State’s complacency when he answered questions earlier. He is being very slow to act, but very quick to abdicate all responsibility and say that this is a matter for the Food Standards Agency. That is just not good enough. It is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that people have trust in the food that they eat.

Barry Gardiner then asserts that "responsibility for food labelling policy lies with DEFRA", not realising that food labelling policy also lies with Brussels, and has done for many years.

And what of Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)? It is too easy for the Secretary of State "to dismiss his responsibilities by saying repeatedly that retailers have ultimate responsibility for the content of food", he complains. Unless he wants the "F" removed from DEFRA, it is incumbent on him to carry out the responsibilities he already has.

The poor dears. They have given away their powers and, unlike the Express cannot cope with the awful truth of what they have done. The collective demands action, while today Owen Paterson, with a broad smile, jets off to Brussels to discuss the situation with our masters. This is what Parliament wanted – Labour MPs are in favour of EU membership, he says. This is what they get.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: German Greens in disarray

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:05:02 +0000

Having virtually ignored the horsemeat scandal, the German media is now crawling all over it with the announcement that adulterated beef products may after all have been sold to German supermarkets.

This comes after supply lists from the EU have been obtained, from which it is clear that large amounts of frozen products have been delivered to the Federal Republic, which could contain mislabelled meat products.

Thus, we have Spiegel, amongst others, reporting that the spokesman for the Consumer Ministry in North Rhine-Westphalia has said businesses in its region are implicated.

Deliveries of suspect product took place between November 2012 and January 2013. A company in Luxembourg and a company from France could have delivered falsely declared meat. The suspect frozen foods, lasagna, among other things, may not only have reached North Rhine-Westphalia but also other regions of the country.

They have been delivered not only to supermarket chains and discount stores, but also to other food businesses that deal with frozen products. The Environmental Agency is now checking the affected premises. Whether the affected horse meat frozen foods actually contain only a DNA test can confirm. The results were expected in three to five days.

Interestingly, Die Zeit has the EU-loving Greens weeping and gnashing their teeth over the "international production chains". Aimed at cutting prices, they are a conduit for fraud and deceit, says the consumer policy spokesthing of the parliamentary party, Nicole Maisch.

Forcing animals in "excruciating transports" to travel through several European countries in order to save a few cents, must belong to the past, says Maisch. Transport should be limited to four hours at home and eight hours abroad. Also clear labelling is needed. she adds.

It strikes me that the Greens haven't quite got a handle on this. The crisis is about shipping meat around the continent, not animals. But then, the Greens have never been known to let a good crisis go to waste, so we can expect the usual mantras to surface.

The irony is, of course, that their doctrine is the antithesis of the EU's own doctrine of free movement of goods and services within the internal market, which puts them at odds with the organisation they love so much. Being a Green, though, means not having to be intellectually consistent.

Not making sense should never be allowed to spoil a Green campaign. Otherwise, they would have to remain silent forever.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: the dead hand of the EU

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:35:28 +0000

Consistently, from the very first, we have been characterising this horsemeat scandal as food fraud, with Owen Paterson picking up the theme of an international criminal conspiracy.

As the Environment Secretary last night was hurtling down the motorway between Brussels and the Hague, ready to meet Europol this morning, the Guardian is one amongst several newspapers highlighting the role of the shady figure of Jan Fasen, director of Draap Trading Ltd, in the sale of horsemeat to the French processor at the centre of this crisis.

Fasen, is emerging as a key suspect in the meat adulteration, having confirmed that he bought a consignment of horsemeat from two Romanian abattoirs and sold it to French companies.

But while he insists that the meat was clearly labelled as horsemeat, the Dutch broadcaster NOS has reported that Fasen has form. In January 2012, he received a one-year jail term for deliberately marketing South American horsemeat as halal-slaughtered Dutch beef and falsifying documents. A second Dutch meat trader, from the town of Oosterhoutse, was given community service.

Draap Trading Ltd is a Cypriot-registered company, run from the Antwerp area of Belgium, and owned by an offshore vehicle based in the British Virgin Islands. Draap spelled backwards is the Dutch word for horse. It delivered meat to the French company Spanghero, which in turn supplied another French company, Comigel. The Findus lasagne products found in Britain containing horsemeat came from a Comigel factory in Luxembourg.

Spanghero, on the other hand, insists that the meat delivered to its Castelnaudary plant in southern France had arrived labelled "Beef - originating in EU". The company said: "The meat received was beef meat. This was the order that had been placed. Spanghero did not treat or do anything to the meat".

This adds a further level of confusion and uncertainty, further elaborated on by the Mirror, in what is already so murky that the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project is looking in detail at Draap Trading Ltd.

It appears that the company was registered in 2008 in Limassol, Cyprus. Its sole shareholder is Hermes Guardian Ltd, an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. A Draap representative, Andreas Mercruri has refused to disclose the beneficial ownership of the company.

This is the sort of thing that the EU has lamentably failed to address, with authorities in Romania suggesting that international criminal networks may be involved in the opaque meat trading business. Sorin Minea, head of Romalimenta, the Romanian food industry federation, warns of "an international mafia ring behind this problem".

Addressing these criminal elements of meat adulteration will require a huge effort of will on an international scale, and yesterday Owen Paterson got agreement in principle for a huge programme of testing throughout Europe, to identify the scale of the problem.

The significance of this has hardly been appreciated, as it breaks away from the EU-mandated paper-based system, and puts physical testing back in the frame. That there has been no resistance from EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg is a tacit admission that the EU regime has failed.

The BBC has it that the EU is "responding" to the scandal, urging members to conduct random tests to tackle a widening scandal. But this is hardly an adequate description. The British-led initiative has the support of the Irish, French, Romanians and the Dutch, dragging a lethargic Commission into the arena, where it has allowed criminal enterprises to flourish through its inadequate system of controls.

Irish Farm Minister Simon Coveney says, "This is a Europe-wide issue that needs a Europe-wide solution". And while that much is true, it is far from being an EU solution. The member states have recognised the problems, they are making the running, and they are putting in the resources to deal with the consequences of a system failure that has gone on far too long.

When the dust has settled on this issue, there is going to have to be some serious re-thinking about how we manage our affairs. The dead hand of he EU is creating the problems. It is going to be the power of the nation states that solve them.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: ramping up the scare

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:05:31 +0000

The one thing you can guarantee about the food "scare" is that the moment the issue hits the headlines, a legion of agenda-pushers will come crawling out of the woodwork, all trying to ramp up the tension for their own purposes.

Some of this is clearly mischief-making, as we see in The Daily Telegraph today, its front-page lead going for the scary headline, while the content is incredibly thin. The report is flagging up the EFRA Committee report now available, with Anne McIntosh and her committee airing their lack of grasp of the issues.

I've been without internet most of the morning, so I'm playing catch-up, and this therefore is a holding post. I'll add it on the fly, posting stuff as it comes to me, in the hope that I'm back on track by the end of the day.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: a crashing EU failure

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:30:43 +0000

The BBC reports, alongside others, that the French meat processing company Spanghero knowingly sold horsemeat labelled as beef – according to the French government. Spanghero's licence has been suspended pending further investigations.

Not untypical of such occasions, the firm has denied the allegations, saying it only ever dealt in meat it believed to be beef. However, French consumer affairs minister Benoit Hamon said the meat left Romania clearly and correctly labelled as horse. It was afterwards that it was relabelled as beef.

"From the investigation, it would seem that the first agent or actor in this network who stamped 'beef' on horsemeat from Romania was Spanghero", Hamon says. There was "no reason to doubt the good faith" of the Romanian abattoir that originally provided the meat, Hamon adds.

The French government believes that the fraud went on for six months and involved around 750 tons of meat, netting half a million euros. But, it says, some blame may rest with Comigel, which made the ready meals sold throughout Europe. Staff there, Hamon avers, should have noticed anomalies in the paperwork. They should also have realised from the smell and look of the meat once it was defrosted that it was not beef.

Methinks that Hamon hasn't fully grasped how processing works, with frozen blocks being used, without defrosting, in order to keep mixes cool. Operators on the production floor, many of them on minimum wage, have next to no chance of detecting substitution.

At this stage, a core samples from a representative number of packs could be taken. No special analytical technology is needed. In my day, a glass beaker, water and a bunsen burner was all that was needed, for what is called the " boiling test ". Apart from detecting taint and rancidity, horsemeat can easily be distinguished from beef by this means.

The point, however, is that such direct testing – part of what is known as "organoleptic evaluation" – has been dropped from the control regime in favour of a paperwork audit. And there is no way the EU can evade responsibility for this. The so-called HACCP principles are written into the DNA of EU regulation, required by Article 5 of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004.

HACCP, says the EU, "is a tool to assess hazards and establish control systems that focus on prevention rather than relying mainly on end-product testing". It goes on to say, "efficient and accurate record keeping is essential to the application of a HACCP system … HACCP procedures should be documented".

Throughout the industry, Europe-wide, with the active encouragement of regulators, ranks of consultants, and the entire food safety establishment, common-sense controls have been ditched in favour of chasing paper records to an almost absurd degree.

Strictly speaking a properly designed HACCP regime might take account of supplier fraud, but the regulatory fashion was to rely on paper. In this context, it would have been entirely normal for Comigel to have relied on paper records to attest to the provenance of its supplies. Furthermore, any such reliance would have been approved by national regulatory officials, and endorsed by Commission inspectors from the EU's Food and Veterinary Office (FVO).

A decade ago, I remember a stormy, ill-tempered meeting in the offices of a major multi-national food processor in Ghent, arguing against full adoption of the HACCP system, calling for the retention of routine checks, and inspection-based systems. My only ally was a deliciously angry French manager who argued that the firm should go into the paper business and stop making meat products if HACCP was to reign supreme (Ironically, it later pulled out of meat processing).

During a factory "walk through", I was able to prove my point when I spotted a major contamination hazard that had not been detected – and not noticed by any of the group I was with - even though the process have been fully approved and certified. The Dutch managing director agreed my point, expressing real regret that he could do nothing about it. He was under instructions from the corporate head office to adopt the system.

Furthermore, within EU law and the Single Market, it is not possible to stand aside from the crowd – everyone must compete on a "level playing field". This also applies to the regulators. If they demands something different or extra, they are exposed to accusations of creating barriers to trade and distorting competition between food business operators in different Member States.

It is here that the FVO exerts its malign effect. The Commission's very own private food police sally forth to inspect national control systems, ensuring that national regulators properly implement the HACCP mantras, and conform with EU regulations. It they depart from the orthodoxy, they are quickly brought into line.

Once the HACCP "virus" got embedded in the system, and regimes were approved by FVO inspectors, we then spawned a generation "auditors" to replace hands-on inspectors. Since then, such skills which were in any event in short supply have been largely lost. The modern hygiene practitioner spends so much time with keyboards and flow charts that observational skills have atrophied and inspection techniques have been lost.

Thus, consumer affairs minister Benoit Hamon needs to wake up to the reality of what the EU has brought to his domain. This crisis is the child of the EU, the inevitable consequence of ten years of policy implementation that has seen the progressive dismantling of tried and tested systems, and their replacement with "Single Market complaint" regimes that have opened the way for a single market in crime.

The irony is that there are now so few people around with knowledge and understanding of how systems used to work and should work, that the crashing failure of the EU regime is scarcely recognised for what it is. But, unrecognised or not, there is no disguising the failure. It is there, daily, in the headlines.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: a modest piece

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:30:27 +0000

A modest piece about the EU, also available online. The advert topping the piece on my browser reads "Europe for less". It is actually an advert for City Jet, but I take it as a sign.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: extruded verbal material

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:43:34 +0000

There are people who read this blog – and there are those who are ill-informed. In the ranks of the latter, however, are not only the readers of the Financial Times but those (especially) who write it, and those upon whom the journalists rely for their information.

How typical it is of the British media (and this paper in particular) that the moment we get something of a food "crisis", up goes the cry for "more regulation", along with condemnation – as we see here – of "light-touch regulation".

This comes from FT journalist Hannah Kuchler, who may not have been around at the time of the Edwina Currie's "Salmonella in eggs", the Listeria scare, Mad Cow Disease and all the other scares of the late '80s and '90s, which spawned the current crop of regulation.

In this example of what the FT calls "high quality global journalism", we get critics likening the failure of Britain's food inspection system to that of light-touch bank regulation before the financial crisis. Industry experts, we are told, blame "a perfect storm of austerity-driven budget cuts, a laisser-faire attitude and fragmented monitoring network for the spread of horsemeat into the food chain".

Before going any further, let us revisit what we know of the causation of the horsemeat "crisis" and we can venture that, has the French food processor Comigel carried out pre-production tests of its meat supply, then the horse meat most likely would have been intercepted, and the problems we are experiencing would not have occurred.

That assumes, of course – as the French government seems to thing – that Comigel is innocent of fraud, and guilty of no more than "negligence". A simple in-house testing regime would have sufficed.

On this basis, the problem cannot in any way be attributed to a "light touch" regime. We are looking at a very specific system failure which, in our view was induced by the regulatory system itself. This is not too little regulation, but the wrong type of regulation.

Sadly, though, journalists – and indeed legislators and regulators – seem incapable of stepping past a childishly simple assessment, thinking of "too much or too little regulation". Their brains seem incapable of asking whether the right type of regulation has been adopted, and/or whether the model we have has been properly implemented.

Devoid of any such sophistication, we thus see Hannah Kuchler tell us that while DNA tests have been used to detect contamination since the crisis erupted, the technique has not previously been standard practice for inspectors. She then relies on a "recently retired [meat] inspector" to tell us that "it could have been possible to discover horsemeat with the naked eye". "Horsemeat does look different – it is darker, the fat is yellower and oilier", the inspector says.

At the user end, however, where the likes of trading standards and environmental health officers roam, we are dealing with a processed product. There, DNA testing is the most reliable technique to detect cross-species adulteration.

In the Comigel processing plant, though, we have already learned that the horsemeat meat was used frozen, in which case, visual appearance is of little relevance. One block of frozen meat looks very much like another.

But this "recently retired inspector" is talking about abattoirs and cutting plants. Reductions in the number of inspections at cutting plants – after a change in EU law in 2004 – and pressure to work at speed in abattoirs, could have made horse meat harder to spot, he tells us. "Before we had two inspectors to work a body of beef and they'd do half each – now one does the lot. The volumes of work people have to do working as fast as the production line means you miss more things", he complains.

Budget cuts to the Food Standards Agency have contributed to a halving of the number of meat inspectors since the 1990s, though the number of meat plants has also fallen. In the past three years local authority regulatory services have been slashed by 32 percent per person in real terms.

Yet the failures which are currently gripping the nation took place in a processing plant, out of sight of the inspectors, as a result of regulations mandated by the EU and enforced by national authorities, under the supervision of EU officials. How could a drop in the number of meat inspectors, or speeding up the work rate, be a contributory factor?

This, though, it what passes for an intelligent contribution to the debate, made all the more predictable and leaden by resurrecting the old war horse, professor Tim Lang, supposedly an "expert in food policy", but in fact a lefty campaigner. Using Lang is a bit like Godwin's Law. Whomsoever quotes him has automatically lost the debate.

That, however, does not stop Kuchler, who then goes on to Liz Moran, president of the association of public analysts. She is allowed a few paragraphs of special pleading, then followed by Andy Foster from the Trading Standards Institute, who says some local authority sampling budgets have been cut by 50-70 percent.

This, it appears, is the best that the Financial Times can offer, a piece of work for which the phrase "extruded verbal material" (EVM) was invented.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

EU politics: gay marriage not an EU competence

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:15:10 +0000

Despite the multiple errors in UKIP's claim about EU involvement in the gay marriage furore (analysed here) its story remains on its website, and is still doing the rounds.

This is despite the analysis offered by Booker and myself, on the role of the Council of Europe, which UKIP chooses to ignore. It is thus interesting to see last year's official EU statement on the the issue, where it states:

The EU strongly supports the Council of Europe's action aiming at combating all forms of discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender persons. The EU is ready to strengthen cooperation with the Council of Europe in this field - as it is mentioned in the EU Strategic Framework and Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy – on the basis of complementarity. In particular the EU is prepared to develop a strategy on how to cooperate with third countries, including within the Council of Europe.

We also see the EU state that it "also looks forward to the review of implementation of the Council of Europe’s Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 on measures to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity, an important reference document for member states of the Council of Europe and also for the EU".

Then there is Your Freedom and Ours which retails Peter Tatchell noting that, after he applied to the European Court of Human Rights to strike down the bans on restrictions on gay marriage, and then lobbied the Conservative Party:

That's when things started to happen. Astonishingly, within three months of our application to the European Court, the Government announced that it was going to consult on legalising gay marriage. They knew that there was no argument they could use in Strasbourg that would be anything other than bigoted and intolerant. I think they realised the game was up, and decided it was better to lead on the issue and get the kudos of enacting liberal reform than be dragged through the courts. It may have been a pure coincidence, but it does strike me as very closely mirroring the pattern of events that I set in place.

These points very much confirm the pivotal role of this recommendation and the Council of Europe, in concert with the ECHR, the dynamics of which we identified.

As regards UKIP's claims, we now have the results of Lord Pearson in the Lords questioning HM Government about EU involvement .

He asks "whether there are any European Union proposals to legislate on gay marriage; and, if so, whether they have influenced Government policy". To this Baroness Stowell of Beeston responds: "There are no European Union proposals to legislate on same-sex marriage. Nor does the EU have competence to legislate in the area of substantive family law".

All this, essentially, shoots the UKIP fox. Maybe now the party will remove its error-strewn claims from its website, recognising that it got its narrative hopelessly wrong.

COMMENT: "GAY MARRIAGE" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: winding down

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 22:43:58 +0000

It is invariably the case in a major infectious disease outbreak that, at the very time when the illness – and the press coverage – seems at its peak, the epidemic is already on the decline. This is because there is usually a time lag between the reports and the events on the ground.

The horsemeat scandal has some of the characteristics of an epidemic – I've heard such media fevers called "psychic epidemics", representing a disease of the mind, rather than a corporeal ailment.

One can certainly see this is the Daily Mail yesterday which chose to feature a perfectly ordinary picture of the inside of a Somerset abattoir, where a slaughterman was preparing to shoot a pony (below).

It is a scene familiar to anyone who has frequented abattoirs – as one does. The rifle in this case is being used because an equine skull is too thick for a captive bolt. But the muzzle of the rifle is correctly positioned, at the intersection of imaginary lines drawn between eye and opposing ear.

The pony is calm, and as regulations require, tethered. A single shot will despatch it, cleanly and without pain. This is humane slaughter, an event which happens up and down the country thousands of times a year.

Yet, forgoing any sense of proportion, the paper presents this as a "grisly scene", followed by the graphic detail of the animal flailing on the ground before being winched up "where her throat is cut with a razor sharp knife, severing the carotoid artery".

These details, with the sequence wrongly described and key events missing, suggest that the author, Sean Poulter, was not present at the scene. He is fabricating a narrative with deliberate intent to shock rather than inform and educate. This is journalism at its worst – the writer as prostitute, a hack offering his favours for money.

In a certain sense, though, there is encouragement to be taken from this low antic. If the Mail has to sink to such depths to achieve its effect, this signals that the attempts at generating a full-blown health scare are failing. The shock quotient of the story is fading.

With the first major tranche of much heralded test reports in – after Owen Paterson called for a major test exercise earlier in the week - there is definitely that feeling that the scare has run its course. There have been 2,472 test made, only 29 are positive for horse meat at low levels, found in seven products lines – all of which have already been withdrawn.

For sure, some horse meat has been found in school meals in Lancashire, in burgers from an Ulster hospital supplier, and the "pub giant" Whitbread has found horsemeat in its burgers and lasagnes. Those and sundry other items, such as the finding of trace horsemeat in an Asda chilled bolognese sauce, are keeping journalists busy.

Then, on the back of arrests in Todmorden and Wales, there have been three more raids, one on Hull and two in Tottenham. Flexi Foods Ltd in Hull have been targeted, after claims that it sold a large shipment to an Irish business McAdam Foods. Although it was labelled as beef, it was found to contain up to 80 percent horse meat.

One of the Tottenham sites under investigation is Dinos & Sons Continental Foods Ltd. It has been asked to clarify its position in respect of the transportation and storage of frozen beef that was imported by, and belonged to, a third party that the FSA is investigating.

All the same, some of the heat and drama seems to have melted away. The papers are covering the story but without the same zest. Some are trying too hard, but they can't sustain it. By Sunday, unless something drastic happens to stoke the flames, the "scare" will be dead on its feet. Next week, the issue could be struggling to find media space, unless the hacks can find something dramatic to sustain interest.

And, perversely, this makes for the most dangerous period. As media interest gradually fades, the regulators will take over. Already, the Commission has proposed an ambitious "Product Safety and Market Surveillance Package" for 2013.

This is intended to "improve the safety of consumer products circulating in the Single Market and to step-up market surveillance concerning all non-food products, including those imported from third countries". It is only a matter of time before the diligent eurocrats come up with a matching package for food products, calling in aid the horsemeat crisis.

By then, of course, the little Englanders of the legacy media will have lost interest. They can handle scares, they can create and magnify alarums, but they don't "do" Europe.

If nothing else, this current episode has demonstrated that. But, with Owen Paterson at the helm, their education has started. The "elephant" had an outing this week. It is not going to be so easy to put it back in the closet.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: winding down

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 07:57:41 +0000

It is invariably the case in a major infectious disease outbreak that, at the very time when the illness – and the press coverage – seems at its peak, the epidemic is already on the decline. This is because there is usually a time lag between the reports and the events on the ground.

The horsemeat scandal has some of the characteristics of an epidemic – I've heard such media fevers called "psychic epidemics", representing a disease of the mind, rather than a corporeal ailment.

One can certainly see this in the Daily Mail yesterday which chose to feature a perfectly ordinary picture of the inside of a Somerset abattoir, where a slaughterman was preparing to shoot a pony (below).

It is a scene familiar to anyone who has frequented abattoirs – as one does. The rifle in this case is being used because an equine skull is too thick for a captive bolt. But the muzzle of the rifle is correctly positioned, at the intersection of imaginary lines drawn between eye and opposing ear.

The pony is calm and, as regulations require, tethered. A single shot will despatch it, cleanly and without pain. This is humane slaughter, an event which happens up and down the country thousands of times a year.

Yet, forgoing any sense of proportion, the paper presents this as a "grisly scene", followed by the graphic detail of the animal flailing on the ground before being winched up "where her throat is cut with a razor sharp knife, severing the carotoid artery".

These details, with the sequence wrongly described and key events missing, suggest that the author, Sean Poulter, was not present at the scene. He is fabricating a narrative with deliberate intent to shock rather than inform and educate. This is journalism at its worst – the writer as prostitute, a hack offering his favours for money.

In a certain sense, though, there is encouragement to be taken from this low antic. If the Mail has to sink to such depths to achieve its effect, this signals that attempts at generating a full-blown health scare are failing. The shock quotient of the story is fading.

With the first major tranche of much heralded test reports in – after Owen Paterson called for a major test exercise earlier in the week - there is definitely a feeling that the scare has run its course. There have been 2,472 test made, only 29 are positive for horsemeat at low levels, found in seven products lines – all of which have already been withdrawn.

For sure, some horse meat has been found in school meals in Lancashire, in burgers from an Ulster hospital supplier, and the "pub giant" Whitbread has found horsemeat in its burgers and lasagnes. Those and sundry other items, such as the finding of trace horsemeat in an Asda chilled bolognese sauce, are keeping journalists busy.

Then, on the back of arrests in Todmorden and Wales, there have been three more raids, one on Hull and two in Tottenham. Flexi Foods Ltd in Hull have been targeted, after claims that it sold a large shipment to an Irish business McAdam Foods. Although it was labelled as beef, it was found to contain up to 80 percent horsemeat.

One of the Tottenham sites under investigation is Dinos & Sons Continental Foods Ltd. It has been asked to clarify its position in respect of the transportation and storage of frozen beef that was imported by, and belonged to, a third party that the FSA is investigating.

All the same, some of the heat and drama seems to have melted away. The papers are covering the story but without the same zest. Some are trying too hard, but they can't sustain it. By Sunday, unless something drastic happens to stoke the flames, the "scare" will be dead on its feet. Next week, the issue could be struggling to find media space, unless the hacks can find something dramatic to ramp it up a notch.

Perversely, this makes for the most dangerous period. As media interest gradually fades, the regulators will take over. Already, the Commission has proposed an ambitious "Product Safety and Market Surveillance Package" for 2013.

This is intended to "improve the safety of consumer products circulating in the Single Market and to step-up market surveillance concerning all non-food products, including those imported from third countries". It is only a matter of time before the diligent eurocrats come up with a matching package for food products, calling in aid the horsemeat crisis.

By then, of course, the little Englanders of the legacy media will have lost interest. They can handle scares, they can create and magnify alarums, but they don't "do" Europe. If nothing else, this current episode has demonstrated that.

But, with Owen Paterson at the helm, their education has started. The "elephant" had an outing this week. It is not going to be so easy to put it back in the closet.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

EU politics: the silence of the media

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:03:23 +0000

"You will have heard a lot about horse meat recently" writes Charles Moore in today's Daily Telegraph, something of an understatement, you might think. "Yet", he goes on to say, "you almost certainly will not have heard of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002".

That, of course, is true of the majority of people who rely on the legacy media for their information, but readers of this blog were told about it last Sunday, with a reminder through the week.

The regulation, writes Moore to his less-informed readers, "discloses the key fact about this scandal. Supported by Tony Blair's government, Regulation 178 transferred responsibility for food safety from each member state to the EU. It set up the European Food Safety Agency. So the British Government is no longer responsible for the safety of the food that Britons eat".

This brings on confession time for Charles Moore, who admits that: "We in the media do not really want to focus on this fact, because it is more fun to hunt down and blame a British minister".

We have seen this throughout that last week, and indeed in Parliament where Labour MPs – from the same party which in government approved Regulation 178/2002 – have been desperate in seeking to pin the blame for the scandal on Owen Peterson and his team.

As for the media, they are still at it in the very paper for which Mr Moore writes. Its editorial today seeks to draw lessons from the scandal, but not once mentions the role of the EU.

Similarly, Geoffrey Lean, in his column seeks to analyse the cause of the scandal, without once mentioning that food control is an exclusive EU competence. And the europhile Guardian has Jonanna Blythman pontificate about improving food controls, without even once mentioning the EU.

In like mould, the Daily Mail offers: "The unpalatable truth: The horsemeat scandal is a brutal warning that Britain MUST change its ways". This is the paper that turned down the offer of an exclusive interview with Owen Paterson, only to have Dominic Sandbrook write two thousand words on the scandal, also without mentioning the EU.

With not the trace of a blush, Sandbrook tells us that the horsemeat scandal is one of those appalling stories from which nobody emerges well: "Certainly not the suppliers, some of whom will surely face criminal charges. Not the Food Standards Agency, which has proved embarrassingly passive. Not the supermarkets, whose obsession with profit margins has seen them drive prices and standards into the gutter".

His main target, though, is the "Great British public, whose love affair with cheap meat means we have effectively colluded in our own deception". Thus, with the EU not even on the horizon, Sandbrook could notbegin to address the failure of the EU's regulatory model. He keeps his newspaper narrowly focused on its "little England" agenda, it having learned absolutely nothing from the events of last week.

Strangely, UKIP – which one might have thought would be shouting from the rooftops that food control is an exclusive EU competence, but all we seem ot have is one press release on the subject, that does not even seem to be on the UKIP website.

Back with Charles Moore, having launched his bombshell, he goes on to discuss the role of Downing Street in this affair and generally. "Horse meat provides only the latest example of the problem about how we are governed just now", he writes. "Everything seems very hard to do. No one really backs up anyone else. Authority does not lie where people think it lies".

For the sentiment expressed in that last sentence, the media bears a great deal of responsibility. And in a week of tumultuous publicity about an issue that lies within the exclusive competence of the EU, the general media not only seems to have learned nothing, it evidently wants to know nothing of how we are governed.

Still less is it prepared to tell the British people anything of such matters.

Booker: Owen Paterson gets a grip

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 20:33:10 +0000

It is not like Booker to be kind to politicians but, as we have both watched the performance of Environment Secretary Owen Paterson over the last couple of weeks, we have both agreed that we were witnessing something exceptional. Interestingly, even Peter Oborne seems to agree.

Mr Paterson, he says, is the only politician to have emerged well from what is, in essence, a bogus political storm. His handling of this issue has been sensible and unflappable, offering all the right reassurances while refusing to panic.

Thus writes Booker in this week's column, the real drama behind the ongoing story which for the past two weeks has been leading the news across Europe has been almost wholly missed.

From the moment when, 10 days ago, Findus told the Food Standards Agency that it had found horse meat in beef lasagne packaged in Luxembourg, from meat processed in France after being bought from an abattoir in Romania, Owen Paterson, our Environment Secretary, has played a blinder.

While everyone else floundered about, chasing every little new bit of the scandal as it came to light from one end of the EU to another, Mr Paterson was the one politician who immediately grasped the nature and scale of the problem.

He saw what needed to be done and he marshalled all the key players, right up to the time when he instigated a top-level emergency meeting in Brussels on Wednesday evening, for himself and six European food ministers, to agree with the relevant EU Commissioner a Europe-wide plan of action that he was proposing to address the crisis.

What Mr Paterson recognised from the start, unlike any other politician in Britain, was that the root of the problem lay in what had followed when, a decade ago, the EU took over all "competence" to make food law from national governments.

It promptly introduced a new set of rules across Europe, to replace the old dependence on regular inspection and testing of foodstuffs with a radical new system. The EU's version of what is known as HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) is based on a trail of paper, whereby any food product, as it passes along the chain from one firm to another, must be accompanied by a piece of paper certifying its nature and contents.

This system, set up under EU regulation 178/2002, was to be administered by a new European Food Safety Authority, represented in each country by "independent"national food safety agencies, such as that created in Britain in 2002.

But the regulation also laid down that ultimate responsibility for the reliability of food sold to the public was placed on the "food operators" at every step along the chain, culminating in those retailers who sell food to the public.

Mr Paterson became aware years ago, when he was on the relevant Commons committee, that this new system was wide open to fraud. Everyone along the chain was expected under the rules to trust the paperwork passed on to them.

But it only needed one firm to insert false information into the paper trail and the reliability of the system would collapse (as we have seen when horse meat correctly labelled on leaving a Romanian slaughterhouse was mis-labelled as beef after being exported to western Europe).

There has long been evidence to show that this fundamentally flawed system was being fraudulently exploited on a massive scale. In 2008, for instance, it was reported that huge quantities of Chinese rabbit meat imported to Bulgaria were being repackaged using falsified Argentinean health certificates, earning the criminals a profit of �18 million. The latest beef-for-horse switch is estimated to have netted a profit of half a million pounds, and the yearly cost of this and similar frauds at many billions.

In 2011 Europol and Interpol collaborated in an investigation known as Operation Opson which led, in just one week, to the seizure of 13,000 sub-standard bottles of olive oil, 12,000 bottles of sub-standard wine, 30 tons of fake tomato sauce, 77 tons of counterfeit cheese, five tons of sub-standard fish and 30,000 counterfeit candy bars.

All this, resulting from the wholesale abandonment of routine inspections and testing, was noted by the European Commission at the time, but it failed to take any serious steps to remedy such criminality because the potential for fraud was implicit in the very nature of the system that the EU had set up to regulate trading in food across the Single Market.

Now, at last, however, the horse meat scandal has exposed the central flaw in the EU system. And, as soon as it emerged, Mr Paterson began liaising with his opposite numbers in Ireland, France, Romania and other countries, and with the EU's new Maltese health commissioner, Tonio Borg, in Brussels.

Only three days after Findus reported its lasagne problem to the Food Standards Agency, he met those senior representatives of Britain's food industry whom he had summoned to his office on a Saturday morning.

He reminded the food operators present that, as EU law dictates, they had ultimate responsibility for the labelling and contents of their products, instructing them to carry out tests on all their stock and to report back within six days. The results would be published on Friday.

Last Tuesday Mr Paterson reported to the Commons all he had done, only to be beset on all sides by MPs demonstrating their ignorance of the fact that food law is now a full "EU competence". Two of the most lamentable contributions came from two MPs who had worked for the EU in Brussels.

The Labour spokesman Mary Creagh, her face screwed up with self-righteous rage, was so determined to blame Mr Paterson for what she imagined was his failure to respond to the crisis that she merely demonstrated that she hadn't got a clue what she was talking about.

Anne McIntosh, chairman of the Commons' food committee, despite having been a Tory MEP for ten years, had already been calling on Mr Paterson to impose a ban on imports, unaware that such a ban can only be imposed by Brussels on food safety grounds.

Much of our media, alas, seem to understand the workings of our EU system of government no better than the politicians. When Mr Paterson explained to Andrew Neil on television that food law is now "an EU competence", it was reported by The Observer that he had attacked "EU incompetence". This misquotation was repeated by other newspapers, including The Times.

On Wednesday, leaving Ms Creagh and other MPs still yapping at his heels in another debate, Mr Paterson travelled to Brussels to join his counterparts from six countries, including Ireland, France, Romania and Luxembourg, in a friendly "summit" with Commissioner Borg, which agreed to all the steps Mr Paterson was proposing.

These ranged from regular EU-wide testing of food products, of the type which the flawed system had eliminated, to bringing in Europol, which Britain had already, on Mr Paterson's initiative, been the first country to contact.

On Thursday morning, having driven up to The Hague, Mr Paterson had an equally helpful meeting with Europol's senior officials, who were delighted to be involved in fighting a fraud scandal which Europol and Interpol had done their best to flag up 15 months previously.

So we have the irony that it has been the most strongly Eurosceptic member of the British Cabinet – also a speaker of several European languages – who is now leading the EU out of a catastrophic mess it has brought upon itself, by creating a system so ill-conceived that for years it has been a disaster waiting to happen.

Yet, at the same time, this dismal episode has again shown just how ignorant of how our EU system of government works are the very people who most pride themselves on being good "Europeans".

The finest irony of all is the way politicians such as Ms Creagh and papers such as The Observer are so blinded by their infatuation with a vague and make-believe idea of "Europe" that, in reality, they are no more than hopelessly blinkered "Little Englanders".

Horsemeat scandal: "damning" evidence

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:06:57 +0000

The French press covering the horsemeat scandal is of one mind today in pinning the blame on Spanghero, the meat processing plant in Castelnaudary, southern France, for causing the crisis.

L'Express, for instance, says there is no doubt that Spanghero is the heart of the fraud. The company's denials, it says, become "increasingly difficult to believe". The French fraud investigators (DGCCRF) have some 1,500 pages of invoices, which they say provides "overwhelming evidence" of the origin of the meat.

The official codes used on such documents, prescribed by law on the Customs website of the European Commission, are 0205 0080 horsemeat against 0201 0202 for beef. And it was the latter code used to describe the product sent by Spanghhero to Comigel. And the same story is run by Le Figaro, which says that the evidence of the invoices is "damning".

The British media, it seems, has not caught up with this and is thus largely offering a fact free diet of opinion and misinformation, dressed up as news. Prize of the day (so far) goes to the Sunday Telegraph , rehashing a story from the Financial Times a few days ago.

The FT headlined its story, "Pressure grows to reform light-touch regulation", and this mantra is faithfully repeated by ST journalist Patrick Sawer, who retails a story headed "EU ruling 'paved the way' for horse meat crisis".

Sawer's lament is that a "directive issued by EU officials in 2006" scrapped daily inspections at cutting plants, following which plant operators were given advance notice of FSA visits, sometimes as far ahead as two months – thus allowing them to prepare for inspections.

Straight away, however, the man displays the all too typical ignorance of the breed, telling us that the "directive" is entitled " Regulation (EC) 854/2004: Official controls on products of animal origin intended for human consumption". A Regulation, of course, is not a directive.

More to the point, the Sawer abbreviates the title of the Regulation, the omission being crucial to the understanding of his piece, and the context of the complaints he retails.

The missing part of the title tells you the this is an EC regulation "laying down specific rules for the organisation of official controls", focusing them on the regulators and the system of control. Thus, the official version is sub-titled: "Requirements and responsibilities of Competent Authorities".

This, in itself, should be part of the story, for this one regulation is part of a suite of legislation which starts with Regulation 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs – a general regulation covering all food – and takes in Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 covering foods of animal origin, applying to slaughterhouses and cutting premises.

These two regulations apply to "food business operators" and then, unusually, you have in 854/2004 a very specific regulation instructing "competent authorities" on how they should implement the regulations applicable to the food operators.

The complaint retailed is that, from a requirement of full-time supervision of cutting premises by a vet, the official veterinarian is now mandated to be present when meat is being worked in cutting plants, only "with a frequency appropriate to achieving the objectives of this regulation".

If it is then appreciated that the objectives of the regulation are to introduce a risk-based system of control, using HACCP principles, the regulations effectively require veterinary presence to be reduced when an approved HACCP regime is in place.

However, this vital detail about HACCP is omitted from Sawer's piece, allowing him to retail a complaint that the adoption of "the lighter touch regime led to a dramatic drop in standards, with the number of inspectors falling from 1,700 during the 1990s, to around 800 today".

Anyone who can seriously argue that the adoption of HACCP represents a "lighter touch" clearly has no idea of how the system works. What we have here is not a lighter regulatory regime, but a different one, based on a completely different control philosophy.

All is explained though when the source of the complaint is revealed, as Ben Priestley, Unison national officer – a trade union official charged with maximising the employment opportunities for his meat inspector members. Says this highly objective source: "It is most likely that the fraudulent meat entered the food chain in the cutting room. Inspectors would have been checking the veracity of the plant's records, and any meat that looked suspicious. I don't doubt that horse meat would have been picked up".

Actually, since the substitution occurred in France, it is hard to see how inspectors in British cutting plants could achieve anything at all. Even then, as we know from the French press – referenced at the start of this piece – the fraudulent meat entered the food chain at the processing plant, Comigel. Such plants are not subject to veterinary inspection, and do not have in-plant official inspectors.

At plants such as Spanghero, where inspectors are present, the meat does not have to be labelled until it leaves the premises, or perhaps not even until arrival at the final destination. Not being retail product, one consignment note attached to each pallet is sufficient, and that could easily be attached as the pallets are unloaded.

Given that the production and sale of horse meat is perfectly legal, no offence is committed until the meat is falsely represented as beef, and that would no occur in the presence of the official inspectors. The inspectors could look at it all day long and it wouldn't make any difference.

Nevertheless, Ben Preistley asserts that: "Meat inspection, environmental health and trading standard services have been severely reduced by government cuts and light touch regulation", adding, "Consumer confidence in meat products is once again very low. True consumer protection will not be achieved until daily, unannounced inspections are back in place".

Yet, despite being offered uncritically by a supposedly reputable newspaper, this is self-serving cant which has no foundation in fact. One wonders, therefore, what the paper is seeking to achieve by dishing up union propaganda, dressed up as fact.

But then, we are finding throughout this affair, that journalists have such little understanding of the way government currently works that they no longer are able to check the veracity of what they write. And, if they cannot do this, they themselves become nothing more than propagandists.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat scandal: multiple agendas

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 23:42:04 +0000

We've had over a week now of high-intensity publicity and although it is abating, it is very far from over. We've had a wonderfully mad piece from Will Hutton and a classic anti-supermarket piece in The Observer, balanced by a frankly stupid comment by Malcolm Walker, CEO of Iceland, and a thoroughly crass intervention from the Waitrose boss.

Everyone, it seems, has an agenda, using the events as a launch platform for their own ideas and prejudices,

The two things that most people seem unenthusiastic about confronting, though, are the EU and large scale fraud. Apart from a tight circle of journalists, Owen Paterson is still a lone voice in insisting that food law is an EU competence. He is also largely alone in stating that too much of this system which has been laid down is based on trust, on paper and there is not enough testing.

Particularly interesting here is the silence of the supermarkets. They have the most to lose from inadequate control systems, and also from food fraud on the scale experienced, yet they are keeping quiet about these issues. We are told they are battling to regain trust, but they are not declaring their real agendas. And, while people may not understand what they are playing at, most can intuitively sense that the whole truth is not being told.

Thus, although some of the heat has come out of the issue, there has not yet been closure, and the media is still mischief-making. There is, I fear, more to come.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

EU regulation: governed in ignorance

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:07:00 +0000

Adding to the growing evidence that public figures and the media have little idea of how we are now governed, we retail below several recent examples.

The first in line would have been seen by watchers of the Murnaghan programme on Sky yesterday, when they were treated to a dissertation from the tight-lipped Anne McIntosh, MP. She heads up the EFRA Select Committee and has been voluble in the Commons (pictured above) about imposing an import ban on processed foods, to prevent products adulterated with horsemeat reaching British consumers.

As she had done in the Commons, she cited an old case from 1979, known as the "Cassis de Dijon", in justification of an import ban. She argued that this French low alcohol product, which had been refused an import license by the German authorities, provided a precedent for a temporary ban while the issues were sorted out.

In fact though, while import of the product had been temporarily banned, the subsequent court case very much established the principles on which current EU rules are based, effectively setting the principles by which import bans are prohibited.

Effectively, the very case that McIntosh cites as permitting a temporary export ban, is now the one used as a precedent to rule out the very ban which she calls for. She has got things completely wrong.

However, Murnaghan yesterday went on to cite the French ban on British beef as a result of BSE, but there the French government, calling in aid its own expert authorities, cited health grounds. This, in a highly contentious decision was subsequently upheld by the European Commission.

Restrictions on free movement of goods on health grounds are permitted by the Treaties, currently Article 36, but, since it is accepted that the horsemeat adulterated beef presents no risk to health, it would be difficult to invoke this Article as justifying a ban.

Today, though, we see Morrisons managing director, Gordon Mowat, tell the BBC that "a simplification of the supply chain was needed so customers knew where their products were coming from". The supply chain had been "allowed" to get too complicated.

This led to a moronic question from the BBC interviewer, who asked: "Do you think it's time the government stepped in and actually simplified the supply chain, so that an animal over here might not get slaughtered in another country, processed in another country and then sent back as a ready meal?"

You would think that the europhile BBC, which so often gives a platform to anyone prepared to extol the virtues of the Single Market, would realise that the very thing suggested there is impossible under the self-same Single Market, and national governments no longer have the power to "step in" and simplify the food "chain".

Again and again, though, one confronts this startling level of ignorance which, in some cases amounts to a complete refusal of europhiles to accept the consequences of our membership of the EU.

Thus, yesterday, I found myself on the Telegraph website dealing with someone who refused to believe that food inspection standards were so tightly controlled by the EU that we were limited both as to the minimum standard and the maximum and, especially, as to frequency.

Thus, to the claim from "putneycommon" that "each country is free to have higher standards of inspections … if they desire", I was moved to respond (in several posts) that this was not the case.

As I pointed out in my earlier piece, the organisation and procedures to be adopted by "competent authorities" are governed, down to the smallest detail. Firstly, there is – as I pointed out - Regulation (EC) 854/2004"laying down specific rules for the organisation of official controls", sub-titled: "Requirements and responsibilities of Competent Authorities".

But that is not even the half of it. As to procedures, and the all-important frequencies of inspection, about which there was much discussion yesterday, we have Article 8 of Council Directive 93/43/EEC, and in particular Art 8 (2).

Looking at this, we find it requires that: "Member States shall provide that all food premises are inspected at a frequency which has regard to the risk associated with the premises". On the face of it, that is pretty anodyne, but it has profound implications when we start putting it together with other parts of the acquis.

In this context, our next port of call is Regulation (EC) No 882/2004 "on official controls performed to ensure the verification of compliance with feed and food law, animal health and animal welfare rules". Article 3 is the "killer" here, with the reference of frequency of special interest.

"Member States", it instructs, shall ensure that official controls are carried out regularly, on a risk basis and with appropriate frequency, so as to achieve the objectives of this Regulation".

Again, we see anodyne wording, but that belies its power. Competent Authorities are given a list of things they must take into account in defining the frequency of inspections, including the "food business operators' past record as regards compliance", the very clear inference being that, so long as the operator presents a favourable picture, the inspection frequency must be reduced.

If there is any doubt about this, however, Recital 13 sets out the key parameters, stating that: "The frequency of official controls should be regular and proportionate to the risk, taking into account the results of the checks carried out by feed and food business operators under HACCP based control programmes or quality assurance programmes…".

There, tucked into the next is the next "killer" word is "proportionate", which refers to the proportionality principle. This is actually set out in Article 5 of the Treaty of the European Union, and under this rule it limits actions to those necessary to achieve the objectives of the Treaties – no more, and not less.

This is further elaborated here. The principle first affected EU law, we are told, in the Internationale Handelsgesellschaft case in 1970, where it was stated: "A public authority may not impose obligations on a citizen except to the extent to which they are strictly necessary in the public interest to attain the purpose of the measure".

It is regarded as a safeguard against the unlimited use of legislative and administrative powers and considered to be something of a "rule of common sense", according to which an administrative authority may only act to exactly the extent that is needed to achieve its objectives.

Standing back from this, nowhere will see anywhere in EU law a specific restriction, overtly stated, limiting the frequency of inspections that may be carried out. But put together Regulation 854/2004, Art 8 of Council Directive 93/43, Art 3 of Regulation 882/2004, all tied in by Recital 13 and Art 5 of the Treaty of the European Union, and all becomes abundantly clear.

Certainly, the EU's Food & Veterinary Office (FVO) is in no doubt that frequency of inspection comes within its purview, as can be seen from this report. See page 14, where reference is also made to uniformity of inspections – another key parameter, one which the FVO seeks to impose across the entire 27 Member States.

And should the FVO not intervene, the issue of proportionality is judiciable both in respect of UK law, via judicial review, and in the ECJ. It is entirely open to food business operators to challenge competent authorities in the event that they believe inspection frequencies to be excessive, as indeed I once did, on behalf of a group of slaughterhouse owners.

Complicated this may all be, but that is now part of our system of government – where the minutia of administration is dictated by an alien power. But, as Booker observes, those who are most in favour of it seem to be most ignorant of what it entails.

Horsemeat scandal: the TV narrative

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:54:26 +0000

Much against my better judgement, I watched both Dispatches and Panorama last night, both claiming to give the inside story on the horsemeat scandal.

I think it is fair to say that the programmes were very similar in their approach. Both sought to target supermarkets and both sought to ramp up the health scare, featuring Irish horses and the "bute" horse painkiller.

Panorama ran with the "cuts" meme, using a darkened profile of our newly retired meat inspector, telling us how reducing the hours of inspectors in cutting premises caused the adulteration of meat in a French-owned food processor, based in Luxembourg.

This was formula journalism at its worst. We were treated to an utterly stupid sequence, showing the difference between a horse and beef carcase (illustrated), but was given no inkling at all of how the horsemeat would have been used, and how thus it escaped detection during manufacture.

Even though the French government investigation is now in the public domain, we got nothing of the recent details about how Spanghero was at the heart of the fraud. Yet, as far as both programmes went, they were supposedly telling us who was "really to blame" for horse entering the food supply.

Needless to say, we got nothing of the "bigger picture", that this episode was but one example of food fraud, which is endemic in the food business, and that the system simply is not geared to detecting such fraud.

Nor did we hear anything coherent of the role of the EU, despite the fact that food law is an exclusive competence. Both programmes interviewed Owen Paterson, but neither had him repeating what he has so often said elsewhere, that the EU system has prevented a more hands-on regime being used.

Panorama made extensive use of Malcolm Walker, the chief executive of UK retailer Iceland, dismissive of the scare, saying his firm did not test for horsemeat, but it did not test for cat or dog either. "You can't test for everything', the programme had him say.

For us, though, it is easier to deal with what the programmes did not say. This was food fraud spanning a period of over six months, with 750 tons of horsemeat adulterating 4.5 million meals passing through a single processor. And no-one noticed. The quality regime in the factory failed, and the official inspection regime failed. Yet neither programme seemed in the least interested as to why.

And this, of course, is only one of the adulteration episodes. The original Irish findings most came from another source, and we have yet to get to the bottom of it. From one of the programmes – I can't remember which one – we got a frankly risible account of how the Irish Food Safety Authority (FSAI) "thought like a food fraudster" and somehow divined that horsemeat adulteration was the thing to look for.

Perhaps the programme researchers should have read The Groocer which retailed Owen Paterson telling the Commons that the FSAI "acted on specific intelligence" when deciding to test, despite insisting that its tests were simply part of its routine monitoring.

Perhaps then we ought to leave the last word to Paterson. As recorded by the Independent, after his meeting with the supermarkets. "They all assured me that they will not rest until they have established the full picture. There is still much to be done to find out exactly how this happened and how it can be prevented from happening again... ", he said.

Whatever else, watching either Dispatches or Panorama wouldn't have told you what happened. These programmes didn't even appear to have been interested in finding out. They had their narratives, and that's all they needed.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: the game changer

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:34:19 +0000

I am so pleased that Nestl� has been caught up in the horsemeat fraud. When food safety was "big" in the European Parliament, with the passage of the first tranche of the "hygiene package" which was to introduce HACCP, Nestl� was very much in evidence, lobbying hard for this paper-based system.

At the time, I was trying to forge a cross-party alliance against the scheme, warning it would be a disaster. Even to this day, I remember a conversation with Roger Helmer, hoping to get him on-side. But his dismissive response was: "well, the industry seems to like it".

One of the other big lobbyists in Brussels at the time was McDonald's, and that should have told Helmer exactly where we were going. The corporates love HACCP. It is the ultimate in bureaucratic system – devised by a giant bureaucracy (NASA) for other bureaucracies. It saves them a fortune in hands-on checks and, more to the point, giving them effective immunity from prosecution when the system goes wrong, which it is always going to do.

Relatively low-key in Britain, reflecting the parochial, "little Englander" tendency of the legacy media, the German press are playing it big, as a German supplier, H.J. Schypke, is involved. Thus we see Spiegel gleefully proclaiming: "horse meat scandal reaches Nestl�", one of many papers to feature the story.

With the Irish adulteration episode, the Spanghero fraud, and now this, this is possibly the third, separate production centre to be affected, each ostensibly unrelated to each other, reinforcing the view that we are dealing with a complex network of international fraud.

As before, the network here is complicated, involving Nestl�-branded products, apparently contracted to JBS Toledo, part of the Brazilian-based JBS – the largest beef producer in the world – and then contracted to Schypke, with its state-of-the-art factory in M�hlen, between Bremen and Bielefeld, not far from the Dutch border.

Schypke itself is a big, prestige player, its website boasting that it sources "impeccable raw materials" to "guarantee a consistently high standard of our finished products".

This, as it is turning out, is the usual corporate BS that has now ensnared Nestl� the world's largest food producer. It has been forced to withdraw two chilled pasta products, Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini from sale in Italy and Spain.

However, it has not stopped there. A high value product called Lasagnes � la Bolognaise Gourmandes, a frozen meat product for catering businesses produced in France, has also been withdrawn. With what appears to be a separate adulteration episode, this further magnifies the horsemeat affair and puts it in a different league.

Crucially, this is a high-end catering product, produced by the billion-euro Nestl� subsidiary Davigel - part of Nestl� Professional - from a massive industrial complex just outside Dieppe.

This knocks into touch the idea that this food adulteration only affects freezer-fodder for the chavs, driven by pressure from cost-cutting supermarkets. Davigel is in the quality catering market, the group employing 3,000 workers, with a fleet of 550 vehicles servicing 10,000 restaurants.

With delicious irony, Davigel opened in April 2011, a training centre for "culinary expertise" (IDEC), located in Dieppe (pictured), to train catering "professionals" in the use and presentation of food.

With Davigel affected, we would appear to have four widely separated European production centres affected by horsemeat adulteration – the Dublin-based Glencore, Comigel in Luxembourg, Schypke in North-west Germany, and Davigel in Northern France.

Davigel is a serious game-changer. At last we are beginning to see the issue for what it is. The affair is a massive, international epidemic of fraud, involving a series of multinational companies - across the quality spectrum - which appear to be wholly unable to contain it. We are witnessing a system failure on a heroic scale, now affecting tens of millions-worth of product.

This is a gigantic economic fraud. It is about time we treated it as such, and stopped letting the lefties using the affair as a platform to pursue their multifarious agendas, ranging from anti-capitalism, to social policy, public-sector jobs and animal rights. We need to focus on the real agenda - dealing with a multi-million, international fraud, and not allow ourselves to be distracted.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: as much a crime as stealing diamonds

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:47:48 +0000

As things calm down here somewhat, the focus of the horsemeat fraud moves to Germany where, it appears, not one but several plants have been implicated in the beef adulteration.

Yesterday we saw the reports of Schypke, with its state-of-the-art factory in M�hlen, being implicated, but that wasn't the first. There was already another plant implicated, the Vossko GmbH factory, at Ostbevern, also in North-eastern Germany (pictured above).

Initially, the situation was more than a little confused, as the early reports had the retailers Aldi and Lidl finding horse meat in tinned pasta and goulash as well as fresh pasta on sale in Germany and Austria.

To cut a very long and somewhat tedious story short, though, the action moved to Switzerland, and the Swiss Co-op, which confirmed that its own brand lasagne had been produced by Comigel, the firm at the heart of the scandal.

There the trail might have stopped, but for the fact that it emerged that the Co-op found other products adulterated with horsemeat, and on Monday, along with several other retailers – including Lidl – removed nine further items produced by the Liechtenstein firm Hilcona.

It now transpires that the offending products were made by Vossko, which has admitted responsibility, with positive horsemeat samples having been reported by the Austrian Agency for Health and Nutrition Safety (AGES). The Swiss authorities found four products positive for horsemeat.

The plot now thickens in that the Swiss retail outlets which have been found to have sold products containing unlabelled horsemeat are facing calls for legal charges to be brought against them for negligence.

This comes from the chairman of the Association of Cantonal Chemists and a spokesman for the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). He told the Swiss News Agency on Monday that the chief chemists of the cantons where the companies are headquartered should draw up a file on the matter and submit it to the courts. It would then be up to the judges to decide whether a case should be opened.

This is in marked contrast to the treatment of the retailers in the UK. Here, under the Food Safety Act 1990, it is a criminal offence to sell food which is not of the "nature, substance or quality demanded", and it is open to local authority trading standards departments to prosecute those companies which sold adulterated products.

So far, we have not heard anything of the intentions, but it seems possible that there is some reluctance to proceed with an expensive prosecution when the retailers can invoke the "due diligence" defence. All they have to do is prove that they "took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence".

As with the Swiss, it would be interesting if the judges were involved over here, not least to test whether the "plausible deniability" which forms the basis of supermarket control regimes would stand up to scrutiny.

On the wider front though, we now have good evidence of five separate plants producing adulterated products, still further reinforcing the view that we are dealing with an epidemic of fraud.

And while there are siren voices suggesting that none of this is very important, the scale of the criminal activity is easily equivalent to the Brussels airport diamond heist. Food adulteration is every bit as much theft as stealing precious stones. Why rob a bank when you can make more flogging dead horses?

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Energy: we told you so

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:20:36 +0000

In a stark assessment yesterday, headlined by most of the legacy media, Alistair Buchanan, head of Ofgem, says the UK will come "uncomfortably close" to power shortages from 2015 …".

In a stark assessment published on this blog on 4 June 2008 (below), Richard North wrote, "by 2015 – if not before - we could be facing the most serious disruption to our power supplies since the 'three day week' of the 1970s".

But, as this piece records, we first wrote about this issue 10 October 2004 and really got into our stride on 17 December 2006 when we strongly suggested buying a back-up generator.

We were at it again on 9 January 2006, when we were worried out the likelihood of anything intelligent being done about the problem receding, and then yet again on 28 May 2008, warning of "things to come" when tens of thousands of electricity consumers suffered blackouts.

On 29 May 2008, we were warning of a "national crisis in the making", on 4 June we were calling for an honest debate about energy and on 3 August, we did our most detailed analysis to date and backed it up with other pieces on 17 September and 22 September.

We were back on the case on 26 September, again on 2 October and yet again on 22 October. Then, on 12 November, in the context of the BBC finally doing a small piece about the possibility of power cuts, we noted the tendency of the media, by act and omission, the media, especially the broadcast media, it deciding for us what is and is not "news".

Now, after all these years, Mr Buchanan is warning that we face power cuts in 2015. And the media is at last deciding that this is news.

Well, I'm shocked.

EU politics: send us your ravening horses

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:14:36 +0000

With its genius for missing the point, UKIP chose to make its stand on foster carers during the recent Rotherham by-election, instead of the very real problem of Roma immigration in the constituency. But, as we see from a report in today's Die Zeit, we are by no means alone in having to deal with the problem.

The piece features an internal report by the city council of Dortmund on poverty in migrants from Eastern Europe, which finds that, since 2006, the number of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants to the Ruhr increased fivefold. In 2012, 3,149 lived in Dortmund, most of them in overcrowded houses fit only for demolition, paying overpriced rents.

The city speaks of 100 "problem properties" in districts that are already socially difficult. It finds that many Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants have no health insurance, and some suffer from infectious diseases such as tuberculosis.

Sub-letting is common, with families letting out already tight space to supplement their low incomes and, in a situation which mirrors Rotherham, children need to be taken into care just because of the housing situation. For vulnerable immigrants, in the Ruhr there is hardly any work, so there is much prostitution and begging.

But this is not new. Roma have been a problem in Europe since time immemorial, and we have seen considerable problems in France and Italy, as well as Holland and Belgium.

The French treatment of the Roma was recently the subject of an Amnesty International Report (with a media summary here). According to this report, there are an estimated 15,000 migrant Roma living in France, most from Romania and some from Bulgaria, often fleeing poverty and discrimination in their home countries.

The French government, said Amnesty, was failing to meet EU and international human rights standards, as a result of which the population was sinking "deeper and deeper into poverty". No one was helping them and this would have "dramatic consequences for the future", president of Amnesty International France, Genevi�ve Garrigos, said.

At this stage, closing our borders in the near future is not an option. Desirable or not, this is not practical politics. Thus, this piece from 2009, headed, "We will send you our ravening hordes", is worth revisiting.

The lifting of the Iron Curtain in 1989 was always going to create difficulties for the richer, developed countries of Europe, and one way to contain migration is to assist economic development in the former Soviet satellites. Perversely, buying meat from their abattoirs is one way of helping, keeping jobs local and reducing the pressure which triggers economic migration.

In terms of a solution, therefore, we can see a way forward. We should be telling the governments of the Eastern and Central European countries not to send us their "ravening hordes". They should instead send us their "ravening horses". You only need to change one letter.

Perhaps a new slogan is called for: "keep immigrants away: eat a horse".

Horsemeat fraud: planting a flag

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:00:37 +0000

Watching the British legacy media for news of the Davigel development yesterday offered an interesting illustration of the shallowness of contemporary journalism. Not one media outlet picked up the significance of a major catering supplier selling ready-meals adulterated with horsemeat, in an affair hitherto dominated by supermarkets and their suppliers.

By far the most fatuous coverage though was in the loss-making Guardian which needed three journalists to tell us that Nestl� products in the UK had tested negative for horsemeat.

This is a classic example of "planting a flag" on an international story, behaviour which is not untypical when reporting EU affairs, something which tends to happen right across the political spectrum.

And in this case, only later in the piece did we see the Guardian trio deign to tell us that Lasagnes � la bolognaise gourmandes, "a frozen meat product for catering businesses by Nestl� Professional produced in France, will also be withdrawn from sale and replaced with product made from 100% beef".

This was a direct copy-and-paste from the Nestl� press release, one which will no doubt go down in the annals of PR coups as an example of how to say as little as possible while avoiding accusations of a cover-up. How well Nestl� understands the media, knowing that, unless every detail is spelled out, it most likely will not be reported.

However, there is possibly a broader agenda here, in that most of the media, and especially the Guardian is anxious to hammer the supermarkets. Crucially, they seem anxious to sustain their narrative against "cheap food", presenting the image of the profit-centric capitalist running dogs in the retail sector driving down prices so much that the substitution of lower-cost horse meat was an inevitability.

In the Guardian, there is a certain amount of intellectual and ideological incoherence. A newspaper which supports the "deserving poor" on the one hand, also detests the idea of cheap, mass-produced food, and hankers after the bucolic days of local butchers, farm-fresh foods and hand-made produce.

The idea, therefore, that we have a company selling high-end catering products to pretentious French restaurants, passing off over-priced, microwaved fare as "home made", doctoring their meat so as to improve their margins, is not one that fits the current narrative. It maybe that, on a different occasion, it would serve as a running theme, but this line does not fit in with the anti-supermarket narrative. Hence, it remains conveniently obscured.

The big irony though, is that this hankering after a bucolic past is chasing an image that never existed. The "local butcher" of yore, was just as capable of defrauding the public as his modern successor, as this piece recalls.

Here, we see a Bristol-based trader fined �300 after supplying beef containing 25 percent horsemeat which ended up at a butcher's shop in Cheltenham. The only things that have changed are the scale of the fraud, and the international dimensions.

As to food safety, one needs to recall that the most deadly outbreak of E. coli O157 was traced to a local butcher who had recently won the award for Best Scottish Beef Butcher of the Year. Another major E. coli outbreak, this one in Wales, was caused by a local butcher who had also been buying frozen New Zealand mutton and passing it off as Welsh lamb, using the flock number from his farm on the paperwork.

This, incidentally, was the same local butcher who had members of staff at his local meat processing plant repackaging decomposing meat and sending it out to schools.

The point, of course, is that fraud is fraud, big or small, international or local. This current rash of food adulteration is nothing new – it is simply fraud. But, as the Guardian indirectly indicates, a series of criminal events have been hijacked to further numerous agendas, without in any way addressing the core issues.

And this is the problem with this whole affair. The root problems have been misdiagnosed, the agenda-pushers have hijacked them for their own purposes, and now we are facing the wrong remedies for wrong problems. Meanwhile, the thieves will already have moved on to the next undefended targets.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

A pause for breath

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:16:44 +0000

Readers will have noticed yesterday that, for the first time in weeks – and what feels like months – I was able to break away from the single subject forming our obsession, and glance at other issues.

That does not mean that we are out of the woods on horsemeat, but there are certainly signs of the tempo slackening. This is just as well, as I was already tired when the press intensity increased to crisis level, and I am hovering on the brink of exhaustion.

The slight slackening gives me time to retrench and today we have our first management meeting on the Harrogate Agenda, which now has its incorporated, non-profit company, its board of directors and its advisory panel. We may have been a little quiet on the Agenda, but we have not been idle.

Meanwhile, I'm doing catch-up on horsemeat, correcting some of my errors and confusions – as always happens when you run with a complex issues, where the information torrent so easily gets unmanageable. The details are best kept for a separate post, but what I am trying to do is define and then quantify what I am calling "adulteration episodes", in the hope of producing a definitive list.

These "episodes" are separate, discrete events, unrelated to any other, where a group of actors collectively caused one or more batches of beef to become adulterated with horsemeat. So far, I have identified five but there are more, and even with those I have, some clarifications are needed, especially with the Irish and related events which, in the early stages, I was not so assiduous in following.

What is so intriguing about current events, though, it the general media insistence in turning them into a food scare, and the reluctance to see the big picture, where this fraud is just one example of a growing criminal enterprise which is part of a much larger continuum.

On this, one wishes that journalists would read their own newspapers, as in The Independent of 10 February 2011. Almost exactly two years ago.

Then we had Meg Carter writing under the heading, "With fraud on the rise, do you know the real origin of your food? With fraud on the rise, do you know the real origin of your food?, signifying then even then, it was generally known that this was a going problem.

One of the things Owen Paterson's "lessons learned" commission – or whatever he chooses to call it - is going to have to look at, is why food fraud appears not to have been taken seriously, and why sufficient resources and intelligence have not been devoted to it. It will have to ask why very obvious signs were missed, and assess whether they could reasonably have been spotted.

The Independent, for instance, retails a (then) recent estimate – based on Food Standards Agency (FSA) surveys of a number of different individual foods – suggesting that food fraud could affect as much as 10 percent of the food we buy.

This is from Chris Elliott, professor of food safety at Queen's University, Belfast, who said those two years ago, "this is why a growing emphasis is now being placed on food fraud detection through investigating and prosecuting alleged fraudsters, and developing sophisticated tests to determine whether a product is what it is claimed to be".

Clearly, as events would indicates, if there was "growing emphasis", it did not grow fast enough or, possibly, it was not properly targeted. The indications are that the authorities allowed a major fraud to build up without detection, for many months, and possibly years, and still have not recognised the scale of the problem or instigated effective control measures.

These, however, are issues for future posts. Today will be light blogging, while we take the next step towards building some semblance of democracy into our system of government. Then, it will be back to the coal face. There is still much to do.

Horsemeat fraud: further complications

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:50:07 +0000

Of some interest yesterday was a piece in the Herald Sun, pointing out that more than 2,000 tons of horsemeat is exported each year to Europe. The question being asked, down under, therefore, is whether their fine fillies are being relabelled as beef.

This tied in with the news from Iceland that the production of horsemeat there had increased last year, from 878 to 1,500 tons - by 71 percent, with exports almost tripling between 2011 and 2012, from 311.7 to 875.6 tons - by 180.9 percent.

From here, the speculation arose that, if horsemeats exports to Europe were increasing across the board, with anecdotal evidence indicating that consumption was declining, this would give rise to a glut of horsemeat and explain why adulteration was taking place on such a heroic scale.

Sadly, though, the raw statistics do not bear this out. According to the very far from user-friendly Eurostat (see: Production and international trade of foodstuffs: Fresh meat and meat products (food_pd_prod2)), horsemeat volume traded in the EU27 is way down even over a period three years. In 2008, internal production plus imports from third countries, with negligible external exports, amounted to just short of 100,000 tons. In 2011, the equivalent figure was around 80,000 tons.

What we don't have, though, is any idea of what per capita consumption might be, nor any data which might give us consumption trends. The information simply aren't available.

Not least, while we have some country-specific data on trade in the internal market, the system is so porous that there is no way of being certain that imports into any one Member State are necessarily consumed there. Furthermore, once horsemeat is used in a processed food, even when sold quite legitimately, it loses its species identity and is recorded generically as a processed food.

This adds a new layer of complexity to this situation, as it had been generally assumed that a glut of cheap horsemeat was taking the place (in part) of the recently banned "desinewed meat" (DSM).

The absence of this product meant that thousands of tons of meat had to be sourced from elsewhere and at low cost, leading Dr Mark Woolfe, former head of food authenticity at the FSA, to suggest that "alarm bells" should have been set ringing. However, EU-wide DSM production probably exceeded what is currently the total trade volume of horsemeat. The entire stock of the European horsemeat would not have compensated for the lost DSM.

This suggests that there is something more to these adulteration episodes than has so far been identified. It also suggests that, contrary to Dr Woolfe's assertions, straightforward market surveillance would not necessarily have signalled an increased level of horsemeat adulteration.

On that basis, there seems considerably greater merit to suggestions that continuous random testing is a necessary part of the surveillance process. The indirect monitoring, which underpins the EU's control philosophy, would appear to be no substitute for hands-on product quality monitoring.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: a "new reality"

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:38:13 +0000

Alpha male and multi-millionaire Justin King, Sainsbury CEO, is sounding off in The Daily Telegraph, telling us something we might just have been able to work out for ourselves – that trust in retailers has been "severely damaged" by the discovery of horse meat in supermarket products labelled as beef.

King, at least, has a background in food although his mouth probably prevents him learning as much as he could from the experience, and he certainly does not go out of his way to make friends with the lower orders.

True to form, he addresses the argument that that supermarkets pushing down costs have forced suppliers to compromise on quality and safety checks and processes, and that "some type of contamination was a scandal waiting to happen".

This is as nice a straw man as you can get, and then King spends his time telling us that the industry is facing a "new reality", as the horse-meat scandal has "identified potential weaknesses in the food supply chain that must be addressed with urgency and rigour".

Then follows several yards of corporate BS which show that this over-paid apparatchik has about as much a grasp on the issues as the greens, who put the "scandal" down to glaringly obvious "light touch regulation".

It is getting to be a characteristic of this affair that those who know least are saying most (in public, at least), joined by media pundits such as Leo McKinstry who consistently go for the cheap shot instead of getting down to the real issues.

As far as Justin King goes, the closest he gets to being right is to doff his cap to the argument that this was "a scandal waiting to happen", even though he doesn't have the first idea why.

On the other hand, the only thing we can aver it that the causes are complex, and we are going to get more of this type of incident unless they are addressed. And given the huge cost and disruption so far caused – right across Europe – it is worth spending the time an effort to get to the bottom of the affair, as Owen Paterson has pledged to do.

For me personally, the interesting thing is that, not only did I warn that this was indeed a "a scandal waiting to happen", I actually put it in writing, publishing for UKIP in September 2000, a booklet entitled Food Safety and the EU, sub-titled, "The proposal for new hygiene rules – a disaster in the making" (pictured right).

Thus, over twelve years ago, I am on record as saying that the regime that the European Commission was then intent on introducing, was going to end in tears, and so it has come to pass. Millions have been lost, thousands of tons of food have been wasted, and industry badly disrupted.

However, it would be wrong to say that this was a disaster wholly manufactured in the EU. As I explain in my booklet (page 18), there is a British contribution as well, which goes under the title "due diligence".

This was a statutory defence, which I touched on briefly in an earlier piece, introduced under the Food Safety Act 1990, which allows food businesses to escape conviction for offences under the Act" if they can prove that they "took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence".

To be fair, the introduction of a "due diligence" defence was very necessary, as major manufacturers and retailers were being prosecuted unnecessarily, for quite the wrong reasons. I will explore this in more detail in a future post, but suffice it to say that, the EU's mandatory implementation of HACCP gave food business operators, and especially retailers, a "get out of jail free" card, which would effectively give them immunity from prosecution.

This, back in the year 2000, had me writing that major operations would be aware of the possibilities which HACCP afforded in protecting themselves, and would "tend to devise systems which maximise the success of a 'due diligence' defence".

Since the defence tended to rely on the documentary trail, I wrote, "emphasis will inevitably be on continuity of paperwork and recording, rather than on ensuring that systems are fully functional". And so it has come to pass.

Justin King didn't join Sainsbury's until March 2004, charged with restoring the fortunes of this ailing retail giant. For his shareholders' sake, I hope he is better at retail strategy than he is at this game, although some will argue that he doesn't even particularly shine at retailing.

Certainly, he needs properly to address the "new reality", about which he talks. The corporate BS on offer doesn't cut it.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: a "new reality"

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:40:47 +0000

Horsemeat fraud: a view from the inside

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:48:22 +0000

As an antidote for the King cant we have an online trade journal for the seafood industry, which offers its own perspective on the horsemeat fraud. In particular, it takes on the "traceability" mantra, often bandied around by "ethical and unscrupulous suppliers alike". It can, says the journal, be engineered and isn't entirely the point here.

It thus cites an unnamed executive supplying frozen seafood from Asia into UK retailers, who says, "Traceability is about more than a few bits of paper, it's about really knowing your supply chain and your suppliers". On the other hand, another source with a retail supplier says that some retail buyers "want to be screwed".

These are the ones who go for the lowest bidder and turn a blind eye, as long as things look ok on paper. "They can go to their boss and say 'look at the money I saved you'. Then they point to the bits of paper that show the 'traceability' is all in place".

The journal itself has its own story to tell, referring to a certification scam certification scam on which it reported last October.

Then, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) – which provides a fishery certification programme and awards a seafood ecolabel to "recognise and reward sustainable fishing" - was under fire from processors over allegations that plants in China were mislabeling certified salmon and pollock and undermining the programme.

The story centred around the inability to distinguish by DNA testing between certified Alaskan, and non-certified Russian wild salmon, as well as Russian pollock. It alleged that Chinese processors, under pressure to deliver cheap prices to win deals in Europe, were mislabelling uncertified fish, using fake documents to authenticate them.

Thousands of tons of fish, falsely labelled as MSC-certified, had been sold, cutting prices from $7.50 to around $6 per kg, giving processors a competitive advantage. Simple economics should have suggested that something was up, said a source.

Said the journal, the Chinese plants were not the only companies to blame; suppliers were turning a blind eye to meet contracts from retailers looking the other way. As with the horsemeat crisis, they were all just as guilty. Food fraud is more about a lack of honesty and basic greed than traceability, it says.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: enjoy the moments

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:32:20 +0000

The really fun thing about this continuing shambles is variously seeing the corporates eat crow (instead of the horsemeat they've been flogging us) or comparing their website claims with their actual performances.

Thus when we get Birds Eye withdrawing foods because of horsemeat adulteration in a Belgian chilli con carne, we turn to supplier Frigilunch which tells us they have 30 years of experience and every "raise the bar in terms of product development, creativity, quality and food safety".

Through my career, I have heard and read so much of this corporate BS, only to see the reality behind the glitz, that cynicism is the only sensible response.

I remember, for instance, inspecting a big-name cream gateaux manufacturer, after a complaint of glass fragments in their cakes. Standing in the cream room, I had to listen while the managers told me in great detail about their glass exclusion policy, and how carefully it was implemented to ensure no glass entered the room in which we were standing.

Throughout the performance, I said nothing. When they had finished, I looked down at my feet, where I had been idly toying with something which had taken my interest. As their gaze followed mine, they saw the object of my fascination – a number of sizeable pieces of glass, which I had spotted as I'd come into the room.

It would be nice now to have Mark Price, the chief executive of Waitrose, eat a bit of crow as well. Only last Sunday, he was telling us that it was shoppers who buy the cheapest food that were "at risk".

But this hubris took a knock when we had Davigel, the high-end French catering supplier, go down. Now it is followed by the world's biggest catering company, after news that one of its products tested positive for horse DNA.

Sodexo, which describes itself as "the UK's largest event caterer and provider of corporate hospitality packages", and provides the catering at the Royal Ascot race meeting. The company won four awards in last year's National Racecourse Catering Awards for its food. So much for shoppers buying cheap food.

We also learn that a cutting plant in Tipperary has been closed down after inspectors found it was exporting horse meat under a label in the Czech language that translated as beef.

And with horsemeat from Farmbox meats being found in burgers supplied for school meals by the Burger Manufacturing Company, the number of adulteration episodes is spiralling into the two figures.

Hilariously, Builth Wells-based BMC describes itself as on a mission to "change the reputation and image of the humble burger". It links with Sparks Catering Butchers in London, which supplies hundreds of fast food outlets, including kebab shops, in south east England and beyond and the company also makes gourmet burgers, claiming to only use only "the finest cuts of UK and Irish Farm Assured beef".

Its website boasts of an "unforgettable eating experience" and of having received many accolades for its high standards and ethics. Our products, it says, "have full traceability and can be purchased with absolute peace of mind". The firm recently gained a silver award in "The True Taste of Wales" for its "distinctive and upmarket Kobe burger".

Pity though Asda chief executive Andy Clarke who, after his firm had to withdraw adulterated products, tells us his organisation took "a very transparent approach". Methinks his protestations, like those of the rest of the industry, are indeed transparent, but not in quite the way he thinks.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

UKIP: an unhelpful squabble

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 09:26:23 +0000

From many accounts, Marta Andreasen is an impossible woman, and UKIP is well rid of her. But the fact that she became a UKIP MEP at all is a reflection of how Nigel Farage manipulates the party list to put his own candidates in place – very often in breach of his own party rules.

Nevertheless, when she was first introduced at their conference in Bournemouth, a party activist remembers that Nigel himself introduced her as their new golden girl - the UKIP equivalent of a then ascendant Sarah Palin. How things change.

For what it's worth, my view is that she should never have been included in the list in the first place. Those with longer memories will recall that before Farage found her a home, she had already sought a place on the Tory list, only coming over to UKIP when offered a paid post as its treasurer.

However, one cannot entirely disagree with her analysis of UKIP, when she says that that party has [some] "good people in it at grassroots". Despite that, she has been at odds with Farage for a long time, having called for his resignation as party leader as early as May 2011. But I cannot disagree with her parting shot, with her declaring that Farage treats any views other than his own "with contempt".

Andreason saw UKIP as his plaything "to mould and shape in any way he sees fit, regardless of the views of others". Sadly, there is truth in that. I myself formed that view long before she joined the party, and very much recognise the validity of her claim that, "Nigel promotes the people who say yes to him and will be grateful for getting the job and will never contradict him".

"Under his leadership - and I have questioned his leadership obviously a number of times – the party has become a dictatorship", she said in an interview earlier this month, adding: "This is a Stalinist way of operating and he doesn't care about the membership or the grassroots…".

Currently, she says about Farage, "His actions, surrounding himself with an old boys' club of like-minded sycophants, are dictatorial, in sharp contrast to those of David Cameron, who has shown he can listen, adapt and do what is right for the country, not just for personal gain".

Responding to her defection to the Tories, Farage says of Andreason, "Having left the OECD, the European Commission and UKIP in unpleasant circumstances, the Conservative party deserve what is coming to them. The woman is impossible".

On the other hand, Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, says that her defection is a vindication of Mr Cameron's European policies. Her words on the Prime Minister's record "prove that the Conservatives are the only party who can protect Britain’s interests in Europe".

Standing back from that, one can only regret that the eurosceptic cause is served so badly by all these characters. We have enough difficulties and hurdles without our own side adding to them.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker: when the lights go out

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 22:55:42 +0000

Booker's readers will not be surprised to find him writing in today's column on the media response to that warning by Alistair Buchanan, retiring head of the energy regulator Ofgem.

With the closure next month of five major coal-fired power stations that between them contribute nearly a sixth of the UK's average electricity needs, over the next few years, Mr Buchanan feared we will be dangerously close to not having enough power in the grid to keep Britain's lights on.

Booker, like so many of us, has been trying to explain this for so long that his readers may be weary of it. It was back in 2006 that he first reported on why, within a decade or so, we might see Britain's lights going out.

In fact, as he set out in his book, The Real Global Warming Disaster, in 2009, the writing was already on the wall in the government's energy White Paper of 2003.

Tony Blair had already signed us up to an energy policy centred on building thousands of windmills, already fully aware that we would be losing many of our coal-fired power stations due to an EU anti-pollution directive, and that we were unlikely to build any new nuclear power stations to replace those that by now would be nearing the end of their life.

This made a nonsense of Mr Buchanan's claim in a vacuous interview with Evan Davis, on Tuesday's Today programme on Radio 4, that everything was fine with Britain’s "visionary" energy policy until we were hit by that "financial tsunami" in 2008.

This prompted Mr Davis to comment, "So we can blame the bankers for it, as we normally do". (Nine months earlier Booker had written a column headed, "When the lights go out, you’ll know who to blame" – it wasn’t the bankers.)

The most interesting passage in Mr Buchanan's interview was where he began hinting at what has recently been emerging as a terrifying new element in the Government' s energy policy.

It well knows that electricity from the tens of thousands more wind turbines it hopes to see built in the coming years will cost between two and four times as much as that from conventional power stations. Its solution to this is to rig the market with new taxes and other devices so that this will make electricity from wind farms somehow seem competitive.

This is the infamous "green paradigm". The aim is not to make wind cheaper but to double the cost of electricity from the gas, coal and nuclear power stations that still provide virtually all the electricity we need to keep our lights on.

Around lunchtime last Monday, for instance, National Grid was showing that all our 4,300 wind turbines put together were providing barely a thousandth of the power we were using, 0.1 percent, or a paltry 31MW (as compared with the 2,200MW we can get from a single gas-fired plant).

The harsh fact is that successive governments in the past ten years have staked our national future on two utterly suicidal gambles. First, they have fallen for the delusion that we can depend for nearly a third of our future power on those useless and unreliable windmills – which will require a dozen or more new gas-fired power stations just to provide back-up for when the wind is not blowing.

Yet, at the same time, by devices such as the increasingly punitive "carbon tax" due to come into force on April 1, they plan to double the cost of the electricity we get from grown-up power stations, which can only have the effect in the coming years of doubling our electricity bills, driving millions more households into fuel poverty.

If our government were not lost in a bubble of complete make-believe, it would keep open those coal-fired power stations the EU is forcing us to close next month (although it may be too late), it would stop subsidising grotesquely expensive wind farms, and it would go flat out to exploit Britain's vast reserves of the shale gas that has more than halved US gas prices in four years.

But we do not have such a government, says Booker. Our lights will go out, our economy will suffer a catastrophe, our bills will double, and tens of thousands more people will die of cold in those freezing winters that our politicians were somehow fooled into believing would never come again.

The bizarre thing is that, according to The Daily Telegraph in May 2010, this wasn't going to happen. But, now it is, the politicians have some explaining to do.

Energy: "Only the Tories have a grip on energy"

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 08:49:48 +0000

In September 2008, we were arguing - with more than a hint of desperation – that the Conservatives needed to address the energy crisis. And we were not only concerned with the politicians but with the failure of the party generally to take an interest in this vital issues.

An aspect of that failure, we wrote, is the apparent willingness of the party to leave the debate on "fuel poverty" arising from high energy prices to the dysfunctional and increasingly aggressive gaggle of Labour back-benchers and the economically illiterate delegates at the TUC conference, now in full flow – all variously demanding a windfall tax on the energy companies.

Now, on top of comments from Booker, we have the hypocritical Independent on Sunday whingeing about "successive governments playing politics over energy".

It complains that, over the past decade there have been seven energy secretaries – and at least five white papers – all playing different cards with energy strategy. Thus does it declare: "It's a shameful way to behave and the politicians deserve being trumped for their myopic populism", then arguing:

Its time to take the politics – if not religion – out of energy policy; whether you prefer wind over coal over nuclear has nothing to do with ideology but everything to do with safety, efficiency, cost, as well as sustainability. What we need is an independent commission – headed by someone like Buchanan and experts from industry – to stake out a thoughtful and long-term strategy and stick to it so that businesses can plan for the future.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Express, with its front page lead, finally wakes up to the EU's Large Combustion Plants (LCP) Directive, telling us what we last reminded our readers in November last year, that: "By next March, five of our largest coal-fired plants, capable of supplying a fifth of our average power needs, are to be shut down".

In this blog, we've actually referred to the LCP Directive 31 times, starting in August 2005, strangely enough with a piece headed: "When the lights go out …". And then, we were writing in July 2008 about a "politically induced crisis", while in April 2009 we were warning that we were: "Six years away from an energy crisis". That was already after declaring in October 2008 that:

We are going to get power cuts, unless we do something soon. The problem is already on us with the quota limitations on the coal-fired stations imposed by the EU's Large Combustion Plants Directive. Now, we know this is that nasty European Union and we don't like talking about it. But hiding your head under the covers won't make it go away!

But then, after the egregious failure of the Conservatives to address the issues, which we quite deliberately set out for them in August 2008, the Sunday Telegraph is at last on the case.

And what does it tell us? Ah! "Only the Tories have a grip on energy", it proclaims, regaling us with the happy thought that, "The voters of Eastleigh have a splendid opportunity to send a message that green fundamentalism is unaffordable".

Sometimes I do have a little difficulty trying to work out which planet than paper is actually on.

Horsemeat scandal: criminality and confusion

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:20:18 +0000

A rather lightweight girlie piece in The Sunday Telegraph today devotes nearly 1800 words to stream-of-consciousness mush about Polish horses.

The only useful information could have been covered in an article a fraction of the length, pointing to what appear to be over-generous prices paid for horses on the hoof. An old mare, it is claimed, was sold through the Skaryszew market for 7,000 zloty, equating to about �1,400 or €1,700. We are further told that the farmer selling the animal expected 5,000 zloty.

Journalist Claire Duffin thus asserts that the farmer was paid almost �3.40/kg for his horse – close to €4/kg. Yet, she writes, the most expensive horse meat, from foals, fetches only �2.40/kg (€2.75/kg) in Italy, where the animals are mostly slaughtered.

By contrast, in the UK, unwanted horses which end up in the food supply, can – according to one horse charity, be sold for �100 or less, making slaughter a lucrative proposition in the UK.

On this basis – and with the help of the World Horse Welfare charity – Duffin concludes that "a more sinister set of suspicions hang over the whole horse trade in Poland: that it is a front for crime". The charity, and the Polish authorities, suspect that the horses are being used in a form of money laundering.

This is a trade that has been going on a long time. In February 2000, the BBC reported on it, using Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) to claim that about 100,000 horses a year were exported by road to Italy, mainly from Poland and Lithuania, and about 7,000 donkeys, most of them from Romania.

The movement of horses, Duffin tells us, creates a convenient paper trail for gangs to "clean up" dirty money. By exaggerating the value and number of horses moved, they can explain the existence of large amounts of cash gained from less legitimate enterprises. Paying farmers "slightly over the odds" for their animals is, then, a small price compared with the potential profits.

It would have helped here if we actually had the comparator, in order to understand what we are dealing with.. Duffin could be getting her information from something like this site, which offers an untypically low figure for meat, from France in 2004, which doesn't really give an idea of what is involved.

Currently, trade prices for Romanian carcase meat can be €3.50/kg. Frozen Polish (boneless) can be bought for as little as €4/kg, but there have been reports of sales at as little €2/kg.

But, looking at typical prices - when meat yield from a carcase may be less than 40 percent - to cover a price on the hoof of €4/kg, boneless meat would have to average about €10/kg. Duffin and her sources are right to be suspicious of the prices paid in Skaryszew market, especially if meat is being sold at €2/kg.

There is another oddity about the Polish market though, which Duffin does not discuss – the fact that almost the entire legitimate horsemeat export volume was sold to Italy. According to Eurostat, of the 130,167 tonnes exported in 2010, valued at €34,625,817, 12,988 tonnes went to Italy. In 2011, the Polish exported 12,598 tonnes, valued at €35,299,856. Of that all but ten tonnes ended up in Italy.

What is not explained is why so much is trade is done with Poland. The next largest trading partner is Spain, from which Italy takes 3.8kt. Belgium supplies 3.7kt, while France sends 2.6kt. Romania sends a mere 1.7kt.

For Italy as a whole, home meat production (2011) was recorded as 24.5 kilotonnnes (kt), with imports of 27kt. A negligible 1.7kt of exports are recorded, making total home consumption in the order of 32kt, over 60 percent of total EU consumption. What going into Italy seems to stay in Italy, in a market that worth about €100 million at wholesale prices.

However, both the Observer and the Daily Mail assert that Polish and Italian "mafia gangs" are involved in the trade.

If this is the case, it may well be through unrecorded trade, a situation which is compounded poor state of official statistics. Not only do there seem to be significant differences between Eurostat and FAO databases, which ostensibly measure some of the same things, there also seems to be a mismatch (in Italy at least) between datasets on domestic meat production and number of horse slaughtered.

Italian data, for instance, has 67,000 horses slaughtered in 2010, producing 17.8kt of meat (carcase weight – at 178,827 metric quintals), as opposed to the figure of nearly 25kt meat, offered by Eurostat (equivalent to 34kt carcase weight).

It would be easier (although somewhat dishonest) to pick one set of statistics, and stick to them. You get this with newspapers, thus having The Daily Telegraph report in 2010, what it claims to be the FAO figure of 213,000 horses being slaughtered for food in Italy "every year", whereas the Italian government recorded for 2009 the number of 84,063 – of which 45,757 were imported.

All the indications are, therefore, that there are significant gaps – or discontinuities – in the statistics.

Even then, the plot thickens. While the bulk of horsemeat is processed in Italy, so far, as of yesterday, only one Italian processor has been implicated in the horsemeat fraud. This is the Prima group, from which about six tons of frozen beef lasagne have been seized.

By contrast, there have been two major units in Germany, with another implicated. This is the German firm Dreistern Konserven, which produced goulash for Aldi, and which bought its meat via a dealer from Mipol, a Polish-based firm. There have also been – as yet unproven – links with the Irish horsemeat findings and Poland.

It cannot thus be said that Poland is in the clear, but it also cannot be said that we yet have anything like a clear picture of the horsemeat trade in Europe, nor even the movement of horses.

And there is a dagger at the heart of the EU's Single Market. We are told so much about how much trade is facilitated through this construct, but when a light is shone on just one tiny sector, the statistics fall apart, and the mechanisms of trade are unknown in detail.

Interestingly, there is an EU Agricultural Council today (Monday), at which our own Mr Paterson will be present. The one thing he might ask for, rather than more labelling, which might obscure more than reveal, is for the European Commission to come up with a definitive report, with reliable statistics, on how the horsemeat trade actually works.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: regulatory aftermath

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:48:10 +0000

As the "colleagues" assemble in Brussels today to discuss measures to deal with the horsemeat fraud, we see the effects of the media treating this as a food scare rather than massive international fraud exploiting failures in the EU's regulatory system.

Instead of a widespread, international police investigation, to track down the criminals in a multi-million pound fraud, we are entering what is more like the classic final stage of the scare dynamic, the so-called "regulatory aftermath", with the politicians braying for more legislation to fix the problem.

In this case, they are calling for "speedier action on introducing country-of-origin labelling for processed beef and other meat products" – or so says the loss-making Guardian, as if putting different labels on packs is somehow going to prevent fraudsters adulterating the food which goes into the packs.

Meanwhile, the sainty, law-abiding Danes have discovered that one of their own has been doing naughty things.

H�rby Slagtehus, a slaughterhouse in the Jutland town of Skanderborg, we are told, can expect to be reported to the police by the nation's food authorities, F�devarestyrelsen, after it sold packs of mixed meat without indicating which meat was part of the mix. The food authorities said that there could be horse, beef and ham mixed together in the packs.

H�rby Slagtehus maintained that the restaurants it supplied with meat were aware that the meat, which the slaughterhouse sold under the labels of 'pizza meat' (pizzak�d) and 'formed beefsteak' (formede b�ffer), could contain horsemeat.

F�devarestyrelsen went to six customers of the slaughterhouse and all said they thought they were purchasing beef. A control team took a total of nine samples from the six restaurants and found traces of horse DNA in three of the tests, traces of pig DNA in one sample and a combination of horse and pig DNA in five of the samples.

But while the Danes are putting their hands up – albeit to minor infractions – the Poles are rejecting allegations that they are involved in the scams.

Agriculture Minister Stanislaw Kalemba claims that: "Poland is so far clean as a whistle. Poland is off the hook", stating that nationwide inspections have failed to find existence of horse in beef products.

He also takes a pop a the Sunday Telegraph for claiming that "Polish authorities" suspect that horses are being used in a form of money laundering, noting that no official from Poland is quoted as saying so. Kalemba says that the original allegations coming from Ireland were "unfair" and that "there are at least a dozen countries in Europe and South America under suspicion" of adulterating beef with horse.

Back in Britain, the Daily Telegraph is getting excited over a report from Paul Smith, a retired auditor of food safety standards, that there is a "massive failure" of retailers to monitor their suppliers and have their meat inspected at "appropriate intervals".

Had the paper been reading this blog (and the Booker column), they would have already known this. We had, after all, written on 8 February (our very first piece on the current crisis) that the supermarkets operate what is known as "plausible deniability". As long as they have the paperwork to say they are in the clear, they are happy, we wrote.

Needless to say, in recounting Smith's "evidence" - which takes the form of a written statement to the Commons environment committee - the Telegraph omits any mention of the European Union, despite it having exclusive competence in food law.

Smith is cited as saying: "The whole system is a disgrace and in need of total review", and that he has spoken out to help bring about "appropriate changes so as to ensure the horse meat incident and related incidents do not reoccur".

But, since we have yet to work out the detail of what has been going on, with all sorts of complexities and inconsistencies, we really should be focusing on the investigation - whence, of course, it will fall to the EU to take action.

As it stands, the "colleagues" seem to be rushing to slam closed the wrong door, long after the horse has been slaughtered. But then, you cannot expect them to admit their own failures.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: expanding the European dimension

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:51:40 +0000

Czech inspectors have found horsemeat in meatballs made in Sweden for IKEA Group, the world's biggest furniture retailer, says Reuters in a report that has catapulted the fraud back into the headlines today.

The Czech State Veterinary Administration reported its findings to the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), after its inspectors took samples for DNA tests in IKEA's unit in the city of Brno from a product labelled as "beef and pork meatballs" (87%).

IKEA, according to other press reports has said that the meatballs were made IKEA said they were made by the Familjen Dafg�rd group, located in central Sweden, a firm which claims to put a "lot of love and care" into its products (as well as horsemeat).

However, the family Dafg�rd is not alone. The Czech inspectors also found horsemeat in burgers from Poland labelled as "beef pre-fried burger" supplied to the food trader and distributor BidVest in the Czech Republic.

The IKEA suppliers have not yet disclosed the source of their meats, but in the "beef pre-fried burger", we have another finger pointing at Poland. This link is being pointed up by Die Welt and others, although information on origin is no proof of complicity in fraud. This we saw with the Romanian link.

Nevertheless, as the days pass, we are getting the full flavour of the European dimension of this fraud. So far, we have information of adulteration events in Ireland (several), the UK (two), Germany (two or three), Luxembourg (one), France (one or possibly two), Italy (possibly one) and now Denmark and possibly Sweden, with persistent but unproven claims of Polish involvement.

The little Englanders of the media are still keen to plant their Union Jacks on the issue, making mischief on the FSA and other local matters, but the facts demonstrate that this is a pan-European failure, with the EU's regulatory system at the heart of it.

Not only does the media seem to be having difficulty with this, they are also still using the phrase "food chain", when "network" would be much more appropriate.

Thus we have a Swedish furniture shop in the Czech Republic selling meatballs which were also on sale in Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal. They were made by a completely different firm in Sweden, although they were claimed to be "IKEA food", and were made from ingredients supplied by other companies, all to a common regulatory standard decided in and enforced from Brussels.

What is fascinating to see, though, is that FAK notes that IKEA's food sales worldwide amounted last year to €1.3 billion, making it a major food retailer in its own right.

Yet, despite the value, and the prestige of the brand name, this firm – along with many others – have put their trust in the Brussels regulatory system and ended up selling adulterated foods. UKIP should be having a field day.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Horsemeat fraud: organic eggs – the next instalment

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:05:07 +0000

Played big by the German press is a new food "scandal", this one involving the mislabelling of ordinary battery eggs as organic produce.

The hare has been set running by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft b�uerliche Landwirtschaft, reflecting the German genius for making even a benign producer group sound like a paramilitary organisation. This is the Small Farmers' Association (AbL) who are complaining of a "giant fraud", with large egg packers sending their supermarket customers the right packaging, without too much concern about what it inside it.

Also being criticised are the "lax EU organic standards", pointing once again to the situation where the EU has exclusive competence in dictating the standards for this fabulous Single Market about which Mr Cameron is so enthusiastic.

Handelsblatt takes it further, reporting that the "deliberate deception" of consumers is probably "widespread practice", with millions of eggs involved. It also seems to have got the point. The second major labelling swindle after the horsemeat scandal, it says, "casts doubt on the success of food inspections".

Says Federal Consumer Minister Ilse Aigner (CSU), "It's all about checks and here I have to clearly say that the controls for which the countries are indeed responsible have to be carried not just from your desks. One must, of course, be on the ground, looking at the plants".

Oldenburg prosecutor Roland Herrmann agrees that fraud involving the keeping of chickens and eggs is widespread. His authority is investigating some 100 farms in Lower Saxony.

Profits from illegal substitution are, as one might expect, enormous. As a guide from the UK, Tesco sells a half-dozen "everyday value" eggs for �0.95, compared with �1.70 for free-range and �2.15 for a half-dozen organic eggs. Given that these eggs are chemically indistinguishable – and there is no known test that can identify substitution – the temptation is massive.

And while this "scandal" is at the moment confined to Germany, anyone who thinks it doesn't happen here is in the land of the fayries.

Outside one of the largest, prestige egg packers in the country, I've personally seen anonymous shipping containers, stacked full of eggs, unknown to the egg inspector, which are brought out to make up for shortfalls on any one line – irrespective of type. This has been going on for years.

Egg marketing in Europe is a truly international business, as the consumption cycles in each Member State are slightly different, while egg laying is a constant. You can't switch laying hens on and off like a light switch.

Thus, there is free trade between producers and wholesalers in different countries, to balance supply and demand. With no cross-border checks, there is ample room for fraud and substitution, and precious little policing. Because the egg regulations are of EU origin, and highly complex, Defra runs its own egg inspectorate, too few in number (and lacking the skills) to be able to detect structured fraud.

Once again, though, we confront the same problem. Where the value of a product depends not on its intrinsic characteristics but on the paperwork accompanying it, there will always be scope for fraud. And, when the system is governed by Brussels, and the checks are determined by the European Commission, the fraudsters are always going to have an easy time of it.

That, though, has ministers from 27 Member States in Brussels today discussing more and better labelling for meat products.

Without the first idea of whether they can be enforced, and how, they labour under the illusion that their regulations will actually achieve anything, other than create more and better opportunities for fraud. These people, with the European Commission alongside them, are oblivious to the reality of the real world.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

EU politics: coming our way soon

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:33:39 +0000

We saw recently in Die Zeit the concerns over Roma immigration. And now we have Die Welt recording how appalling conditions from eastern slums have suddenly moved to within a few metres of the German welfare society. "As worlds collide, integration comes to its limits", say the local police and security sources in the North Rhine-Westphalia.

Currently, there are an estimated 209,000 Romanians and 121,000 Bulgarians living in Germany, although how many are Roma is not known. Thousands more from southeastern Europe arrive every month and some cities have reported a six-fold increase since the two countries became EU members.

Officials in Duisburg, in an internal report of September 2012, offer a troubling assessment. "As long as there is unrestricted immigration and there is unregulated settlement, the problems are not controllable by the police", they say.

The police in Duisburg have suffered particular pressures. Last year, they recorded some 13,000 staff hours on immigration-related issues, trying to prevent tension escalating. And they have nearly 350 live investigations, mainly for fraud and simple theft.

Officials warn of an additional area of conflict. It is not only the Germans who feel threatened, but Turkish and Lebanese immigrants. Several times the police have had to intervene to break up armed fights.

There was a major confrontation in September 2012, when the police recorded a targeted attack by young men of Turkish origin against young Romanian Roma. The police consider that the ever-increasing and uncontrolled growth of the Roma was the catalyst of this type of attack.

In the UK, Farage may be over-egging the numbers but, if this German experience is any guide, he cannot over-egg the problems that will arise from unrestrained Roma immigration, starting on 1 January 2014.

A potential ally is the head of Dortmund The Social Department, Birgit Zoerner. She is head of the German Association of Cities and a member of a newly established federal-state working group on "poverty migration from Eastern Europe".

Her focus, though, is on financial support from the EU – of which Farage would doubtless not approve. The EU can organise bail-outs for banks, Zoerner says, and we now need urgent rescue packages for people. But she also argues for restriction of free movement until the EU is able to control immigrants and manage their distribution.

The current European-led movement, she says, disrupts communities because new immigrants mostly prefer the districts which have already succumbed to major social challenges.

And in a new development, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich is joining in demanding that the EU make money available for the integration of Roma into their native countries. These people, he says, present schools, municipalities and charitable organisations with unique challenges.

Local governments are complaining that they are now being made to bear the costs of EU expansion, concerns that the federal government in Berlin have thus far ignored.

And that presents a somewhat different perspective to the immigration debate. While national politicians parade on the European stage, it is local government – and local taxpayers – who are bearing the costs, as we have already seen with Rotherham.

EU membership, therefore – always regarded as mainly a national issue – now has an even greater and more urgent relevance to local politics.

Horsemeat fraud: gibberish but very little action

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:23:37 +0000

While the Italians were trying to work out whether they had a new local government, or not, the business of their real government went on in Brussels, not least with the Agriculture Council meeting.

Here, the repercussions of the weeks of publicity over horsemeat were felt, with the "colleagues" obsessed with imposing new labelling requirements in the hope that somehow, miraculously, they would cure the problems arising from a single market in meat and meat products.

In this, we have an encapsulation of the entire European Union experiment, which makes the whole issue so rewarding for study. Faced with trying to defend the indefensible, and to make the unworkable work, the "colleagues" retreat to their fantasy world, ending up bickering about the minutia of labelling, to the extent that the Austrians wanted the life history of every morsel of mince on their packs.

Particularly aggressive, though, were the Poles, denying everything, and complaining that their industry had been unfairly pilloried. Then, this morning, up pops Polish Radio, pinning some of the blame for horsemeat burgers in the Czech Republic on a company called FVZ Deli Meat, Poland.

In the good old times, we here would just shut out the cowboys until they had sorted themselves out, but now our ministers have to waste their time in Brussels, listening to the fantasy outpourings of the "colleagues" who have very little grasp of the issues. Only the Danes, it seems, had the sense to recognise that new labelling would not have the slightest on preventing fraudulent meat adulteration.

So it is that we are locked into this unreal system, while the likes of Mr Cameron tell us how important it is to be on the "top table" in Europe, when the only reward for that is a great deal of gibbering and very little sensible action. We wold be better off burning the table and banning the burgers.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

German politics: Merkel goes gay

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:44:10 +0000

It isn't only Mr Cameron who is having trouble in his party with gay marriage. German chancellor Mrs Merkel seems to be having similar ructions with her own CDU.

According to Handeslbaltt, there are increasingly hostile noises coming from senior party members. Most voluble of these is Saxony CDU parliamentary leader Steffen Flath, who is also a member of the "conservative network" in the Berlin district.

He is warning against Merkel's proposal to grant to full equality to same-sex partnerships. He concedes that the CDU should continue to develop as a people's party, and to take note of social changes. But, he says, "that does not mean that you have to run after every fashion or equal to the general zeitgeist. This is especially true for a conservative party like the CDU".

Flath is calling on Merkel to focus on the core values of the CDU. "Only in this way can the trust and credibility that the party has lost be recovered," he adds.

Berlin is an awfully long way away, and even more so in political terms. As far as the parochial British media goes, it could be light years away. Yet, in Flath, we could have a British Conservative talking. The response from some of the knights of the shires has essentially been in the same terms.

Doubtless, there are senior German politicians asking the same questions of Merkel that have been posed about Cameron – as to why she is prepared to put herself out on such exposed limbs, in support of this minority cause, which is causing so much trouble.

Of course, it makes sense when the European (i.e., Council of Europe) dimension is factored in, but since the various national media still live in their own tiny bubbles, very few are joining the dots. Nevertheless, the spell cast by "Europe" does seem to trump all other considerations, causing politicians to lose all sense of their core values.

If only we could discover what it is that exercises such a grip on the minds of our politicians, we could then use it to our advantage and make them work for us once more.

EU politics: money down the drain

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:47:00 +0000

Last year, the National Audit Office was reporting that the Rural Payments Agency, which administers EU farm subsidies, had incurred penalties as a result of weaknesses in management and administration to a total value of �590.4 million since 2008-2009, including provisions for an estimated �125.4 million in penalties which had not yet been finalised.

Then, yesterday we learned from the BBC that the European Commission has ordered the return of �85m for failing to comply with rules on agricultural payments. Again, this is the result of "weaknesses" in processing applications for funds and on-the-spot checks.

I suppose, considering what we have had to pay previously, this should be considered an improvement, although of the �357 million demanded from 22 Member States, the UK is being called upon to pay the largest amount. Next on the list is Italy, having to pay back �41.6 million, even if it is doubtful whether the money will ever get to Brussels.

However, �85 million is still a lot of money and we are not so flush that we can afford to give it away. The one thing you can be sure of though is that no one will be fired, no one will even be censured and, if there is any shortfall to be made up, the taxpayer will pick up the bill.

That is one of the joys of working in government. You can pour zillions down the drain and nobody thinks any the worse of you, even when the EU is the beneficiary. Should thee or me commit such a heinous crime, however, we would never hear the last of it.

Perhaps we should all apply for jobs with the Rural Payments Agency – we could hardly do worse than the present incumbents.

Food fraud: "what's in your fish fingers?"

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:23:07 +0000

From 1,247 identified samples of fish purchased from retail outlets in the United States, 33 percent (401) were mislabelled. That has been the finding of a survey on seafood fraud by the conservation group Oceana (full report here, which has been running in the US press for the last few days.

Inevitably, papers such as the New York Times are drawing comparisons, this paper telling its readers that: "Many Europeans are fretting these days over horse meat, and whether it might have adulterated their shepherd’s pie. Over here, it's all about the red snapper".

Surveys previously of one kind of fish had found mislabelling rates of 25 to more than 70 percent for commonly swapped species such as red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod. And in this survey the most commonly sampled fish, snapper and tuna had the highest mislabelling rates (87 and 59 percent, respectively), with the majority of the samples identified as something other than what was purchased.

Halibut, grouper (not the Lib-Dem variety), cod and Chilean seabass were mislabelled between 19 and 38 percent of the time, while lower levels of mislabelling were noted among salmon (7 percent) and sole (9 percent).

Some mislabelling, says Oceana, may result from human error in identifying fish or their origin. More often, it is driven by economic gain, as when a cheaper or more readily available species is substituted for one that is more expensive, desirable or in limited supply.

This type of fraud, it says, not only cheats the consumer, but it also hurts honest fishermen and seafood suppliers who play by the rules. Mislabelling can also provide cover and profit for illegal or unregulated seafood, and the fraud can also have serious health consequences when mislabelled produce masks undeclared allergens, contaminants or toxins.

Reinforcing the assertion that this is not a victimless crime, Reuters joined in with a report that Interpol had launched a global crackdown on illegal fish catches worth up to $23 billion a year.

The agency also made comparisons with "Europe's scandal of horsemeat sold as beef", with Interpol declaring that: "The last decade has seen an escalation of trans-national and organised criminal networks engaged in fisheries crime". Interpol's head of its Environmental Crime Programme, David Higgins, described the crime as covering everything from illegal financing to mislabelling.

Interestingly, the project, with an annual budget of €300,000, is part-funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Norwegian government. Says Anthony Long, head of the Pew's global campaign to end illegal fishing, "One fifth of the fish that come out of the water are believed to be illegal, unreported or unregulated".

A study published in 2009 estimated illegal fishing was worth between $10 billion and $23.5 billion a year and part of the current plan is to set up a new fisheries crime working group.

Interpol's David Higgins also thinks consumers should be more demanding, partly because Europe's meat scandal has exposed how easily horsemeat can be passed off as more expensive beef. "Can the supermarket vouch for where the fish has come from?" he asked, then posing another question: "what's in your fish fingers?".

He may well ask. But according to the little Europeans, the answer is more labelling - presumably so that we can have still more mislabelling.

Horsemeat fraud: more adulteration emerges

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:16:44 +0000

The "little England" media seems largely to have abandoned the horsemeat fraud story, even though results from European testing are pouring in, leaving Le Figaro to exclaim, "European supermarkets flooded with horse meat".

"Fraudulent products", says the paper, have been found on the shelves of all the major chains of distribution in Europe. And, while the scandal has ballooned to more than 20 countries to date, the list of distributors and brands involved also grows.

One of the latest brands to be caught out is the Panzani group, the global past specialist which announced yesterday it had found traces of horsemeat in ravioli made by a French supplier and that the products had been withdrawn in France.

But, as the finding multiply more information emerges on the scale of the adulteration and the complexity of the supply network.

The Panzani ravioli, for instance, was manufactured by William Saurin. The company's ambition, it tells us, is "to offer the best products available to all and for all the family", with recipes "tasted and re-tasted by our team of experts in culinary arts before marketing to achieve culinary excellence".

It turns out, though, that to achieve its "culinary excellence", the company sourced some of its meat from the Dutch company Windmeijer Tradng BV. This had earlier been associated with rogue trader Jan Fasen, of Daarp Trading fame, who had used one of the company's cold stores in the Dutch city of Breda, storing horse meat which had been supplied to the Spanghero cutting plant.

The Dutch prosecutor has now started a criminal investigation into the affairs of Windmeijer, the second company to have attracted this sort of attention. The first was the Willy Selten plant in Oss, Netherlands, which was accused of mixing horsemeat and beef and selling it on as pure beef, after a raid on 15 February.

Those two cases, no doubt, are going to run and run. In the meantime, we also have a report from Portugal, with the authorities seizing 79 tons of beef containing horsemeat. We hear also that 19,000 food packs, "such as lasagne, hamburgers, canneloni and meatballs" have been removed from retail and distribution outlets.

Also, beef lasagne containing horsemeat has been discovered in Hungary, according to Gyorgy Pleva, Director of Hungary's National Food Chain Security Office. This does not seem to be a new contamination episode though, as the lasagne was imported into Hungary by the Danish company Nowaco and produced by the Luxembourg-based firm Tavola, the subsidiary of Comigel which produced the product for Fundus.

What is certainly a new episode, though, is a report from Latvia. The Food and Veterinary Service has established suspicious activities with horsemeat at several Latvian slaughterhouses and companies. It has been established that 416 horses were slaughtered in Latvia in 2012, including 272 at an AIBI slaughterhouse.

Their meat, it is reported - amounting to 203 horses - was supplied to meat-processing company Forevers and it is "already clear" that AIBI horsemeat was labelled as beef in nearly all cases. There have also been violations established at three other slaughterhouses and a meat supplier.

Nor have the Swedes finished yet, as IKEA has decided to withdraw its wiener sausages from sale after tests found "indications" of horsemeat. The company is removing the sausages from sale in Britain, France, Spain, Ireland and Portugal after tests confirmed "a few indications of horsemeat".

Russia is also getting in on the act, complaining that a shipment of 20 tons of hot dogs "tainted" with horsemeat had been exported from Austria by the Landhof company in Linz. The Russian Federation is now considering taking unspecified "protective measures". Unlike the cases elsewhere, the sausages were labelled not as pure beef but as containing only pork.

Landhof tells us that the entire production chain, "works with the HACCP concept, which deals specifically with the hazard and risk analysis". The products are tested for their hygienic condition and chemical composition in the in-house laboratory,. The very strict Austrian Food Codex guarantees the consumer with additional top quality.

Back in Britain, seven councils have withdrawn certain meat products from schools and care homes after Swansea council said its own test found horsemeat in products supplied by Welsh Bros Ltd of Newport. The company said it was shocked and "had been let down by a non-Welsh firm".

Welsh Bros is another one that tells us they operate a fully documented Food Quality and Safety system, using HACCP principles where they "identify possible hazards with our products and processes" and "put controls in place to ensure safety is maintained". Their measures, they say, "are regularly monitored and information documented". This system is under constant review to identity where any improvements are made.

They go on to say that all carcasses are purchased from licensed and approved suppliers. "Specifications are agreed so that the correct product is always supplied to us" and "these specifications are verified via goods inwards checks which are conducted by our Technical Manager upon receipt to deliveries.

“Inferior product”, they claim, "is rejected and retuned (sic) to supplier with only products which have the quality we demand passing these important checks".

Thus we come to the NFU conference in Birmingham, were farmers were said to be angry, with platitudes flying about buying more British produce and preventing "another horsemeat-style scandal".

The trouble is, as we see from the European Parliament, there is still no real understanding of what has happened. MEP are calling for more meat tests along the food chain, but felt that the issue was one of "labelling and traceability".

They cannot seem to get to grips with the idea that we are experiencing criminal fraud on a massive scale, and all the labelling in the world will not make it better. Weeks into this "scandal" and we are really not much further forward. The entertainment is set to continue.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

Eurocrash: a national nightmare

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:56:57 +0000

Bankia we are told is a symbol of the Spanish housing and credit crisis. The group was formed in the wake of the financial crisis from seven troubled savings banks - and then evolved into a national nightmare.

And what is a national nightmare today, could become – and most likely already has become – a European nightmare. But then, RBS hasn't done so very much better, declaring a loss of �5.2 billion, although it has managed to keep the pot of gold open, with �600 million bonus payments.

The EU, therefore, has delivered itself something of a publicity coup with its proposals to cap bankers' bonuses - although I defy anyone to show me where, in the legislative proposals, where this appears, much less in the European Parliament response.

But then, so much of this is smoke and mirrors that it is very difficult to find out what is actually going on and, as we know, the media don't ever bother trying. They just vomit out the latest press releases.

I am not even sure that the EU has the legislative competence on this issue, and it trying it on to see how far it gets. In this, there is an amount of complicity with (some) Member States, who are happy to see the EU take the flak, saving them having to face down their own rapacious bankers.

But, for the ordinary man who sees banking losses multiply, while their thieving corporates make no efforts to retrain their own greed, this becomes the ultimate populist issue – a wonderful irony for a construct which publicly deplores populism.

All of this though, allow the likes of the BBC to keep attention focused away from the main issue, which is that this current round of legislation is the implementation not of EU proposals but of the Basel III agreement, covering up the failures of the previous rules.

Keeping the public "debate" focused on bonuses is a wonderful way of distracting the "man in the street", but the greater effect of the rules – insofar as they are capable of being understood – are virtually escaping public scrutiny.

The net effect, then, is to have disasters like Bankia, and more like them to follow, which eventually leads to real suffering by real people, while the corporate swindles go on unchecked, and the thieves in suits strut their stuff.

It is a while since I used the catch phrase: "and the reason we should not rise up and slaughter them is?" Answers on a postcard please … but I suspect the Post Office will not get rich on the proceeds.

Horsemeat fraud: it's all our fault

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:46:52 +0000

At last the Polish have admitted the obvious about horsemeat adulteration. They say they have found horse DNA in beef stored at three storage facilities in central Poland, after three samples from 121 tested proved positive. Eighty more await examination. The meat tested arrived there from various suppliers in Poland and abroad, including from the Netherlands.

From Latvia, we also get an admission that it was common practice to label horsemeat as beef. In Soviet times, massive amounts of horsemeat came to Latvia from Latin America without being publicly mentioned. "We are aware that such practices are consumer deception, however, life is life," explained the head of one slaughterhouse.

Spreading the network of adulteration further, however, we can add a small consignment of tinned corned beef from Latvia is being withdrawn from the UK, after tests in Germany showed the product comprised 69 percent horsemeat. The product was distributed to Germany, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The extent of this fraud, details of which are growing by the day, led on Wednesday to French consumer minister Beno�t Hamon to conclude that the "existing sanctions" are weak and that "there is a form of impunity for this kind of deception". He thus intends to present a Consumer Bill in April, multiplying eight-fold the financial sanctions against fraudsters.

Under the provisions he will propose, an individual could be fined €300,000, with €1.5 million for corporations, even be extended to 10 percent of turnover. On conviction, fraudsters could also be prohibited from carrying out a business in the same field where their fraud was proved.

It hardly seems possible, therefore, that yesterday, in an "exchange of views" with the European Parliament, EU health commissioner Tonio Borg expressed much the same intent.

"Public confidence has been badly shaken", he said. To help restore it, a forthcoming proposal would require every member state to introduce financial sanctions against food fraud, so that "crime does not pay".

He acknowledged that a "growing number" of member states favoured mandatory "point of origin" labelling which currently applies only to fresh beef, but stressed, "Even if we had mandatory labelling it would not have stopped this scandal happening".

"Europe", he said, "has one of the best food safety systems in the world and all the evidence suggests that, unlike in the past, this is not a food safety issue but one of fraudulent labelling".

"When a scandal happens, some jump to the conclusion that the legislative system is at fault and that fundamental change is required but the legislation is sound and fraud only occurs when the rules are deliberately broken". But", he continued, "the EU does not have an army of enforcers to ensure the legislation is enforced. That is the role of member states".

So there we have it. The European Union is perfect. There is nothing wrong with its legislation. When things go wrong, it is entirely the fault of the Member States, and they must take the necessary action.

"This scandal has caused enormous public mistrust and many people are bog-eyed about the whole thing", says Borg. "That is why we have to improve the deterrents and need better traceability".

And behind all that is the BBC. It's all our fault for expecting cheap, convenient processed foods made from raw ingredients whose prices continue to rise in the global marketplace. It's nothing to do with the EU. It's all our fault.

COMMENT: "HORSEMEAT" THREAD

UK politics: Eastleigh by-election

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:10:15 +0000

More than usual hyperventilation has attended this by-election, with some pretty bizarre predictions, even by the rather low standards of British political commentary.

For what it is worth, my prediction is that the Lib-dims will romp home, the Tories will come a poor second, Labour third and UKIP will keep their deposit with about seven percent of the vote ... all on a very low turnout of 40 percent.

But then, I could be completely wrong.

UK politics: a wasteland of democracy

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:25:09 +0000

The media are glibly talking of the "humiliation" variously of David Cameron (Independent) and the Conservatives (Telegraph), completely unconscious of the fact that the by-election result represented a humiliating defeat for the political class as a whole.

As Your Freedom and Ours points out, people are not turning out to vote for any of the candidates in any numbers. But, when the lead candidate goes to Westminster on the back of 17 percent of the electorate – not even one in five of the voters – that represents a crashing failure of the political class to take the people with them.

But then, when we see Clegg stand alongside the new MP and proclaim "we overcame the odds", while The Times talks of a "stunning" victory, the nature of the problem becomes apparent.

The great divide then yawns into a chasm when Lib-Dem party president, Tim Farron, claims: "This is a staggering result … it will be a turning point in this parliament and that we are in a position to win this seat completely changes the narrative of the parliament".

And while the voters delivered a majority of 1,771 for the Lib-Dems, it is interesting to note that aside from the Lib-Lab-Con-UK matrix, there were ten other parties in the field, including the Monster Raving Loony Party, which collectively polled 2,056 votes.

Farage talks glibly about the Conservatives "splitting the UKIP vote", but there were over two thousand voters who thought more of the likes of the Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party than they did of his offer, sufficient to deprive his candidate of a seat in Parliament.

What is thus very, very clear from this result is that the politicians simply haven't got the message – any more than has the media. They are regarded, collectively, with a mixture of indifference and contempt, with party politics and voting in this country having become a minority preoccupation.

The result today, therefore, is not a disaster, per se for Cameron and his Conservatives, as some would have it. It is a disaster for the flawed experiment in representative democracy, another nail in the coffin of a failed system.

As for UKIP, the picture remains muddy. Your Freedom and Ours observes that their plan to become the third party after the Lib-Dims has fallen by the wayside by the latter's victory in Eastleigh.

They cannot pretend that they are the second party in the country with no MPs and very few councillors. So, despite the undoubted rejoicing in the UKIP ranks and despite the nauseating plaudits that will be heaped on the Dear Leader, the fact remains: after 20 years and in the most propitious circumstances they remain in no-man's land.

Increasingly though, this is becoming the "no-electors' land" – a wasteland of democracy. And the politicians can't even bring themselves to admit it.

COMMENT: "EASTLEIGH" THREAD

UK politics: a wasteland of democracy

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:29:01 +0000

Climate change: green fatigue

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:29:35 +0000

Communities in Hokkaido and five prefectures of the Tohoku region, we are told, have had record levels of accumulated snow as of 25 February.

In the Sukayu district of Aomori city along the Hakkoda mountain range, the snowpile measured 5.61 metres, a record for all areas where the Japan Meteorological Agency keeps records of accumulated snowfall. Thirteen locations have set records for their snowpiles this winter.

But this is not without cost. The death toll around the nation has hit 67, while 444 have been "badly wounded", according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA). Of the 67 deaths, 52 were citizens aged 65 and older.

Japan, of course, is not alone. Baltimore is set for a two-year record. Chicago has experienced record-breaking snowfall.

Wednesday saw a total of 5.4 inches measured at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. This snowfall total makes the event the largest snowfall of the season for Chicago thus far, making up 28 percent of the 2012-2013 winter snowfall total.

Southwest of the Windy City, a blizzard broke the all-time monthly snowfall record for Wichita, Kansas. The storm dropped nearly seven inches of snow on that city, bringing the monthly total to 21 inches — the most snow the city has seen in any month since records have been kept, according to the National Weather Service.

These were just a tiny few of the records broken, in a winter that had 652 records set in the US, with snow as far south as the Mexican border in Arizona.

But we've also seen a French resort - Cauterets, in the Pyrenees - overtaken the world record for snow at a ski resort, with a massive five metres of snow on the ground – enough to keep the slopes open for business until mid April.

The quantity of snow this year has surprised everyone, and has its drawbacks. Some ski slopes being forced to close for safety reasons and sixty people currently working to clear the resort of the excess.

No amount of clearance will sort out the Russian village of Oymyakon, which hit -70�C this winter – the land that global warming forgot. But, with so much of the white stuff around, it is thus not a surprise that public concern about environmental issues including climate change has slumped to a 20-year low.

Only 49 percent of people - according to the poll of 22,812 people in 22 countries including Britain and the US - now consider climate change a very serious issue – far fewer than at the beginning of the worldwide financial crisis in 2009.

One reason for the relatively low ranking of climate change is that people often believed it did not directly affect them, says Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey. But then it could also be that people can see for themselves that the greenie propaganda doesn't stand up.

With "global warming" readily seen as an ironic synonym for snow, the warmists are losing the game.

UK politics: UKIP is just like the rest

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:32:24 +0000

The post mortems over Eastleigh continue to multiply, leading Readwald to offer half a cheer at Charles Moore's sudden realisation that "all parties are the same".

This, in fact, is the dominant theme in many of the comments to the Tory Diary, while the editorial staff remain locked in their intellectual bubble, unable to comprehend what the rest of the world is telling them.

If they begun to understand the "all parties are the same" meme, they would immediately realise that their call to arms cannot succeed. At the moment, the main attack on the UKIP tendency is to point out that "robbing" the Conservatives of a vote simply lets in Labour or – in the case of Eastleigh – the Liberal Democrats.

Arguably – and with some justice – the effect of UKIP's intervention in this most recent of by-elections has been to open the gate for Mr Clegg's europhile candidate, excluding an ostensibly eurosceptic Maria Hutchings, who could have strengthened the anti-EU ranks of the Tory parliamentary party.

But the logic of the situation is unassailable. Just as with the eurosceptic Owen Paterson in post as environment secretary, we are still bound by EU law, so the election of Hutchins to the green benches, instead of a Lib-Dem, would make absolutely no difference.

Hence, it is not so much that all parties are the same – per se. Manifestly, they are not. One has just to look at Owen Paterson and then Mary Creagh to realise that between the Conservatives and Labour, there is a massive ideological gulf. But the point is, whether it was Paterson or Creagh at the despatch box, nothing fundamental change as long as the UK is a member of the European Union.

What seems to be happening, though, is that this political philosophy – or anti-philosophy – is becoming strengthened by the antagonism towards the established political parties, so that UKIP is also becoming a reservoir for the protest votes, taking over the role from the official opposition and what was once the Liberal Party.

The irony here is that, in order to harvest votes from the establishment parties, UKIP too is becoming an establishment party. To be accepted by the media and the political classes – and indeed the electorate – it must ape the very constructs it is supposedly challenging. Rather than challenging the establishment, Nigel Farage becomes part of it.

Thus, if UKIP supporters, both temporary and longer-term, are looking for something different, they are most likely going to be disappointed. In the unlikely event that Mr Farage is ever in a position to control the British government, it would be on the basis of a compromise with political allies, which could include him ditching his party's ambition to leave the EU.

But, if Farage did lead the nation out of the EU, this would not necessarily change anything on the ground. To ordinary people robbed of power, it makes little difference whether laws are made in Brussels or Whitehall. The geographical location of those who wield power over the powerless is of academic interest only.

What Farage offers, therefore, is not the promise of democracy – for power is what democracy is all about – but the prospect of change, without anything fundamental being specified.

To that extent, what we have in Farage and his party is a British version of Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy. As analysts now complain, "despite its radical appearance and its revolutionary rhetoric, we believe that, over the past three years, the M5S has effectively defended the present system, acting as a force that has quelled rebellion and stabilised the system".

As with M5S and to an extent also Geert Wilders' party in the Netherlands, we see in UKIP a lightning conductor. Of Grillo and his partner in crime, Gianroberto Casaleggio, it is said that they have intercepted the "indignation" expressed by ordinary people at the dereliction of their government and, on the back of this have created a political/economic franchise with its own copyright and trademark, a movement rigidly controlled and mobilised from the top.

It is said of them that they have hijacked slogans and ideas from social movements and mixing them with apologies for an "ethical" capitalism, with superficial statements centred on the honesty of the individual/politician/administrator. Thus have they:

… created a confused set of proposals, where neoliberal and anti-capitalist, centralist and federalist, libertarian and reactionary could co-exist. A manifesto for all occasions, cherry-picking ideas wherever they found them and whenever they considered them useful, typical of a diversionary movement.

Just as we see Grillo list his demands which amount to nothing more than "tweaks" to the established order, so we see UKIP threatening to wreck the Conservative chances of winning the next election while offering nothing of any great consequence which would alter the balance of power between citizen and state.

Effectively, Farage's idea of change is to put himself and his supporters in power instead of Brussels – swapping one set of bosses for another - a prospect some might find so unattractive that they might actually prefer Brussels.

Either way, the one thing not on offer is any form of government which takes us any closer towards a democratic state, in which event UKIP has much in common with the established parties, which it currently emulates.

It great, and possibly only difference is that it has not yet tasted power, and has therefore yet to disappoint its followers as it grapples with the compromises need to retain power and see off the competition. And that, when or it it happens, will bring its own disillusionment as people gradually discover that UKIP is just like the rest.

COMMENT: "EASTLEIGH" THREAD

UK politics: UKIP is just like the rest

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:33:56 +0000

… created a confused set of proposals, where neoliberal and anti-capitalist, centralist and federalist, libertarian and reactionary could co-exist. A manifesto for all occasions, cherry-picking ideas wherever they found them and whenever they considered them useful, typical of a diversionary movement.

Booker: disappointingly free

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 23:25:29 +0000

If Booker has been a bit quiet on the stolen children front over the last few weeks, there has been a reason. He has been the subject of his very own "super injunction", bestowed on him by High Court judge Nicholas "Mr Payout" Mostyn, at the behest of Sutton Council.

With criminal proceedings being discussed, on the basis of Booker's supposed "contempt of court", bully-boy Mostyn had demanded he attended court personally to hear the injunction confirmed, so his paper's lawyers had suggested he keep schtum for a while, to avoid inflaming the situation.

On the day, however, we were disappointed to learn that Booker's brief had so schmoozed the egregious Mostyn, to say nothing of shredding Sutton's case, that there was no question of the great man being banged up. Thus we were deprived of the fun of feeding him buns through the bars – in which had been secreted the obligatory hacksaw blades – or springing him by more direct means.

For once, though, Booker has become the story, with his own version of the trial in his column. Inexplicably, there is no comment thread on the column, although the news piece does have comments.

Says Booker, the hearing was the first occasion on which a judge was persuaded to agree to an injunction forbidding him me from making any mention of a case. The fact that he was prepared to listen to the arguments – not that he had any option, as he was being set up for an Appeal Court hearing - and was thus prepared to lift it was "a salutary victory for the freedom of the press".

Giving a glimpse of the real battle, Booker goes on to say that this was "certainly welcome as far as it went". But, he says, the battle to lift the veils of secrecy that shroud the "secret courts" we already have is very far from over. "Behind those veils far too many cruel abuses of justice will continue to flourish unreported".

EU legislation: a confusion over bonuses

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 15:26:43 +0000

Running in the Sunday Telegraph today is yet another story in which the journalist fails completely to understand the complexities of the EU legislative process, thereby presenting a false impression of what is going on.

This is the bankers' bonuses controversy, which the paper has got so wrong that its headline refers to bankers' pay – which is not in the frame. The issue is about a cap on bonuses, despite the ST headlining: "The Government signalled its growing anger over European Union plans to impose a cap on pay for bankers".

Notwithstanding that the EU probably does not have the power to regulate either pay or bonuses – something which Booker deals with in his column - the central issue here is the status of the proposal.

Those with a basic knowledge of EU treaty law and procedures will know that, with very few exceptions, the right of proposal is reserved to the European Commission, which has an absolute monopoly in this department.

And it is here that the confusion starts to descend on the issue. The legislative proposal in the frame is an amendment to Directive 2002/87/EC, in the form of COM(2011) 453 final published on 20 July 2011. And search of the text of the legislative draft shows that there is no reference whatsoever to the regulation of bankers' bonuses.

Strictly, speaking, therefore, there is no "EU proposal" or "plan" to regulate bonuses, insofar as only the European Commission is in a position to make such a proposal.

Nevertheless, the ST is not the only media organ confusing itself and everyone else, as the BBC tells us that "it seems that the European Union is poised to cap bank bonuses across the 27 members in the trading bloc".

Here, the diffident "seems" is probably appropriate, as we are told that "the agreement was reached during eight hours of intense talks in Brussels between members of the European Parliament, the European Commission and representatives of all the governments".

To suggest an "agreement" though, is at best premature and, in this context, most probably wrong. What we are dealing with, once again, is our old friend the ordinary legislative procedure, where a legislative proposal from the Commission goes simultaneously to the European Parliament and the Council, each of which institutions draw up their "common positions", on which they then vote.

In the case of the European Parliament (EP), the common position was drafted by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, under the guidance of rapporteur Othmar Karas, an Austrian MEP and member of the EPP (pictured below).

However, the EP's common position was actually drafted on 30 May 2012 – last year - and, interestingly, the report also does not include any formal amendments calling for the regulation of bonuses.

Even after this report had been prepared though, for instance on 29 June 2012, Karas was calling for "tougher rules on banker bonuses".

There was, he said at the time, "no cap on bonuses", but he wanted a fixed ratio between the fixed salary and the bonus. "My suggestion", Karas explained, "is to limit the ratio of fixed salary to bonus at 1:1. Bonuses must not be a driver for short-sighted and risky action".

As of 28 February this year, Karas seems to have got his way, although the details of this "agreement" come in a press release from the European Parliament, and a statement by the Irish presidency, which refers to a "provisional agreement".

There is as yet no formal documentation published, which sets out the agreement so it is a long way from a formal EU proposal. Officially, it stands as a proposal from the rapporteur, Othmar Karas, which has yet even to be agreed by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. And even with that approval, its must then be voted on by the entire Parliament, with the first reading scheduled for 17 April 2013.

From there, it is far from plain sailing as there are potentially two further readings, with an important twist. If any parliamentary amendment does not have the approval of the Commission (and it is hard to see how this one could), then under the procedure, it requires unanimous approval by the Council. In effect, any Member State – including the UK – has a veto.

Such complexities are very much for the future, but for the present, we are ill served by a media which seems ill-equipped to report on EU affairs and constantly demonstrates that reporting on anything more complex than a TV soap is beyond its capabilities.

UK politics: the people don't decide

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 22:35:39 +0000

While the EU takes the high ground on Bankers' bonuses, stealing a march on national governments over a populist issue, the Swiss people are exercising their own sovereignty, demanding a new law allowing shareholders to veto executive pay proposals as well as banning excessive for new and departing managers.

This is the result of the latest referendum where 67.9 percent of Swiss voters coming out in favour of the so-called "Minder initiative", the brainchild of entrepreneur and independent MP Thomas Minder.

Also called the "rip-off initiative", it prohibits managers (or remuneration committees) deciding their own wages. Shareholders will have to the right to vote on the total of all remuneration of Directors, the Executive Board and the Advisory Board. This also extends to base salaries as well as bonus payments.

During the voting, supporters had the upper hand in all language regions and both in urban and rural areas, in what was the third highest approval rate ever for a popular initiative. It was driven partly by big bonuses blamed for fuelling risky investments that nearly felled Swiss bank UBS, as well as outrage over a proposed $78 million (�51 million) payment to outgoing Novartis chairman Daniel Vasella.

Judging from responses to the news of the EU attempt to curtail bonuses, such a move in the UK would be highly popular, where corporate greed has taken on a life of its own, in both the public and private sectors.

Certainly, that is the case in Germany where 79 percent of respondents to a Handelsblatt Online survey opted for shareholder control of salaries and bonuses. An almost identical majority voted in a poll held by an online market research company.

Few things, therefore, better illustrate the parlous lack of democracy in this country where our own politicians oppose mandatory restraint in the private sector and have no plans whatsoever to control the "thieves in suits" in the public sector.

Whether you approve of the Swiss initiative or not, in that country the people can make the decision as to whether to clamp down on the "fat cats", as opposed to British citizens relying on the "undemocratic" intervention of the European Union in the teeth of the opposition from our own "democratically elected" politicians.

Of course, if the Harrogate Agenda was in place, we could make our own decisions on this and many other issues, without having to wait for politicians – in Brussels or London – to make up their minds, or not.

In Switzerland, the Business Federation Economiesuisse fought the initiative with a million dollar campaign, and now regrets the referendum decision. At the same time, however, the Federation has issued an assurance the will of "of course" be respected.

When we the people can tell our corporates what to do, and get the same response, we can start to claim that we have elements of a democracy. As it stand though, the idea that the UK is a working democracy is a pretence to which we should not subscribe.

In the meantime, we can expect the "rip-off" to continue, a standing testament to where the power really lies in this country, a country where the people don't decide and the political classes have no intentions of letting us anywhere near the reins of power.

COMMENT: "BONUSES" COMBINED THREAD

UK politics: the joys of representative democracy

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:20:23 +0000

The "little England" tendency in the British media is in full flow today as the results of the Swiss referendum on executive wages are treated with scanty disdain. We see nothing but bland reports with sparse editorial comment, which includes a "rattled" Economist and no political follow-up worth talking about.

It takes Jon Snow in his error-strewn Snowclog to represent the broadcast media. He observes that the government, "so keen to test public opinion on Europe", would never brook such a test of public attitudes to banking remuneration and working practices in the UK.

The Swiss, he says, have often been ridiculed for their love of referenda. Not any more.

Certainly, in Germany, there is no ridicule. The media give the referendum full coverage, many newspapers offering several stories, while the politicians have been quick to react, sparking a vibrant debate.

Thus, Handelsblatt led on SPD Vice Joachim Poss, retailing a report from Neue Osnabr�cker Zeitung, which had him saying, "The referendum is an important step in the right direction to meet the rip-offs in management elsewhere".

Such is the emasculation of the German political classes, though, that Poss, instead of calling on the Federal Government to introduce a new law, called for an EU Directive, perhaps oblivious to Article 153(5) of the Treaty, which makes it clear that the EU cannot legislate on pay.

But, when it comes to views of the referendum result, though, even the CDU economist Michael Fuchs approves. According to Die Zeit he is happy that salary decisions should not be taken by the state. "The shareholders know exactly what they can afford", he says.

Green party leader J�rgen Trittin said that Switzerland was "a model for the compensation excesses in the financial sector" and wanted stricter rules in Germany would "stricter rules" are introduced. Sahra Wagenknecht, deputy parliamentary leader of the Left Faction asked Germany to take action. Her country, she said, was "a paradise for executives, undermining the merit principle".

The North Rhine-Westphalian FDP chairman Christian Lindner criticised the multi-million bonuses paid by Deutsche Bank, calling for "a sense of responsibility". That was echoed by economist Michael Huether from the Institute of the German Economy in Cologne. While welcoming the public debate, his view, "instead of more laws, we need more boards of directors and board members who take personal responsibility".

But it is precisely because the "thieves in suits" are devoid of any sense of personal responsibility that the people of Switzerland felt impelled to act. And, it appears, they haven't finished yet.

Piggy-backing on Minder's success, the Swiss Young Socialists are campaigning to prevent executives from being paid more than twelve times the wage of their lowest-paid employee. A referendum on this is expected in the second half of this year, the group says.

That formula would be particularly appropriate to the public sector, with a complete prohibition on performance bonuses, non-contributory pensions and excessive payoffs.

But what a contrast we are seeing. While the Swiss people are able to force action, we are forced to rely on laborious progress of Mr Pickles, doing very little very slowly. Such are the joys of representative democracy. No wonder the British media, guardians of the status quo, are reluctant to talk about it.

COMMENT: "BONUSES" COMBINED THREAD

Climate change: the invisible global warming

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:09:42 +0000

Lawrence Solomon in a recent post charted the "rise and rise" of global warming over the past fifteen years. Based on UK Met Office data, the graphic above shows the global temperatures in degrees Celsius.

And if you think the flatlining represents proof that global warning has stopped, you are very silly people. Those clever scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have found that the real reason is volcanic eruptions releasing tons of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.

So there you are – we still have global warming, but it is being temporarily suppressed by a volcano-induced increase in the "optical thickness" of the stratospheric aerosol layer. This allowed less sunlight to reach the surface, and therefore lowered the temperature.

The only problem is that, it there is global warming, but it isn't showing, that surely means that there can be no detectable effects from the non-existent global warming. And if that is the case, how come all that "extreme weather" is being blamed on global warming?

After all, if the temperature isn't going up, there can't actually be any temperature-induced weather effects, in which case this "extreme weather" can't be attributable to global warming. Or is that too simple for us mere mortals to understand?

EU legislation: blundering in the dark

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:15:15 +0000

With the Daily Telegraph and other representatives of the legacy media reporting on today's supposed "clash" involving Chancellor Osborne over bankers' bonuses, we confront yet more evidence that the corps of journalists genuinely have no idea how the European Union is run.

Typical of the pack's offering is the Telegraph's headline, "Osborne faces clash over bank bonus cap at talks with EU finance ministers", framing the story in terms that the lame hacks can understand – the "battling Brit" versus the rest of the European Union.

This child-like pastiche is as far as the media can go, as their lamentable ignorance prevents them even beginning to understand what is going on. Even Reuters, whose journalists lay claim to the possession of some brain cells (even if they are rarely used), don't seem to be capable of navigating their way through the Brussels morass. They wrongly assert that Osborne today had a chance to "challenge plans in Brussels to cap bankers' bonuses".

Nevertheless, in another of the agency's reports, we have an apparent corrective to the Telegraph's trivialising biff-bam approach, telling us that Osbonne has no chance of getting a change to the status quo, citing Ireland's Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, as its source.

Irish ministers, of course, have special status here, as Ireland currently holds the presidency of the EU's Council of Ministers. But what we don't get from Noonan is precisely why Osborne is whistling in the wind.

Actually, it is quite possible that Noonan doesn't know anything beyond the framework in which he operates. The system is indeed complex, and one finds that even senior cabinet ministers in the British government have a very limited grasp of the EU's procedural rules. At the highest level this applies, as time and again David Cameron has shown himself ignorant of the EU's procedures.

But the reason Osborne cannot prevail today at the finance ministers' meeting is because there is no procedure which allows his to do so. The ball does not rest in the Council's court, as the next move rests with the European Parliament.

As we discussed on Sunday, this is dictated by the EU's ordinary legislative procedure, the nature of which seems to defeat the entire corps of journalists and indeed most of the Member State politicians.

The journalists' mistake seems to stem from their insistence in treating the European Union as a homogeneous body, instead of a series of (often warring) institutions – and then (in the British camp) to treat the UK as if it were somehow separate from the EU instead of an integral part of it.

Failing to make the distinction between the EU as a whole and its institutions, the hacks thus are unable to appreciate that we are witnessing a power struggle between the European Parliament – strengthened by the Lisbon Treaty – and the Council of Ministers, representing the Member States.

This is an interesting development, the subtlety of which evades the average hack, as the traditional struggle was always between the European Commission and the Council (of Ministers), but now the European Parliament (EO) is emerging as a powerful player in its own right, challenging both the Commission and the Council.

Those, incidentally, who still dismiss the EP as a "toy" parliament, without power, are out of date. The Lisbon Treaty substantially altered the balance of power, and this institution is beginning to flex its muscles and make a real impact on the legislative scene.

Thus, as we partially explained on Sunday, what we have is the EP's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, through its rapporteur Othmar Karas, drafting an amendment to the Commission's proposal, which imposes a cap on bankers' bonuses.

On Sunday, I was unable to find the original amendment – assuming therefore that it had yet to be formally tabled. But it was there. The reason I could not find it was one of terminology. While the media at large (and the politicians) are referring to "bonuses", the amendment was couched in terms of "variable remuneration".

Once this is understood, the rest becomes clearer. Karas's amendment was actually approved by the Economic and Monetary Affairs on 7 March 2012, but what we see is the cap on bonuses set (as is the current proposal) of no more than the fixed salary, but a requirement that they should not exceed two times the fixed part.

However, this basic amendment then attracted rival and in some cases more severe amendments, not least from the Greens, limiting total remuneration to "three times the salary of the head of the respective government" or no more than "thirty times the average remuneration of the lowest paid five percent of employees". One amendment even capped total remuneration to €500.000 while another banned bonuses altogether, for bank directors, and yet another limited bonuses to 50 percent of fixed remuneration.

Thus, the EP was facing a situation – which is not untypical – where a series of rival amendments were to go before the plenary, from which only one could emerge, where no single amendment could command majority support. And here started the horse-trading that is not in the rule books, and which you will not see written up in the text books.

At this point, one has to understand that the EP was arguing over the committee report, which was to become the submission to the parliament as a whole, from which was to emerge the parliament's "common position". And now the situation becomes even more complicated, as the Council, alarmed that one of other of the more extreme amendments might emerge – or that there might be no amendment at all – convened a series of "trialogues".

This is what has confused the poor journos, as these are entirely informal talks between the Council officials (COREPER), the Commission and members of the EP's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, including Karas.

Officially, these trialogues don't exist. They do not appear in the rule books and, therefore, they cannot make formal agreements. But it was at the final trialogue that the parliament agreed to rationalise its amendments and get behind a new amendment, proposing that bonuses should not exceed fixed remuneration – a 1:1 limit.

And that is why, today, Osborne did not have a vote. There is no formal agreement to vote on, within the framework of the rules. Nothing now can happen until the EP votes on a consolidated amendment, provisionally set for 17 April. Then, and only then, does the parliament adopt its position - which may or may not include the bonus cap.

Under the current procedure, that position must be communicated to the Council, and only at that stage does the amended proposal formally exist. Only then can the Council then discuss and vote on whether it agrees with the parliament.

Thus, the very idea that there would be a showdown today was a complete misrepresentation of the process – an ignorant fantasy on the part of the media. Osborne has gone away frustrated, as was always going to be the case. He must wait his turn.

COMMENT: "BONUSES" COMBINED THREAD

EU politics: budget veto on the cards

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:04:09 +0000

After the shenanigans on bankers' bonuses, it seems that the European Parliament is doomed to stay in the news for, according to Die Welt, MEPs are set to reject the reject the multi-annual budget agreement next week, at their plenary session in Strasbourg.

This, the paper claims as an "exclusive" and that it may be, although the Irish Independent was forecasting problems last week.

Nevertheless, we have heard very little recently about the budget from the British media, even if EP rejection was always on the cards, kicking another of Mr Cameron's great victories into touch.

Parliament president Martin Schulz, we are told by Welt, has had initial exploratory talks with the Irish EU Presidency and the European Commission and has demanded that the Council should agree to a "package of demands". This includes a "mandatory mid-term revision of the budgetary framework" by the Parliament and the EU Commission. There will be an insistence on a "legally binding resubmission" to be enshrined in the Finance Act.

Herbert Reul, Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the European Parliament is also demanding more flexibility in reallocating individual budget items. He wants surpluses to "be transferred automatically into the next financial year".

Another demand is for the reallocation of funds within the budget, and the Parliament thus demands "comprehensive negotiations" with the Council. Negotiations could include aspects that were not part of the Council decision.

The test of whether the EU leaders are ready to return to the negotiating table will come the by the end of the week following the plenary session in Strasbourg, when they meet in Brussels for European Council meeting.

This could be a testing time for the "colleagues" as it was difficult enough for them to reach an agreement in the first place. As for Mr Cameron, the very last thing he needs is for his budget "triumph" to unravel.

Media: cleaping up its act

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:10:48 +0000

Jessica Winch of The Telegraph tells us that payday lenders have been told to "cleap up" their act. The same might be said of a newspaper that is downsizing its editorial staff and, in the interests of "economy", cutting down the number of sub-editors it employs.

But, like the payday lenders, the Telegraph is only interesting in taking your money for minimum input. It certainly isn't about giving us accurate news.

UK politics: the dishonesty of the "Left"

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:20:52 +0000

One of the reasons for blogging is the altruistic desire to spread knowledge. Strange though it may be, I have an old-fashioned sense that one should share information when one is blessed with it, for the betterment of mankind as a whole.

And when it came to the recent horsemeat issue, this was something where I could certainly contribute, having been in the food safety business for thirty years, with a comprehensive overview of food legislation and safety systems.

The sadness is that while you can offer knowledge and insight, there is no way one can – or should - force it on others. But it remains troubling that so many seem to revel in their own ignorance, and make no attempt whatsoever to remedy it. One can take a horse to water, as I am prone to say, but you cannot make it think.

When it comes to cultivating ignorance, though, none seem to cultivate their ignorance more assiduously than the so-called "Left", as in this very recent example by Left Futures, its dissertation faithfully reflecting the views of the Labour front bench.

The horse-meat "scandal" it thus tells us, "has exposed the awful regulation of food, the disgrace that the food industry is, and class divisions in society that even manifest themselves in peoples' diets".

That then is the mantra and, to illustrate the first point, we are referred to the "Any Questions" programme a few weeks ago when Nigella Lawson said she did not know what the fuss was about. She had eaten horse plenty of times in restaurants.

This, apparently, had evoked a response from Helena Kennedy, who had been "quick to point out Lawson’s privileged position", saying "the horse she'd eaten hadn't come from the knackers yard and not been properly regulated like the horse found in this scandal".

Now, if one recalls the early phase of the publicity on this issue, where Findus was in the frame, the source of the horsemeat was tracked to a slaughterhouse in Romania. And there, no one suggested that the slaughter had not been unregulated in what was a fully approved EU-standard slaughterhouse.

In fact, if you want to eat rotten meat, the place to have been might have been the branded 220-strong French restaurant chain Flunch, which was last year caught up in a rotten meat scandal, where the Castel Meat Group had been implicated in "repackaging" spoiled meat and sending it on to its restaurant group customers.

The scandal emerged after a "Peter H", former quality director, had discovered that employees of the company had been selling lots of spoiled meat. He had ordered the meat destroyed but had found that, behind his back, they had continued selling it. When Peter H had challenged the practices, he had been fired, the complaining at the end of 2012 to the veterinary services.

Ironically, as with so many others, Castel Meats claims to have ISO 9000 certification and HACCP plans, the latter being a statutory requirement under EU law. But surely, this must be an example of "poor regulation" about which Left Futures complains, for it is exactly the same legal framework under which horsemeat has been sold as beef.

Interestingly, Left Futures - which exhibits strong europhile tendencies – does not identify the source of its "awful regulation of food", and nor does it suggest where improvements might lie, other than to say: "We have to have proper food regulations to make sure that companies cannot exploit the less well off with sub-standard products".

To support these claims for the less well off, we are earnestly told that the horse DNA "has all been found in cheap meant that many people who are less well off have to buy", something which simply is not true. Not only do we have Davigel, the high-end French catering supplier, there have also been several kebab suppliers, and we have also seen adulterated corned beef.

In fact, the very latest findings from Berlin involved two doner kebabs, corned beef, a fresh meat product and one ready meal. The adulteration is by no means confined to foods eaten by the less well-off. This is a widespread international fraud, involving multiple actors in many nations.

Only by complete disregard of the evidence, therefore, could Left Futures assert that we "should make no mistake". The horse-meant scandal, it tells us, "has class at its core". Its about "the rights of all people, whatever their means, to be able to have the dignity to have decent food".

Now add another lefty mantra – the "cuts". The adulteration of beef with horse-meat "was driven on as a race to the bottom for ever cheaper meat by local authorities. With non-essential budgets being cut from hospitals and schools, procurement departments were handing food contracts to the cheapest bidder".

That, it is then asserted, "made companies look outside the law to get cheaper meat and ended up with unregulated horse in our food-chain".

The libel there is, of course, non-specific, but the inference is that companies producing the end products knowingly broke the law. No allowance is made for the probability that some of those companies were themselves victims of this massive epidemic of fraud, and the flawed regulatory system on which they were unwise enough to rely.

In the simple world of the lefties though, there are no greys. It is all black and white. "Ultimately, they advise us, "the scandal has exposed all the problems in the modern food industry".

What those problems are, we are none the wiser. And we are not left to dwell on the issue. The real message is - poor regulation aside - that "there is a clear class division in terms of diet, with those less well off being forced to eat poor quality food that leads to ill health".

Then, sneaked in at the final furlong is the real message: "Government cuts to services" have resulted "in sub-standard food making it onto the plates of schoolchildren and patients". There you go – you knew it was that all along. Like the europhiles, with their "more Europe" as the answer to every problem, the cause of every problem for the lefties is "government cuts".

We don't need inquiries; we don't need knowledge. The answer was there all along. All we needed to do was to read Left Futures.

UK politics: an ironic contrast

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:56:56 +0000

The UK is to provide armoured vehicles and body armour to opposition forces in Syria "to help save lives", Foreign Secretary William Hague said yesterday.

This is as we approach the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, with troops crossing the border from Kuwait on the 20 March 2003. I wonder if Hague appreciates the irony of the moment – that our troops then were not equipped either with sufficient body armour, or suitable armoured vehicles.

And here we are, ten years later, giving away exactly that kit to people who could just have easily been on the other side and, at some time in the future, probably will be.

UK politics: an ironic contrast

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:56:57 +0000

UK politics: aid for industry

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:26:14 +0000

Readers will be delighted to learn that the UK government, under the care of Mr Cameron, last night announced a �10 million aid package for the mining industry.

A slight downside to this award is that it is not for the hard-pressed British industry, but for the corruption-prone Afghanistan Ministry of Mines, whose minister of mines reportedly accepted a bribe of $30 million in exchange for awarding the country's largest development project to a Chinese firm. This was the $3 billion contract to extract copper from the Aynak deposit, considered one of the world's largest unexploited copper deposits.

Last year, however, the project ground to a halt over the deteriorating security situation and the Chinese now need additional financing to restart the work. It is that, to which much of the British finance will be directed, giving the Chinese developers an annual income of close to half a billion dollars, based on current copper prices.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, we celebrate the final closure of one of Britain's last coal mines, with the loss of 650 jobs, brought about by an underground fire which continued to burn ferociously two weeks after it started.

The mine, which was once seen as the future of the industry in the UK but, with its owner UK Coal unable to obtain government support, there is now little option but to close the mine.

On the other hand, Drax power station in Yorkshire is to import millions of tons of wood chippings from the United States, to benefit from renewable subsidies which will double the cost of the electricity produced to the consumer.

Somehow, out of all this, one presumes that Mr Cameron wants us to believe that his coalition government has a coherent industrial and energy policy. But, if he is so determined to wreck our domestic enterprises, and burden us with unnecessary costs, while continuing to support his extravagant aid programme, it is unsurprising that he cannot afford any tax cuts.

But, when he blithely tells us there is "no magic money tree", he should perhaps be listening to himself.

UK politics: aid for industry

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:37:09 +0000

The mine, which was once seen as the future of the industry in the UK but, with its owner UK Coal unable to obtain government support, there is now little option but to close the mine.

On the other hand, Drax power station in Yorkshire is to import millions of tons of wood chippings from the United States, to benefit from renewable subsidies which will double the cost of the electricity produced to the consumer.

Somehow, out of all this, one presumes that Mr Cameron wants us to believe that his coalition government has a coherent industrial and energy policy. But, if he is so determined to wreck our domestic enterprises, and burden us with unnecessary costs, while continuing to support his extravagant aid programme, it is unsurprising that he cannot afford any tax cuts.

But, when he blithely tells us there is "no magic money tree", he should perhaps be listening to himself.

COMMENT THREAD

UK politics: aid for industry

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:47:21 +0000

UK politics: grinding us down

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:35:15 +0000

There can be no doubt about the number one political story of the moment – as far as the personality-obsessed media goes: the conviction of Vicky Price. We are left with the prospect of her, and her former husband, Chris Huhne going to jail in the near future.

What struck me though was the recent picture of Huhne in the Daily Mail. Out of office and no longer an MP, he somehow looks shrunken and ordinary – so very far from the puffed-up, self-important secretary of state that he once was.

The machinery of state, however, goes on, demonstrating that the placeholder has limited ability to affect the course of a department, and can so easily be replaced when he (or she) falls out of favour. But then, Huhne was going with the flow, an identikit warmist preaching to a gang of warmists. No wonder he is so easily replaceable.

Nevertheless, his potential to cause political damage does not seem to have ended, as there is some talk of the Lib-Dem hierarchy having known of his transgressions long before they become known to the police, leading to charges of a political cover-up. This may have legs but it may also die a death. Either way, it is probably no longer an issue in the grander scheme of things.

What is more significant, perhaps, is a sudden sense of loss of direction, as if the body politic has been stricken with an outbreak of what the French Foreign Legion used to call le cafard. The politicians posture and prattle as before, but their behaviour had acquired a sense of pointlessness. The coalition is dead men walking. Everybody now is waiting for it to die.

Perhaps that's why Murdoch is making some moves, although of they were that secret and important, their nature would not have been revealed. Murdoch is sending a message to Cameron, and doesn't care who knows it.

With that, and talk of rebellion in the ranks, high and low, Cameron seems to have lost any control, any semblance of conviction. He talks the talk, but one senses he is just going through the motions, waiting for the end.

Unlike Huhne, though, he looks bloated and podgy. But speaking in a West Yorkshire factory yesterday, he had as his background, "high-precision cylindrical grinding machines", his incipient corpulence conceals the fact that The Leader has a grinding machine of his own.

The question is whether it is grinding him down, or us – or all of us.

UK politics: Lib-Dems "cockroaches"

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:23:42 +0000

The ghastly Tim Farron meant "strong as" cockroaches. "We are a bit like cockroaches after a nuclear war, just a bit less smelly, we are made of sterner stuff", he says.

But other characteristics come to mind. In London especially, they infest the sewers and come up through the toilets to plague homes and businesses. That seems more akin to Lib-Dem way of operating.

Climate change: playing the health card

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:03:21 +0000

Launched upon the unsuspecting world today is a report headed "The Unpaid Health Bill - How coal power plants make us sick". Aimed at coal-fired electricity generation, this is a naked attempt to play the "health card", bolstered by faux economics, as a means of promoting the climate change agenda.

Translated into journalese by AFP, this becomes a tale about how Emissions from coal-fired power plants in the European Union contribute to over 18,000 premature deaths a year and cost an annual €42.8 billion.

The basis of this calculation is the allocation of a direct cost of €2.3 million to each premature death, at an upper range, which is a classic scare tactic. To put it in perspective, we are told that lung cancer in Europe (2008) caused 367,000 premature deaths.

Applying the same value (€2.3 million) to those deaths, we come up with a cost of €844,100,000,000. With the entire EU GDP standing at a mere €12 trillion, that would suggest that lung cancer deaths alone cost the EU economy a full seven percent of GDP.

It is worth remembering that yesterday, we had the great hoo-ha about processed meats adding 20,000 premature deaths to the list, in the UK alone. That, by the same reckoning, would cost the UK economy €46 billion.

Now, ignoring causes of premature death such as heart disease, and concentrating just on cancer, the deaths for the EU are about 550,000 a year. By definition, all of these are premature. Thus, if we apply the €2.3 million cost, we arrive at €1,265,000 trillion.

However, if we take on board cardiovascular diseases (CVD), there are about two million deaths a year, of which, it is calculated that 80 percent are preventable and therefore – by definition – premature.

Apply the €2.3 million cost to this group, and we are looking at €3.7 trillion, and the total cost burden to the EU economies from cancer and CVD at nearly €5 trillion. Add other causes of premature death and we are easily looking at €6 trillion plus – more than half the entire annual EU GDP.

Clearly and very obviously, the figure of an annual cost of €42.8 billion for the health effects of coal-related air pollution is a gross exaggeration, more so when we look at some other claims in this respect. For instance, in 2005, we had a BBC report on a study by the European Commission which had air pollution (as a whole) responsible for 310,000 premature deaths in Europe each year, costing "more than" €80 billion.

So, when the European Commission looks at 310,000 deaths a few years back, they "cost" €80 billion, or thereabouts, but when the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) – the author of the current report – looks at just over 18,000 coal-related deaths, they cost €43 billion.

Look at the Commission and HEAL, though, we find – effectively – they are one and the same. The HEAL study is part-funded by the EU and the cost assessment is based on data reported under the Large Combustion Plants Directive (LCPD).

This relies on an assessment published in The Lancet in 2007, based on the results of the EU funded research project ExternE, where one Terawatt hour (TWh) of electricity produced from hard coal was reckoned to cause on average 24.5 air pollution related deaths. Then, the calculation of health impacts and related costs is based on the same methodology as used by the Clean Air For Europe (CAFE) Programme – also funded by the EU.

Small wonder that the Commission prefers to use its paid proxies to spread its propaganda, with very convenient timing as the LCPD is set to knock out a major component of our generating capacity. Playing the "health scare" card is always a winner, especially if you can call in aid the "non-profit" Health and Environment Alliance to do your dirty work.

EU politics: Alternative f�r Deutschland

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 23:31:34 +0000

"Democracy is eroding," reads a statement on its website (in German). "The will of the people regarding (decisions relating to the euro) is never queried and is not represented in parliament.

The government is depriving voters of a voice through disinformation, is pressuring constitutional organs, like parliament and the Constitutional Court, and is making far-reaching decisions in committees that have no democratic legitimacy".

Thus does Spiegel tell us of a anti-euro party in Germany, its founders a collection of some of the country's top economists and academics.

Named Alternative f�r Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), the group has a clear goal: "the dissolution of the euro in favour of national currencies or smaller currency unions". The party also demands an end to aid payments and the dismantling of the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund.

And it also demands referendums on fundamental social issues. "Blatant bad decisions by our elected officials", it says. "need to be corrected. This especially applies to the assignment of important powers to the EU".

The party has yet to produce a party manifesto but its "impressive" list of prominent supporters includes a large number of conservative and economically liberal university professors.

The most notable name on the list is Hans-Olaf Henkel, the former president of the Federation of German Industries, but it also includes such economists as Joachim Starbatty and Wilhelm Hankel, who were part of the group that challenged Greek bailout aid at Germany's Constitutional Court.

The main founder, Bernd Lucke, a professor of macro-economics from Hamburg, was a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats for 33 years before leaving the party in 2011 as a result of euro bailout efforts. "The current, so-called rescue policies are exclusively focused on short-term interests, primarily those of the banks," he says.

Nevertheless, it is not yet certain that the party will be able to collect the requisite number of signatures in time to be included on the ballot in general elections this autumn - a minimum of 2,000 in each of Germany's 16 states or 0.1 percent of each state's population, whichever is lower. "We will make that decision based on the support we receive," Lucke adds. "But we have been overwhelmed by the public's reaction thus far".

Even if the party does get on the ballot, it remains unclear whether it will attract significant support, says Spiegel. So far, it remains a single-issue party - and even on that single issue there is a lack of clear consensus on exactly how to proceed.

There is a feeling though that, with concern in Germany growing that the country has become the de-facto paymaster for the rest of the euro zone, Alternative for Germany could attract a fair number of protest votes from frustrated conservatives.

But, most likely, the party's success will depend on the state of the euro at the time of the election. Should the crisis flare up, so too could anti-euro sentiment. If it does, concludes Spiegel, that sentiment in Germany now has a political home.

Christopher Booker: Passing of the People’s President

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 11:29:42 +0000

Guest post

Since the proprietor and chief author of this blog is very careful to avoid listening to the Today programme or watching Channel 4 News, I have had to keep him posted in recent days on the remarkable coverage given by the BBC and the Channel 4 team to events in Caracas and the death of that legendary hero of our times, Hugo Chavez.

In its general tone this has been so striking that I was tempted to write about it in this week's Sunday Telegraph column, until more pressing subjects intervened.

From the moment Chavez's death was announced, the BBC went into adulatory meltdown. "Charismatic and controversial" was the mantra phrase repeated half a dozen times before 9 o'clock that morning, to mark the passing of "the People's President", who among his many other achievements could have boasted that, under his benign rule, Venezuela became in 2010 the country with the highest murder rate in the world.

Where these reporters really came into their own was when they could wander round the streets of Caracas marvelling at such an astonishing explosion of collective grief, as vast crowds spontaneously gathered to mourn the passing of the man they looked on as their "Father".

According to Channel 4's Matt Frei, he could think of nothing remotely to compare with it since the scenes in Rome which marked the passing of Pope John Paul II. To the BBC, the comparison was with the upwelling of national grief at the death of Diana Princess of Wales.

As millions turned out for the lying-in-state – and 30 world leaders converged on Caracas for the state funeral, led by the rulers of some of the world's nastiest and most despotic regimes, such as Ahmedinajad of Iran, Lukashenko of Belarus and Raoul Castro of Cuba – I was irresistiibly reminded of the not dissimilar scenes in Moscow in 1953 when Stalin likewise lay in state in the Hall of Columns.

By a brilliant coup de theatre, Chavez even managed to die on 5 March, exactly 60 years to the day after the death of Stalin. And what a masterstroke it was to announce that Chavez's corpse is to be embalmed and put on permanent public show as an object of worship, just as was Stalin's until he had to be secretly hurried away for burial seven years later after being denounced by his successor Nikita Khruschev.

Accounts of the mood in Moscow in 1953 are remarkably reminiscent of what we have seen being reported on in Caracas, the vast, grief-stricken crowds counted in millions, the interviews with sobbing citizens, the sense of a people suddenly robbed of the man who had given them and their nation an elevated sense of identity.

To be fair, at least Matt Frei gave a brief interview with one man who was not entirely carried away by the general mood, who refused to say that he was sad at Chavez's passing, but then also refused to explain why.

In terms of group psychology, obviously these two events had much in common, as a monster whose presence had dominated all their lives for so long departed, leaving a horrible sense of vacuum behind.

But at least in Moscow in 1953 the crowds became so great that they had to call in the tanks of the Red Army, leaving hundreds of people crushed to death. When it comes to real monsters, the friend of Ken Livingstone and George Galloway was no more than a beginner.

PS. If you want to know more about Chavez, it's no good looking at Wikipedia. His entry has been taken over by Friends of Chavez, just as those on climate change have been hijacked by the warmists.

Food fraud: a growing problem

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 16:14:44 +0000

The very few that watched Defra questions in Parliament on Thursday last would have witnessed shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh trying to breathe life into the "horsemeat scandal", positioning it – as she always has tried to do – as a health scare rather than consumer fraud.

From a narrow political perspective, Creagh's obsession and limited grasp of the issues has been to the advantage of environment secretary Owen Paterson, who was able to sidestep her questioning which, although aggressive was ill-judged.

Had Creagh taken a wide view of the issue, as the German media are doing, she could have done much more damage in highlighting how ineffective the food control system has become, with the food industry increasingly prone to fraud.

What particularly she is missing is the calls for reform of the system, brought into high focus with the recent episode of contaminated animal feed in Germany, of which some 10,000 tons was delivered from Serbia to 4,500 farms in seven German, with higher than acceptable levels of aflatoxin.

Thus we had Berliner Zeitung retailing a call from the chairman of the Association of Food Inspectors, Martin M�ller, who declared that it was time for a centralising of food controls, with the different state authorities joining forces to tackle the problems centrally and with greater expertise.

M�ller, however, warned that Germany lacked 1500 qualified food inspectors, a complaint picked up by the magazine Stern, which also echoed M�ller's call for "a kind of food Europol".

The need for this was pointed up in an earlier piece in Berliner Zeitung which warns, under the heading "Food Mafia", that the gangs have discovered the food market.

The criminal business of food is on the rise, says the paper. Drug cartels have already been caught dealing with chicken and the paper also recalls that, two years ago there was a major fraud based on adulterated with champagne, in which investigators seized thousands of bottles. In another incident, the Spanish Civil Guard found cheap caviar imported from China, which counterfeiters had misdeclared as high quality and very much more expensive Iranian caviar.

In Belgium, a cheap variety apples were sold as expensive Pink Lady. The Sicilian Mafia helped with the marketing of adulterated wine. And in 2011 Italian counterfeiters misdeclared 700,000 tons of conventional flour, soy and dried fruit as organic produce, selling it at the higher organic prices.

While criminal gangs in the past have enriched themselves mainly from arms trafficking, drug smuggling and human trafficking, they have spread their activities more and more into the area of consumer goods: electronics, counterfeit trainers, pharmaceuticals and now increasingly, foods and beverages.

"This is big business, in which you can earn a lot of money," says a Europol investigator. "The high number of fake and shoddy food we have seized is worrying". Furthermore, there are indications that the trade is being funded with the proceeds of other criminal activities such as drug and human trafficking, with the food trade also being used as a means of laundering "dirty" money.

The authorities complain that they do not know enough about the structure and dimension of the illegal food business. It is clear that there is fraud within the EU as well as via imports from the United States and Asian countries. As a result, in the last two years, national and international law enforcement bodies have stepped up investigations.

Trade with inferior and banned foods has always existed says a Europol investigator, but the scale of the trade is "a fairly new phenomenon" which has emerged only a few years ago".

The highly fragmented European food market is vulnerable to fraud, he says. With agriculture, middlemen, the food industry and the retail sector in Europe, there are 24 million people in 15 million businesses. In Germany alone, there are approximately 160,000 products on the market.

Inevitably, therefore, there are numerous entry points for fraud. The processing steps are numerous and there are long transport routes. To check all participants and products at any time is impossible for the authorities, making this trillion-dollar market attractive for fraudsters.

And while the health of consumers has not been prejudiced by the current rash of food fraud, fake and shoddy does pose a risk. "Criminals who are only interested in their profits have no respect for the consumer," says Europol. "Counterfeit and substandard food and drink are often produced, transported and stored outside of any regulation and hygiene control".

Time and again, though, we see frustrations raised at the changing nature of food controls, which have – under the aegis of the EU – become more and more paper-based.

Thus we see in a recent edition of Die Zeit (pictured above) complaints that checks on organic eggs are based primarily on inspection of invoices and delivery notes. This means that if a farmer or orders too many chicken – and therefore breaches to density requirements – or buys cheaper, non-organic feed, he will suppress the relevant documents.

Also, inspections are made on announced dates which give farmers a chance to make things "disappear" and to reduce overcrowding and bring density down to acceptable limits. (It has been known, under such circumstances, to give birds a day trip to the seaside, keeping them away from the gaze of inspectors.)

However, in this instance the chairman of the Agriculture Committee of the Bundestag Hans-Michael Goldmann, does not hold back from blaming the inspectors. "To them it must have been obvious", he says, that the organic farms were producing far too many eggs for the number of birds registered.

But, says Stern magazine, although the inspectors go into the factories, they rely mostly on the written responses from the companies. The inspections by local veterinary authorities failed. Paper checks were relied upon because it was too difficult to count the chickens.

For consumers though, there is a lesson in the findings from the growing levels of food fraud, which is not evident from recent events. While the emphasis has been on supermarkets and cheap, processed food, Europol has bad news for consumers who swear by farmers' markets. Investigators find that these are the outlets most favoured for putting fake, substandard goods into circulation.

No amount of EU regulation will make it different. Laws only go so far, and paperwork is no guarantee against fraud. Thus we see the the calls for more enforcement. And perversely, as border controls are relaxed, the need increases – to the extent that one wonders whether many of the gains of the so-called Single Market are being wiped out.

Energy policy: the lunacy of biomass

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 19:14:05 +0000

In the Saturday essay for the Daily Mail, Booker dissects Britain's energy policy by looking at the giant Drax power station in Yorkshire.

There is, he writes, no better symbol of madness than turning one of the biggest and most efficiently run coal-fired power stations into a world of eco-lunacy as it embarks on a �700 million switch away from burning coal in its six colossal boilers to devour millions of tons a year of wood chips instead.

Most of these chips will come from trees felled in forests covering a staggering 4,600 square miles in the USA, from where they will be shipped 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to Britain, to fulfil the insane pursuit of reducing CO2 emissions.

Unlike coal, which is now demonised as a filthy, planet-threatening pollutant, biomass is considered ‘sustainable’, because it supposedly only returns back to the atmosphere the amount of CO2 it drew out of the air while the original tree it came from was growing.

Yet coal is still by far the cheapest means of creating electricity. But the Government is so committed to meeting its own and the EU's targets for reducing Britain's "carbon emissions" that it is now going flat out to tackle the problem on two fronts — both of which forced the changes at Drax.

First, the Government wants to use a carbon tax to make burning fossil fuels such as coal so expensive that, before too long, it will become prohibitive for power companies to use them.

A new carbon tax will be introduced in three weeks' time, and applied to every ton of carbon dioxide produced during electricity production. The tax will start at a comparatively low level, but rise steeply every year so that, within 20 years, the cost of generating electricity from coal will have doubled and it will no longer be economical.

Second, the Government is determined to boost all those "carbon neutral" — but currently much more expensive — means of making electricity, such as wind farms, nuclear power and burning biomass. It hopes to achieve this by offering a host of subsidies, paid for by every household and business through electricity bills.

What forced Drax to embark on the switch from coal to "biomass" was ministers' decision last year to give any coal-fired power station which switched to "biomass" the same, near-100 per cent "renewable subsidy" that it already gives to the owners of onshore wind farms.

Tackling the problem: The Government is determined to boost all those 'carbon neutral' - but currently much more expensive - means of making electricity, such as wind farms, nuclear power and burning biomass.

When the experts at Drax did their sums, they could see how, if they stayed with coal, they would gradually be priced out of business by a carbon tax which will eventually make their electricity become twice as expensive. In terms of hard-headed realism, the Government was giving them little choice.

And that is the story Booker tells in his piece: how sensible, well founded business which produces seven percent of the nation's electricity, has been forced to double the cost of the electricity it produces, joining the ranks of the eco-loons in the process. Read what Booker has to say, and weep.

EU politics: Sch�uble's empty words

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:57:44 +0000

In an interview with the Austrian Der Standard, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Sch�uble has warned against the idea of Britain leaving the EU, claiming it would be "catastrophic". "We have to try", Sch�uble says, "not to make the British think 'Europe' isn't concerned about us, we will leave".

His concern,m though, is not primarily for the UK. "Try to imagine", he adds, "explaining to, for example, an Indonesian, that Europe is an incredibly strong, dynamic entity but that it is not in the position to keep a globally oriented member such as Britain. The damage to our reputation alone would be a catastrophe".

This, then, is a German who speaks with forked tongue. At one he is a man at the forefront of pushing for a "federal" Europe, yet on the other hand consistently offers emollient words about Britain not leaving the EU.

The last time he did this was in December when he declared that he would wish for more British involvement in Europe, not less, while cautioning that any attempt to "blackmail" Germany with threats of an exit would not be tolerated.

We thus appear to have an instance here where we take more note of what a politician does, rather than what he says. His words may say "in", while his actions so far have been calculated to push Britain towards the exit.

He would prefer, on the one hand, that Britain agrees with everything the EU throws at it – such as the limits on Bankers' bonuses – but then says he does not want the British to be driven out at the end of the EU, while doing nothing to stop it happening.

But then, in his current interview, he says that he "cannot support the voices in German politics that imagine an EU without the UK". This suggests a domestic agenda. Whatever he might actually feel about the UK, it is not politically advantageous to him to be seen to be driving it out of the EU.

Hence, we get the honeyed words. But, as FAZ once observed, he is a master of empty language (Sprachgirlande). The words mean nothing.

Booker: look at the graph

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 22:09:33 +0000

It was Booker who pointed me to the graph in the Financial Post which went on the blog earlier this week. Now Booker has reproduced it on his column - without a comment facility for the second week and the back office staff manage completely to screw up the website.

Nevertheless, the graph speaks for itself. By including the huge part of the data usually left out, we see that the line looks virtually flat. The actual changes look relatively so small, compared with those rises and falls of several whole degrees the world survived in the past, that any idea that we are facing catastrophic warming pales into insignificance.

In recent months, says Booker, even such fanatical proponents of the warmist orthodoxy as Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, James Hansen of Nasa, and the Met Office have all had to concede that since 1997, the warming trend has stalled virtually to a standstill.

Of course, there was a modest temperature rise in the 20th century, as a continuation of the warming that began 200 years ago as the world naturally emerged from those centuries of cooling known as the Little Ice Age. But the 0.5C rise between 1976 and 1998 was no greater than the 0.5C rise between 1910 and 1940 (with 35 years of cooling between them, so that the net rise in the past century has been only 0.8C).

Yet it was on that modest rise in the 1980s and 1990s that the whole of the greatest and most expensive scare in history was launched on its way, with all the terrifying political and economic consequences we see around us today.

The very last people to recognise this, alas, will be our politicians, because they seem incapable of looking properly at the evidence. The price we are all increasingly having to pay for their gullibility is incalculable.

survived in the past, that any idea that we are facing catastrophic warming pales into insignificance.

In recent months, says Booker, even such fanatical proponents of the warmist orthodoxy as Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, James Hansen of Nasa, and the Met Office have all had to concede that since 1997, the warming trend has stalled virtually to a standstill.

Of course, there was a modest temperature rise in the 20th century, as a continuation of the warming that began 200 years ago as the world naturally emerged from those centuries of cooling known as the Little Ice Age. But the 0.5C rise between 1976 and 1998 was no greater than the 0.5C rise between 1910 and 1940 (with 35 years of cooling between them, so that the net rise in the past century has been only 0.8C).

Yet it was on that modest rise in the 1980s and 1990s that the whole of the greatest and most expensive scare in history was launched on its way, with all the terrifying political and economic consequences we see around us today.

The very last people to recognise this, alas, will be our politicians, concludes Booker. They seem incapable of looking properly at the evidence. But the price we are all increasingly having to pay for their gullibility is incalculable.

EU politics: Sch�uble's empty words

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:10:32 +0000

His concern, though, is not primarily for the UK. "Try to imagine", he adds, "explaining to, for example, an Indonesian, that Europe is an incredibly strong, dynamic entity but that it is not in the position to keep a globally oriented member such as Britain. The damage to our reputation alone would be a catastrophe".

This, then, is a German who speaks with forked tongue. At one he is a man at the forefront of pushing for a "federal" Europe, yet on the other hand consistently offers emollient words about Britain not leaving the EU.

The last time he did this was in December when he declared that he would wish for more British involvement in Europe, not less, while cautioning that any attempt to "blackmail" Germany with threats of an exit would not be tolerated.

We thus appear to have an instance here where we take more note of what a politician does, rather than what he says. His words may say "in", while his actions so far have been calculated to push Britain towards the exit.

He would prefer, on the one hand, that Britain agrees with everything the EU throws at it – such as the limits on Bankers' bonuses – but then says he does not want the British to be driven out at the end of the EU, while doing nothing to stop it happening.

But then, in his current interview, he says that he "cannot support the voices in German politics that imagine an EU without the UK". This suggests a domestic agenda. Whatever he might actually feel about the UK, it is not politically advantageous to him to be seen to be driving it out of the EU.

Hence, we get the honeyed words. But, as FAZ once observed, he is a master of empty language (Sprachgirlande). The words mean nothing.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: Sch�uble's empty words

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:12:23 +0000

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: Alternative f�r Deutschland

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 08:42:08 +0000

COMMENT THREAD

Harrogate Agenda: a foundation year

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:15:24 +0000

After launching the idea of the Harrogate Agenda last year, with the publication and subsequent approval of our six demands, things on the surface have been quiet – and deliberately so. We are in for the long haul here, and have decided to make this year our foundation year, setting up the structures and refining the message, ready for a modest launch in September.

We could, of course, go faster, and some of our supporters argue passionately that we should. But the worst thing we could possibly do, in my estimation, is run before we can walk. History is littered with examples of campaigns that rise out of nowhere, achieve a degree of fame and then disappear as fast as they have risen, achieving nothing of any consequence.

Here, one must remember that the Chartist Movement, on which we are loosely based, published its demands in 1838. A petition was presented to Parliament in July 1839, and in November 1839 came the "Newport Rising", a premature event which was a disaster for the movement.

Arguably, far from advancing the cause, it was set back by the early activism to such a great degree that it was not until 1918 – eighty years after the first publication of the demands – that all but one were met, with the advent of universal suffrage.

One is conscious, therefore, of the Bastiat dictum that, "the worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skilfully attacked, but ineptly defended". The worst thing that can happen to the Harrogate Agenda is a premature launch and a misdirected or under-resourced campaign.

The crucial point, from which we can take comfort, is that the tide of history is with us. As Witterings from Witney never tires of pointing out, the "representative democracy" on which our government relies for its legitimacy is increasingly seen as an anachronism, and totally unsuited to the needs of the time.

In that context, despite the ephemeral fluff which is the obsession of our own media, what may be two of the most significant political events to emerge in recent years have occurred abroad – one in Switzerland, the other in Germany.

The first – barely mentioned in the UK – was the Swiss referendum on executive pay, followed by the considerable interest shown by the German media and political classes, which continues today with a major feature in Welt am Sonntag, where they are looking enviously at the Swiss (below).

At the core of the Harrogate Agenda, or course, is the principle of "direct democracy", very much on the lines of Swiss democracy, borrowing from that country but not entirely copying it.

But what is significant about the recent Swiss referendum is that the mood is catching. As we noted yesterday, the new opposition group in Germany, the Alternative f�r Deutschland (AFD), has embraced the idea of direct democracy. It demands referendums on fundamental social issues. "Blatant bad decisions by our elected officials", it says. "need to be corrected. This especially applies to the assignment of important powers to the EU".

And here, an important theme begins to emerge. The AFD is the first specifically eurosceptic party to emerge in Germany and, with a commitment to direct democracy, it confronts one of the core principles of the European Union, as specified in Article 10. This states that: "The functioning of the Union shall be founded on representative democracy" and that: "Citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament".

In other words, the AFD commitment to direct democracy, and indeed the Harrogate Agenda, are incompatible with continued membership of the European Union. Direct democracy and the European Union cannot exist side-by-side.

With unintended irony, the Treaty says that, "Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union", then telling us that, "Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen". What it does not allow for is that decisions should be taken by the citizens.

Given that the European Union is our supreme government, this necessarily requires for the Harrogate Agenda to succeed that we first remove ourselves from membership of the European Union. This means that, in terms of any future "in-out" EU referendum, we very much have a dog in the fight.

In fact, not only does pursuit of the Harrogate Agenda require departure from the EU, it also gives us the reason for leaving. Direct democracy is an objective worth pursuing in its own right. If the price of gaining this objective is leaving the EU, that is extremely good value.

However, linkage between the EU withdrawal and the Harrogate Agenda also tends to influence the timing and the strategy of the latter.

What we must bear in mind is that, sooner or later, there will be an "in-out" referendum. At its earliest, it will be 2017, but then only in the event that the Conservatives win the next election – which looks increasingly unlikely. This notwithstanding, we must assume that, at some time in the future, there will be a referendum.

In any such contest, it will be necessary that THA (as we are beginning to call ourselves) is an active player. We would expect to be a key member of any coalition which formed to the official "no" campaign, and to promote the Harrogate Agenda as one of the positive reasons for leaving the EU.

Thus, in our view, the immediate objectives of THA are best served by forging an alliance with putative "no" campaigners, and ensuring that we have a seat at the table in any discussions about building a fighting coalition.

All of that suggests that we pace ourselves carefully, focusing initially on EU issues, and using them – and any "no" campaign - as a springboard for a full-blown Harrogate Agenda campaign. Through this, leaving the EU ceases to become an end in itself (thereby ensuring the failure of any campaign) but a means to an end.

On that basis, our target for a modest launch, with the infrastructure in place, by September, is a measured response to the need to mount a long-term campaign. And if UKIP, after 20 years and the expenditure of millions has yet to gain its first MP, for us to spend a year or so building our structures hardly seems extravagant.

EU politics: no help from the Italians

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 23:26:58 +0000

While the Google machine translation is quite good with German, it is less so with Italian, the headline for the Corriere Della Sera reading, "Il referendum sull'euro non entusiasma", which it turns into: "The referendum on the euro uninspiring".

It might perhaps be better put as "no enthusiasm" for a euro referendum, which is the thrust of the piece, telling us that Beppe Grillo's proposal is falling on stony ground. The majority (69 percent) of Italians surveyed in an opinion poll for the paper were against the idea of a referendum, with 36 percent strongly against, as against only 30 percent in favour.

Worst still for Grillo, even 67 percent of his own supporters did not want a referendum. And, on the substantive question, 73 percent did not want to return to the lira, very close to the 74 percent of overall response, with just 16 percent wanting to dump the euro.

Even amongst those who would be prepared to leave the euro, many still regard it as a "negative event", giving a majority (82 percent, including 53 percent who considers it "a disaster) who think it would be a bad thing. Furthermore, opinion is hardening. In June last it was 70 percent, with 74 percent recorded in September.

Significantly, 77 percent of Grillo's supporters who were in favour of an exit regarded it as a negative event for the economy.

A Reuters report adds a little political background (although it does seem to muddle the figures), but the upshot is that the vast majority of the population seem to support the euro. Corriere Della Sera thinks that is means that the traditional parties have a chance of recovering support from Grillo, although it concedes that how well they will do depends on their degree of persuasiveness.

For us, though, it would seem to suggest that the eurosceptic agenda does not exert much leverage with the Italian electorate, although one suspects that if a response was invited on immigration, a more EU-critical line might be apparent.

The strongly pro-euro line in Italy makes an interesting contrast to recent German sentiment – in terms of support for Alternative f�r Deutschland - and with the poll last June, which had only 43 percent of Germans voting to keep the euro, against 41 percent opting to return to their former currency.

What is fascinating, though is that, contrary to the received wisdom of a certain brand of British eurosceptic which sees in the EU a German plot to dominate Europe, on current form, it looks as if the our main support for bringing down the evil empire could come from Germany.

Certainly, this country, rather than Italy, seems a good place to look for allies.

EU politics: settlement with the sinners

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:00:09 +0000

A juicy little scandal is sweeping through Athens, with the local English-language newspaper, Ekathimerini telling us of multiple resignations of high officials after alleged corruption over the commissioning of a natural gas electricity plant in central Greece in October 2007, which was completed last year.

Embarrassingly for the Greek government, the man at the centre of the storm is a senior finance ministry official and head of Greece's privatisation agency, Takis Athanasopoulos, who has now been charged with "breach of duty, with aggravating circumstances under the law about public embezzlement".

Greece, says Reuters has stepped up prosecutions of politicians and businessmen in recent months amid rising public anger against a wealthy elite partly blamed for dragging the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

On the other hand, when such high officials are charged with embezzlement, it shows that Greece must be a primitive country. Their officials and industry leaders have not yet learned to institutionalise and thereby legitimise such theft.

All they have to do is set up remuneration committees, manned by their pals, and award themselves obscene salaries and bonuses. As long as this is done in the open, in accordance with procedures, they can steal as much as they can carry and even get knighthoods for their trouble.

Lacking such skill in advanced peculation, this – in the words of commenter Costas Iordanidis - has brought Greece to the point where the political system is unravelling.

He notes that two of the country's highest-profile politicians – former Thessaloniki Mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos, who also served as a New Democracy minister in the 1980s, and former Socialist heavyweight Akis Tsochatzopoulos, who also hails from the northern port city – have both been dragged to prison in what has been called "the settlement with the sinners".

In the past, writes Iordanidis, these politicians were supported by tens of thousands of PASOK and New Democracy voters, who placed trust in the integrity of their character or at least in their ability to manage public matters. The country's economic establishment was keen to schmooze with Tsochatzopoulos - he was a minister with nationwide influence – to advance their material interests.

In what has resonance here, Iordanidis then says that innocent supporters were disillusioned and the corrupt ones were ridiculed. Some, he says, are now worried about the potential repercussions as the scandalous deals with these politicians come to light. Greece's already discredited political system has suffered a devastating blow.

Some critics say that their punishment was, perhaps, too harsh. Others say that the judges were influenced by the overall mood or the reductions to their salaries – cries and signs of confusion from a system that is coming apart.

It's hard, Iordanidis observes, for traditional parties to accept their discrediting in such a short period of time. It's even harder for interests outside the political system to grapple with what is happening. But, he concludes, we are witnessing the dismantling of the Greek political system. And this is just the beginning.

Energy: electric cars kaput

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:38:06 +0000

It was in October last year that Handelsblatt indicated that all was not well with the plan to produce (and sell) a million electric cars in Germany by 2020.

Now, despite the pivotal role of electric cars in future energy management systems, the German car industry is effectively giving up the struggle to produce electric models and will now concentrate on producing hybrid vehicles, and on fuel cell technology.

According to Die Welt, Audi has "completely pulled the plug" and BMW is not going to expand its range beyond its compact car.

Nor are the Germans on their own in finding electric cars hard going. Bloomberg reports that Nissan has put its electric-vehicle business under the direct supervision of the chief operating officer after sales of the Leaf missed the company's expectations.

Deliveries of Nissan’s flagship electric car in the US, we are told, failed to reach even half its 20,000 target for last year, a "blow" to the company's Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn. He forecast that electric cars would become so popular that they would account for at least ten percent of global car sales by the end of the decade.

The problem is highlighted by this report, which makes the obvious point – which has clearly eluded Ghosn – that the electric car is a short-range vehicle, and an extremely expensive option.

Closer to the real world, therefore, is Ralf Speth, chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover. He says that electric cars will never be a mass-market solution to climate change and should not get government subsidies.

"The batteries are too expensive", he says, "the customer must be very rich, and can only use [them] in mega-cities [where there are charging points]". He asks: "Should we do it only for the rich?" In his view, it would be better to wait until the technology improves and there is a greater benefit to the environment.

Still, though, there are those trying and failing, such as the Better Place electric-car company in Israel, which has managed to pile up €500 million in losses in selling 750 cars. Clearly, unless you want to waste a great deal of money, electric cars are nit much use for anything.

Media: predicting the odds

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:22:37 +0000

That was less than a week ago. And now we have the Telegraph reporting that snow and freezing gale force winds have caused travel chaos across the country as Britain faces some of the coldest temperatures of the winter.

To be fair, the "experts" are not involved in the Star forecast. The paper is relying on a Ladbrokes spokeswoman, on the basis of bets placed, saying that, "we're confident it’s going to be the hottest March ever rather than the coldest". But, on the other hand, this is the organisation offering odds of 11/10 on a Labour majority at the next election.

Punters, it would seem, are rather better at predicting elections than they are the weather. But then, Mr Cameron is making it rather easy for them.

EU politics: strange and different times

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:57:48 +0000

Without even having fought a single election, the Alternative f�r Deutschland is causing considerable perturbation in German politics, according to an opinion poll carried out for Focus magazine. Given the choice, the "prestigious Emnid poll" finds, more than a quarter of the electorate would vote for this anti-euro party.

Emnid CEO, Klaus-Peter Sch�ppner, says that the results are worth noting. "The 26 percent is a relatively high value [which] suggests that there may be potential for a new protest party".

Reuters, in a separate report, has picked up the poll, stating that the result highlights German unease over the costs of the eurozone crisis.

Germany's mainstream parties, it says, remain solidly pro-euro despite grumbling over bailouts of countries such as Greece. A German taboo on nationalism, rooted in atonement for the crimes of the Nazi era, has helped to muffle eurosceptic voices.

The poll, conducted by TNS-Emnid, not only showed that 26 percent of Germans would consider backing a party that wanted to take Germany out of the euro, as many as forty percent in the 40-49 age bracket would do so.

The new group was due to hold its first meeting yesterday in a northern suburb of Frankfurt but, so far, there have been no published reports about it, But one of the party founders, economics professor Bernd Lucke, says he has no concern that it would be able to raise the required 2,000 signatures in each German region to take part in September's federal election.

Reuters notes that previous eurosceptic parties in Germany have made little headway. One of them, the "Free Voters", has won seats in Bavaria's regional assembly but have yet to win support at the national level. AFD, though, could prove a greater challenge to Angela Merkel.

Nevertheless, the Frankfurter Rundschau has former economics professor Joachim Starbatty, one of the party's "mentors", admitting that the chances of a breakthrough are limited. It would be difficult for a new party in such a short time to build an infrastructure, he says.

In an attempt to bring them quickly into the game, AFD founder Bernd Lucke sought an alliance with the "Free Voters", but feelers have been rejected. Thus, this liberal-conservative group threatens to fragment the vote, with unknown effect.

Starbutty, though, believes it will be hard for the party to break the strong commitment people have to the establishment parties. But, says Reuters, many Germans, including at the Bundesbank, are deeply uncomfortable with the action by the ECB pledge and last month's inconclusive election in Italy.

These are strange and different times, where the Red Cross has never distributed so much food aid in Europe since the end of the Second World War, and a comedian is predicting a collapse of the political system. Anything can happen in the next six months.

UK politics: Huhne banged up at last

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:30:21 +0000

And although one can rejoice at the downfall of a dangerous and self-seeking minister, I wouldn't wish their fate on anyone, not for that "crime" – especially when you see what real toe-rags get away with.

COMMENT: "HUHNE" THREAD

UK politics: the "Europe" card

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:19:44 +0000

Polls may come and polls may go, but in the frenetic Westminster Village atmosphere of plot and counter-plot, this current Guardian/ICM poll is of some interest.

A month after Eastleigh, it has the Conservatives clawing back some of Labour's lead, to stand at 31 percent, while Ed Miliband's party stands at 39 percent. The Lib-Dems are up two, on 15 percent, and the UKIP "fever" has abated somewhat, with that party dropping from nine to seven percent.

But what is more significant is that there is apparent support across the political spectrum on issues such as the EU. By a majority of 67 to 25 percent, voters across the spectrum say "the Conservatives would be more appealing if they took a tougher line with Europe".

Thus, the poll indicates that the "right" is solid in believing a tougher line would boost the Tories. We get 83 percent of Tories, and 100 percent of UKIP supporters favouring this line, but even among Labour and the Lib Dems majorities of 56 and 64 percent respectively take the same view.

An even larger majority say the same about "a tougher line on immigration". Overall, a tougher policy is favoured by 75 to 21 percent. And in what the right may seize on as a rejection of gay marriage, voters judge by 69 to 24 percent that the Tories' appeal could be boosted by keeping "themselves on the side of traditional families".

Interestingly, though, there is little support for views of former defence secretary Liam Fox, who on Monday called for lower taxation as a priority, with a freeze on public spending. That attracts only 21 percent of the poll – respondents who hope for "lower taxes" above all else.

As regards the bigger picture, Fox in any event is seen as a busted flush and would be unlikely to attract any significant support in the Tory leadership stakes. Teresa May, having gone out early, with Hammond as a possible running mate, is attracting a degree of opprobrium for her lack of "loyalty".

She, like others (although she should know better) has been gulled by the media chatter about leadership contests – the standard fare of the media claque, whose political correspondents have long since ceased to report serious politics and are entirely focused on personalities and gossip.

However, going too early likely means she will crash and burn – the early front-runners rarely win the race. And, if this poll is any indicator, the "Europe" card may be as significant as we hoped it would be.

Energy: Japan extracts methane hydrate

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:50:14 +0000

In what must been seen as a major setback for the greens, the Japanese have said that they have successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate off the central coast of Japan - a world first.

Methane hydrates, or clathrates, we are told, are a type of frozen "cage" of molecules of methane and water. The gas field in question is about 30 miles away from Japan's main island, in the Nankai Trough, extracted from about 1,000 feet below the seabed.

Researchers say it could provide an alternative energy source for Japan which imports all its energy needs, and the estimated deposits in the Trough amount to at least 40 trillion cubic feet, sufficient for a decade or more of Japan's gas consumption. Total reserves may be sufficient to supply Japan for a century.

Globally, by some estimates, the energy locked up in methane hydrate deposits is more than twice the global reserves of all conventional gas, oil, and coal deposits combined. Other countries including Canada, the US and China have been looking into ways of exploiting the deposits and are also reporting promising results.

The Japanese aim is to establish methane hydrate production technologies for practical use within five years, following which substantial quantities will doubtless be extracted.

Any exploitation is bound to have a global impact as, since the backlash against the nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster two years ago, Japan has become a major player on the global gas market, driving up prices of internationally traded gas.

A major new source of Japanese gas, therefore, is bound to have an effect on relieving the pressure on gas prices – even in the UK – making this fossil fuel more attractive, until the carbon tax wipes out its cost advantage.

This notwithstanding, a substantial addition to global reserves from this unconventional source further weakens claims that there is a global energy shortage. Success by other countries, and exploitation of what will then be proven energy reserves, will remove energy shortage from the political agenda, with interesting knock-on effects.

Climate change: not just us

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:37:18 +0000

A pile-up in the snow on the A45 yesterday got full media coverage, as dozens of people were injured, some seriously. And it could have been much worse. According to police, up to 100 vehicles were involved in the accident, including several trucks.

Inevitably, there are questions about the lack of preparedness, leading one researcher to note that sudden changes in weather do create a special hazard. But, just for once, this is not the UK. The A45 in question is in Hesse, near M�nzenberg, as opposed to the A23 in England which took the brunt of the weather here.

As always, there were complaints from motorists stranded overnight, but there were similar problems in the Channel Islands, and throughout Northern Europe, including France, Belgium. Holland and Germany.

Eurostar train services between London and Paris were suspended after snowfall of up to two feet on the tracks in northern France and Belgium, leaving passengers stranded at St Pancras. But then, nearly a third of France's regions were on alert and the government activated a ministerial crisis group.

Both of the main airports serving Paris were badly affected by the weather, with Charles de Gaulle and Orly cancelling up to a quarter of flights. No aircraft took off from the nearby Beauvais airport, which serves mainly low-cost airlines.

At Orly, a Tunisair flight carrying 140 people from Djerba skidded off the runway on landing but no one was injured, an airport source said. And a traffic accident near Lille injured 14 people and a 58-year-old homeless man was found dead, presumably from the cold, outside a building in the town of Saint-Brieuc in Brittany.

Belgium had its share of chaos, experiencing nearly a thousand miles of traffic jams on motorways caused by snowdrifts and ice. Buses and trains were cancelled or delayed in Brussels and other towns and the high-speed Thalys service linking Paris and Brussels was suspended.

Thus, it is not only Britain that suffers unduly when there is unexpected snowfall. Most of the European authorities seems to have been unprepared – as indeed were many drivers.

But most unprepared of all were the warmists. They have been very quiet indeed, although in due course they will be telling us that this unseasonable snow is down to global warming.

For us in the sunny North, though, this is the fifth bout of snow this season, with one session having lasted well over a week. We have not experience conditions like this for more than 20 years, and I can't remember when we last had snow this late.

With that, it doesn't matter what the warmists say. They really have lost the public argument. And when the lights go out, I suspect it will be open season for greens. And the more they parade their propaganda, I guess the worse it will be for them.

EU budget: procedures baffling brains

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:01:25 +0000

The EU budget was up for debate in the European Parliament today, and then for a vote. Yet, despite the importance of this issue, which was pitching the parliament against the member states heads of government – who believe they already have a deal - only the BBC and Euractiv offered reports, neither of which gave a clear – or comprehensive – picture of what was going on.

This is all the more puzzling as Die Welt signalled story weather ahead last week, which we reported on the day – almost the only English-language report on the net.

Current reports focus an a Motion for a Resolution drafted by the leaders of the main political groups in the parliament.

This is a potentially explosive document as it asserts that the European Council's conclusions on the MFF (Multiannual Financial Framework), is "no more than a political agreement between Heads of State and Government", and "rejects this agreement in its current form, as it does not reflect the priorities and concerns expressed by Parliament".

Euractiv, in its detailed report, suggested that there was strong pressure from national delegations to water down this wording. We were told that amendments tabled would remove the word "reject" and the proposed revisions would be voted upon in this week's session in Strasbourg.

The debate was held this morning, without the final text of the resolution being listed on the agenda, with a counter-motion proposed by Richard Ashworth on behalf of the ECR Group. The vote was scheduled for the midday session.

However, even if this resolution falls – which it well might – the battle is far from over. Procedurally, the Parliament is still required to come to an agreement with the Council on the detail of MFF, with formal negotiations set to start in April with a target for an agreement by the summer.

Meanwhile, the procedure for agreeing the annual budget for 2014 is going ahead, on which there was a debate yesterday, on a separate motion. On this, a formal proposal is expected from the Commission in April, although without an agreement on the MFF, it is not clear how the budget will be framed.

All of this makes the position as clear as mud, so one can quite understand the media walking away from the complications, and going for the easy option of reporting on possible changes to the euro elections.

After all, the EU comes under foreign news, and people aren't interested in what goes on in foreign parts, especially when there is so much important domestic news to absorb.

Horsemeat fraud: back in the news

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:50:38 +0000

After something of a pause, food adulteration has suddenly made a brief reappearance. Another Tesco product has been found to contain two to five percent horsemeat.

This is 600g packs of frozen meatloaf, sold as "Tesco Simply Roast Meatloaf", manufactured between October 2012 and January 2013 at Eurostock in Craigavon, Northern Ireland. The product has now been withdrawn and Tesco is telling the world that said it would complete its own investigation into tracing the "source of contamination" before it took a call to continue with the supplier.

If Tesco is still referring to "contamination", that suggests it is either being a little bit coy about being associated with the "adulteration" word, much less admitting to their involvement in what is a growing epidemic of fraud.

However, if the corporate Tesco is playing games, it is not alone. Food adulteration never actually went away. Over the weekend, for instance, the Scottish Sunday Mail reported that one in three curries tested in Scottish restaurants were "fake", using cheap beef instead of lamb in popular Indian dishes such as bhoona and korma.

Substitution was found in 46 of 129 restaurants tested; 33 contained no lamb at all and the remaining 13 had some lamb, a raw ingredient priced at about �9 a kilo, adulterated with cheaper cuts of beef which could be bought for �5 kilo. Officials have not so far taken any action against the restaurants, but are trying to track down the suppliers who, in some cases, are as far away as Birmingham.

Slightly further away is Romania, where Doctor Yordan Voynov, Executive Director of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency, reveals that his agency has discovered unreported horsemeat instead of veal in four products: boiled smoked sausages and one cold smoked flat sausage. That is four out of 25 samples, the first batch of 100 samples taken from the commercial network.

France also has been testing and admits to horsemeat having been found in pre-cooked beef meals prepared meals from four companies other than the already-identified Spanghero-Comigel.

So far, out of 140 tests, two of the new companies, Covi and Gel Alpes who supply William Saurin and Panzani, were associated with Dutch firm Draap Trading – which has already been implicated as a source of the horsemeat. The two others were Davigel (Nestl�) and corned-beef maker Toupnot, but the reports says they have had very little horsemeat.

France, though, has not just had horsemeat to contend with. Like the Americans, they too are aware of the possibility of large-scale fish substitution . Anti-fraud agents from the DGCCRF have been ordered by Consumer Minister Beno�t Hamon to check sole, halibut and sea bass, to ensure that cheaper fish has not been substituted.

DGCCRF agents say they have uncovered 15,700 frauds in 740,000 checks in 142,000 businesses last year and Hamon says that, despite a 16 percent reduction in staff over the past five years he was ringfencing jobs in 2013. He also called for increased use of "mystery shoppers" to uncover fraud.

The Germans, of course, have had their aflatoxin in animal feed and their organic egg scandal to deal with. And now, it seems, the Hungarians have something fishy going on with eggs – to coin a phrase. Recently, the Customs and Finance Guard discovered in a warehouse in the southeast of the country 864,000 undeclared eggs of unknown origin, worth over €100,000. The goods have been seized and proceedings initiated against the owner of the warehouse.

Alert veterinary officials in Poland have also been busy, raiding a manufacturer in the Bydgoszcz district. It is alleged to have mixed rotting meat with expired shelf-life meat to produce sausages. To date, 25 military units have been supplied with meat from this sausage company.

Iceland went to the other extreme, their investigators finding that one meat product tested for horsemeat adulteration passed the test with flying colours, but only because no meat at all was found in the product.

Into this heady mix, though, wafts the Consumers Association (CA), full of its own importance, telling "government" what action it should take.

"The answer is simple, something must be done", is almost the tenor of the advice, as it calls for, "more surveillance that's better coordinated", even though the chances of picking up adulteration from ransom sampling is slight indeed. The CA wants Defra and the FSA to improve co-ordination, but there is nothing about involving the international police agencies, which are in the forefront of the fight.

The same limited vision afflicts their advice on "tougher enforcement", with "tough penalties" for those prosecuted. But nothing is said of the effect of "due diligence" or of the role of paper-based controls, which have weakened the control system. Instead, the CA calls for better "traceability", and "improved labelling", even though neither would have an impact on food fraud.

And the one thing we have not seen throughout the continent is the structures of the control services having any impact on the prevalence of fraud. Yet the all-knowing, all-wise CA demands that the split between food standards and labelling issues between the FSA and Defra should be ended, with the responsibility for labelling and standards moved back to the FSA.

Never mind that, throughout Europe (and most developed countries), there is a split between food safety and food standards activities – for good reasons. The skill-sets required are different, and the disciplines are very separate.

What we see, though, is the failure to recognise that we are talking about criminal enterprise, with a string international dimension. Beyond the limited vision of the Consumers Association, we need to see police and fraud specialists in the loop. Once again, it has to be emphasised, this is primarily a criminal issue, something which the CA clearly does not understand.

More usefully, we get Petra Wissenburg corporate quality projects director for Danone telling us that we must think like criminals to beat the food fraudsters. And that again is another skill set.

The fish products industry adds that the industry sectors must cooperate and work together. That means taking food fraud seriously, which even now – to judge from Mr Tesco – is not yet happening. But only when fraud is seen for what it is will we start to see some serious progress.

Is the pope a catholic?

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 09:34:08 +0000

Well, he's a Jesuit. That may be better. We are warned not to expect too much, but you never know with Jesuits. If he doesn't surprise, I'd be surprised.

Horsemeat fraud: mischievous media

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:23:04 +0000

In a typical example of tabloid mischief-making, The Sun today "reveals" that the Queen's Master of the Horse "supplied beef laced with horse meat to one of the UK's biggest catering firms".

This goes back to late February when the caterer Sodexo was reported to have withdrawn products from sale after horsemeat was found in them.

At the time, Sodexo refused to name their supplier, and both the FSA and ministers refused to make the name public, claiming that this could prejudice further investigations of what, on the face of it, were criminal offences.

Last night, however, the supplier was named, which The Sun names as one of the Vestey Foods Group, a privately owned group of thirteen food companies trading all over the world.

Picking on the name, however, allows the tabloid (followed by the rest of the personality-obsessed media) to pick on Lord Vestey (pictured), chairman of the group and former chairman of Cheltenham Racecourse. Since 1999, he has served as the Queen's Master of the Horse - a ceremonial role responsible for the "horses of the sovereign".

The way the story reads, one could almost take it that Lord Vestey personally dropped chunks of horsemeat into the Sodexo order, while, according to The Sun and the dreadful Mary Creagh, "Tory ministers" are engaged in a high level cover-up, "protecting their friends in high places rather than the interests of British consumers".

In fact, the supplier is GA International Food Services Ltd in the Labour heartland of Pontefract, one of the Vestey Group enterprises which moved into the area in 2004 to give jobs to unemployed miners, and their wives, after the collapse of the coal industry in the region.

Lord Vestey would have no more knowledge of the detail of the operation that Mary Creagh herself, or her partner in crime, Labour MP Jon Trickett, in whose constituency the plant is situated. But, given its location, this is obviously clear evidence of a plot to destabilise Tory ministers.

In fact, the clue to what has gone wrong lies in the company's website, where we see that it conforms to BRC Global Standards on food safety – part of the same madness that spawned HACCP and which drives the food safety industry, leading down the cul-de-sac of paper-led certification instead of intelligence-led inspections and traditional enforcement measures. You can tell where their interest lie from the introduction:

The BRC Global Standards are a leading global safety and quality certification programme, used throughout the world by over 17,000 certificated suppliers in 90 countries through a network of over 80 accredited and BRC recognised Certification Bodies. The BRC Global Standards are widely used by suppliers and global retailers. They facilitate standardisation of quality, safety, operational criteria and manufacturers' fulfilment of legal obligations. They also help provide protection to the consumer.

The essence here is standardisation, which stems back to the 70s when supermarkets started employing their own inspectors and setting their own hygiene standards. Suppliers found themselves besieged with rival inspectors, often requiring wildly different and often contradictory standards, so much so that a large plant could be getting two or three inspection a week.

To resolve this problem came the industry bodies such as the BRC to produce their own standards, the name of the game being to reduce the number of inspections to, latterly, to provide evidence of conformity which could be used in any "due dilligence" defence. Note how "protection to the consumer" comes as an afterthought.

From what I know of Vestey Group operations, they always were a cut above the rest, but aggressive in defending their interests against local authority inspections. It would be a brave inspector who took them on, and rare to have your council back you, as the expense of taking a case against a Vestey Group company could be prodigious.

Latterly, the "BRC Global Standards" and similar scheme, have provided the "get out of jail free" cards to the food industry, enabling companies to protect themselves from the risk of food safety and related prosecutions, while providing their supermarket and corporate customers with the paperwork needed for their "constructive ignorance" defences.

It was this ethos which infected the EU at the turn of the century, and led to the current food safety package, brought about by intensive corporate lobbying and ignorance on the part of the legislators.

Throughout this affair, this has been at the heart of the problem, and how nice it would be if the media actually focused on the real issues. I did, in fact, take a phone call from Reuters, taking ninety minutes to explain to a journalist the failings of the regulatory system to a Brussels correspondent. But no story was ever published. The issue is beyond the competence of the media to report.

Strangely, though, at a higher level than the EU, in UNECE, we are beginning to see a glimmer of intelligence. Says Alberto Alemanno. Assessing the EU response to the horsemeat fraud, he sees policymakers selling the EU consumer "the illusion of addressing their concerns while instead relying on the first available policy option that promises a quick fix".

"Creating rules is definitely easier, though more expensive for tax payers, than making sure that they are abided by", he adds, offering a truism that is easy to say but hard to put into practice. Not least, policymakers tend to want panaceas. Devising real solutions is far too difficult for EU politicians and risks upsetting too many powerful people.

Media: Pope Francis on journalists

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:11:37 +0000

Courtesy of he loss-making Guardian, we see what the pontiff thinks of the fourth estate. "Journalists sometimes risk becoming ill from coprophilia and thus fomenting coprophagia: which is a sin that taints all men and women, that is, the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive aspects", he says.

Could be that he has been reading the blog, where we used exactly the same definition, or is the Jesuit influence showing? Either way, it's nice to have a papal endorsement.

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: friends of the Mafia

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:57:21 +0000

The circus is back in town, as the European Council meets in Brussels. This time, there were about 15,000 demonstrators (small by Brussels standards) protesting about "austerity", with the issues of jobs and growth to the fore.

This is because, by tradition, the Spring European Council is devoted to economic matters. And, to greet the event, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is running a long article about fraud, the Mafia and EU structural funds.

The story is not new and actually picks up on a piece this newspaper did last year when it reported on a "record" €400 million being diverted by fraud on road construction in southern Italy.

The specific focus this time is on Calabrai, and the appalling story of the upgrading (not) of the A3 highway. This ambitious project, now considered as the main European gateway for Colombian cocaine, is in a region which has so far absorbed €2 billion of EU subsidies.

The highway was built in the sixties and seventies, and connects the provincial capital of Reggio Calabria on the outermost tip of the boot to the northern city of Salerno, 300 miles further north.

Italy started in 1997 to upgrade the road and the EU contributed half a billion euros to the construction work. Since that time, the A3 has been one huge building site, a perilous obstacle course for every driver. It is built of concrete supplied by the Mafia, cut with sea sand.

It is so weak that structures fall apart as soon as they are built.. The A3 tunnel linings have crumbling and cracked pillars; the road surface is bumpy and beset with ripples. Nobody knows when it will ever be ready.

On 3 July 2012, investigators of the European Anti-Corruption Authority, Olaf, told the Brussels press corps that the worst case of fraud involving EU subsidies ever encountered had been between 2000 and 2006 in Calabria.

Some €453 million had been spent on roads, especially on the upgrade of the A3, of which €205 million came directly from the EU structural funds. Local politicians, officials and businessmen were bribed by the Mafia to fix contracts, resulting in an epidemic of overcharging or the presentation of invoices for services never rendered.

But despite this, and despite reports to the contrary, there is no obligation on Italy to pay back the money. It has simply been required to spend the equivalent amounts on another, "clean" project. MEP Ingeborg Gr��le, sitting on Budgetary Control of the European Parliament, was not alone in angrily querying whether Italy had any "clean" projects.

What comes over here is the weakness of Olaf. It makes threats, but they have no teeth. Barely 25 officials are involved with the subsidies from the Structural Funds.

Nevertheless, the EU was told about the A3 in 2006, and informed of "serious irregularities". Between 2006 and 2010, what the EU Commission unearthed was so outrageous that it stopped funding the project. But, from the very first moment, the project had been "under the influence of the Mafia".

This has been described by the Anti-Mafia Commission of the Italian Parliament. Emilio Santillo, Director of Police in Reggio Calabria during the seventies described the activities of the 'Ndrangheta – the Calbrain Mafia - in a detailed report.

Each family was given a special section. They then installed at each construction site one of their men, the "site manager". The construction companies paid these "bosses" three percent of the estimated costs as protection money. They also had to let them dictate who they had hired: mostly young, unemployed men from nearby villages.

The "bosses" then forced the companies to work only with subcontractors, which were controlled by the gangs, and only with suppliers who were approved by the Mafia. Inevitably, materials supplied were of catastrophically poor quality and overpriced.

With the A3 funding, the EU has since 1994 invested almost three billion euros of taxpayers money in Calbria. This was to produce a "new Calabria" of which EU Commissioner Michel Barnier boasted in 2001.

Yet, as to what the money has actually achieved, there has been no formal evaluation. The EU Parliament produced in 2009 a report which questioned the effectiveness and value of aid programmes in southern Italy, as long as the "threat posed by organised crime" continues to exist.

But, even then, road construction was only one of the many criminal enterprises. Drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion, property scams and even food fraud, are all grist to the mill.

Last week, tan Italian paper noted that the 'Ndrangheta had become one of the world's biggest criminal organisations. Experts say it is richer and more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia. Cocaine is thought to be its biggest source of revenue, along with extortion and money laundering.

It controls the European cocaine trade, and has close ties with south American drug cartels. It also operates in northern Europe, Australia and Canada. And decades of EU subsidies, paid for mainly by British and German taxpayers, have helped them acquire these riches.

Yet, today, oblivious to the effects of their policies, EU leaders are meeting to discuss growth and jobs. Yet, on the basis of the current track record, the main beneficiaries will be Mafia gangsters and the drug cartels. What is so significant, though, is that newspapers such as FAZ are choosing to remind their readers of it.

EU Referendum: whatever happened?

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:20:05 +0000

Apart from the Daily Express blundering through the territory, we hardly seem to hear about Mr Cameron's EU referendum.

Via the Express, though, we get a glimpse of it at the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference, where John Longworth, director general, is calling for an early vote. "Once again the Government has chosen to push a decision until after the next election", he says. "Uncertainty is not helpful and the Prime Minister should consider engaging in negotiations this side of the election and bringing forward a referendum".

If this is leadership, then Heaven help up. Longworth backs the PM's stance on renegotiating membership, but if he really thinks that Cameron is able to mount a renegotiation with the "colleagues" in time for a referendum before the next election, he is either ill-advised or terminally stupid.

Further, the last thing we need right now is a referendum. Still we are not ready as a movement to fight an effective campaign. Generally, we see the arguments frozen in time, with the focus on whether we should leave, when the real issue should be "how", part of which being to determine the shape of a post-EU Britain.

But what is remarkable, perhaps, is that the BCC is a voice in the wilderness. From being centre stage, with alarming rapidity, the EU referendum has dropped off the political agenda and is barely discussed in polite company.

Some are trying to resuscitate it, but the issue is going nowhere soon. The heat has dissipated and it is going to take some effort to bring it back. That, at least, gives us time to come up with a better campaign strategy than is currently on offer.

Horsemeat fraud: the Irish dimension

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:34:40 +0000

Simon Coveney, the Irish minister of agriculture yesterday released his government's official report on its investigation into the horsemeat affair. It has been crawled over by the Irish press, such as in the Irish Times (above), which reveals some of the excoriating criticism of the meat industry.

Bizarrely, although it was the Irish finding that triggered the whole of the horsemeat "scare", I have yet to see any reports in the British press, even though, as the Irish Independent picks up, a major Irish food company kept secret its discovery of horse meat in beef products last summer and was later found to have supplied contaminated meat found in school meals and Birds Eye products.

The company was slated for its "inexcusable" delay in notifying Coveney's department of its discovery of horse DNA in imported meat until weeks after the Europe-wide crisis broke. Coveney then criticised QK Meats in the Irish Parliamant, for "knowingly withholding information about problems in the supply chain".

He also criticised management at the ABP food group for failing to maintain proper oversight of its Silvercrest plant and warned that QK and ABP were "risking reputational damage to the Irish food sector itself".

The official report concludes that there was "no evidence that Silvercrest knowingly purchased horsemeat", but the company itself has admitted that "it had used non-approved suppliers in breach of specifications laid down by some of its major customers".

The "failure of management in this regard and the inherent disrespect for customer requirements", says the report, "has led to very serious consequences not just for the company concerned but has also put at risk the reputation of the entire agri-food sector in Ireland".

"It is a real concern that management oversight and corporate governance structures were not in place to prevent the failures detected in this investigation in Silvercrest", the report adds, noting that, Silvercrest did not fulfil its responsibility to ensure the quality and authenticity of the products it was selling. It "deliberately failed to respect its customer expectations and agreed supply contracts".

Now compare and contrast the corporate BS on the company website (above):

At Silvercrest we produce the highest quality frozen beef, lamb and pork burgers and grillsteaks at our high technology plant. Our customers include major leading retailers and foodservice companies in Ireland, England and across Europe. They serve the discerning consumer who demand quality, taste and the assurance of rigorous food safety standards.

Then, we get the usual litany of high-flown claims about monitoring and standards (illustrated below), with again reference to the BRC Global Standard that we identified yesterday, on the GA International website – the industry equivalent of "go-faster" stripes, with now just as much credibility.

Also we see the corporate BS in full spate, as the company tells us:

We operate using a comprehensive, validated HACCP plan, carefully constructed by the on-site fully trained HACCP team. This has strengthened quality management systems and in turn increased customer confidence in Silvercrest Foods to produce a safe product by using a preventative approach to product safety hazards.

And yes, all the staff will have been "fully trained" in the procedures, and the plant will have been inspected by diligent "auditors", who will have rigorously filled in their tick-boxes and compiled their independent certification awards.

So to complete the charade, the company proudly displays its awards (below), including the 2012 SuperMeat & Fish Award. There is no truth, of course, that the company has been shortlisted for the best adulterated food award of 2013, sponsored by the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigations.

As we observed yesterday, though, this is precisely the BS that the European Union bought into when establishing its own legislation, supported by national enforcement agencies, turning standards into a corporate charade that puts the consumer last and least, at the end of a long list.

Says the Irish report, "The disclosure in Ireland of adulteration of beef products with equine DNA has prompted other authorities to examine this issue". And, surprise, surprise, "It transpired that what had been uncovered was a pan- European problem of fraudulent mislabelling of certain beef products".

"Almost all Member States have been affected by the problem. Indeed it has been uncovered outside of the European Union. It became a global problem affecting some large global companies and international food brands".

Corporate BS, is indeed a global problem, and it is going to take some fixing. Whether banks, the food industry, water providers or energy suppliers, they are all at the same game. The only difference now is that it is the meat industry's turn to be caught out.

Horsemeat fraud: the Irish dimension - part 2

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:01:30 +0000

Briefly mentioned in part 1, the real villains of this continuing drama are not so much Silvercrest, as QK Meats – now spread all over the Irish press, not least in the Irish Times. This keeper of secrets is a subsidiary of the Queally Group, a group with a current value in excess of €1.5 billion which claims to be one of Ireland's largest privately owned Agri-businesses.

Look for the Queally Group on the web, however, and you will come up with this website, which advertises its flagship company, Dawn Meats. Of QK Meats, you will find no official company presence. Its website address is qkmeats.com, but this has evidently been taken down, for good reason. All we get is, "Error: The Query produced no records".

Thanks to the cleverness of the Wayback Machine though, we can see the website in all its former glory (pictured below - click to enlarge), noting that the company has supplied meat products to over 40 countries world-wide since 1991.

Ironically, it claims that, "Complete traceability along the chain from 'Gate to Plate' is guaranteed with production to the highest standards". And a separate page on food safety tells us:

To enable both QK and its customers to serve the market at the highest levels we have achieved accreditation's such as higher level EFSIS, British Retail Consortium (BRC) membership of the Bord Bia quality assurance scheme, triple hygiene award from Excellence Ireland and a fully implemented HACCP system.

The irony starts to become apparent when the company was recently implicated in the supply of meat to Frigilunch which in turn had supplied Birds Eye with a number of products.

Birds Eye had been drawn into the drama when one of its chilli con carne products had tested positive for horse DNA in Belgium. Birds Eye then withdrew Spaghetti Bolognese and Beef Lasagne in the UK as a precaution, and subsequently confirmed that these products had tested positive for horse DNA as well.

Birds Eye said it believed QK Meats was the source of horse DNA in both UK products and the chilli con carne from Belgium. That was on 5 March, but we now find from the Irish report that QK Meats had been involved much, much earlier.

Details in fact started to emerge after the Irish Department of Agriculture had found horsemeat at Silvercrest. It had then conducted further enquiries to establish whether Polish labelled product had been used in other meat processing plants in Ireland. This led to QK Meats informing the Department on 5 February last that it had imported consignments of Polish labelled beef trimmings. Some of these had tested positive for equine DNA.

The company then told the Department that products had been sourced from some 19 different Polish suppliers over a sustained period and these stocks had been stored in QK Cold Stores, in Naas, Co. Kildare. QK Meats subsequently admitted that, based on its own "risk assessment", it had tested 15 consignments from nine of its 19 different Polish suppliers. Seven of these had been positive for equine DNA.

What has shocked an outraged both the Department and the media in general, though, is that the first positive test result was on 27 June 2012. Yet, instead of warning the Department, the company kept the information secret, simply contacting the Polish supplier whose representative visited the plant and arranged to take back the consignment.

And this had by no means been the end of it. Further positive tests results on other consignments of Polish labelled product were obtained by the company in October, November, December 2012 and January 2013. QK Meats claimed that none of the equine positive raw material entered the food chain, but nevertheless continued to source raw material from Poland while being aware of its suspect nature.

Another damning fact is that QK Meats was buying the Polish-labelled beef at €400 per ton less than the price of corresponding beef trimmings available in Ireland, making it clear that price had been the primary motivator in utilising imported ingredients in the manufacturing process.

Still it goes on. Despite having found some products positive for horsemeat, the company did not test other consignments. Some of these were used in the manufacture of frozen minced meat preparations at a rate of between 10 and 40 percent, for a range of customers in six countries.

Other than suggesting that there were "mumblings" in the trade about suspect Polish raw material, QK Meats did not explain fully why it was testing for equine DNA since last June or why, having found equine DNA in some products did not test all such products.

Thus, says the official report, while these findings are extremely disturbing, QK Meats, knowing that the State was involved in a full public investigation into the source of equine contamination during the latter part of January, failed to inform the Department of its earlier findings following positive DNA test results.

These facts, it says, would have informed the official investigation in a significant way and, most likely would have led to earlier conclusions on the source of equine DNA. Failure on their part to act at a much earlier time was inexcusable.

It then adds that the this failure on the part of QK Meats senior management showed scant regard for the public good and was a serious failure of judgement on its part in not revealing to the official authorities. The information could have shortened the initial phase of the investigation in identifying the likely source of the equine DNA.

But hey! The company can't be that bad. It has all its certifications and accreditation, it conforms with BRC Global Standards, it has a triple hygiene award from Excellence Ireland and it has a fully implemented HACCP system. All the bells and whistles were there. How could there possibly be a problem?

COMMENT THREAD

European Council: does anyone care?

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 22:51:46 +0000

One senses that even (or especially) the legacy media is struggling to find something interesting to report. Nevertheless, I am sure that the Council conclusions are terribly important for the whole of personkind.

Given what I've been writing about EU regulation and horsemeat, though, how do you begin to take paragraph 9(c) seriously?

This is the bit that tells you: "Further action is required to reduce the overall burden of regulation at EU and national levels, while always taking account of the need for proper protection of consumers and employees".

The trouble is that one the passage falls at the very first hurdle. "Further", it says. "Further"? That implies that some action has already been taken to reduce the burden of EU regulation. It would be better if the word had been omitted completely, although even "some" would have been more honest.

Actually, I'm getting bored with this whole argument about regulation and its "burdens". If it is needed to stop rapacious and dishonest meat processors ripping off their customers, regulation should impose burdens – the burden of being honest, of making the appropriate checks, of selling what's on the label.

Currently, the great defect of food regulation is that it imposes the wrong sort of burden – keeping the "good guys" bogged down with paperwork while letting the crooks walk away unpunished.

Somehow, though, Mr Cameron seems to believe he's got a good deal. I doubt he has, for his understanding of the workings of regulation is bound to be slight.

Then there is enforcement. Nobody, but nobody talks about enforcement. Bad law can be, to some extent, mitigated by good enforcement. No amount of law, good or bad, will survive incompetent or malicious enforcement. But if Mr Cameron has little experience of law making, he has precisely none of enforcement.

So, instead of action, on a rainy Friday afternoon, we got paragraph 9(c) of the Council Conclusions. And none dare not call it a victory, for without that, what is there to applaud? But, in truth, does anyone actually care?

Eurocrash: a contribution to financial stability

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:46:39 +0000

I cannot begin to pretend to understand what the "colleagues" think they are doing, with their €10 billion "bailout" of the Cyprus banks. But with a deposit levy - set at 9.9 percent on bank deposits exceeding €100,000 and at 6.7 percent on anything below that, it is being described as "pure theft".

The levy is intended to raise around €5.8 billion and will take force on Tuesday after a bank holiday on Monday. This has precipitated queues at the "hole in wall" cash dispensers machines, as people have sought to remove their money before the levy is extracted.

The Cypriot government, however, has got there first. Bank customers are only permitted to withdraw the balance of their deposits, less the amount of the levy. Meanwhile, a block has been put on the electronic transfer of funds, stopping people moving money out of the country.

Almost half of the depositors, though, are believed to be non-resident Russians, which means those that did not pre-empt the action have been caught by the freeze. Cypriot Finance Minister Michael Sarris, who negotiated the package during ten hours of late-night talks in Brussels, will not be popular with his offshore investors.

However, it is being said that, without a rescue, Cyprus would most certainly default, threatening another crisis in the eurozone to add to all the other crises they have to deal with.

That has not mollified the unhappy citizens of Cyprus. In the coastal town of Larnaca, Andy Georgiou, 54, speaks for them all. "I'm extremely angry", he says. "I worked years and years to get it together and now I am losing it on the say-so of the Dutch and the Germans". He is a British-Cypriot who returned to Cyprus in mid-2012 with his savings.

An unnamed pensioner was a little more direct. "They call Sicily the island of the mafia. It's not Sicily, it's Cyprus. This is theft, pure and simple", he says.

But you just have to love Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who says that, without the levy, it would have been impossible to save Cyprus' financial sector "We are not penalising Cyprus ...,we are dealing with the problems in Cyprus", he says.

Stealing money from pensioners, it seems, is "a contribution to the financial stability of Cyprus". You know it makes sense – and they've been doing it here for years.

Booker: polar bears – warmist baiting

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 23:09:42 +0000

Any mention of polar bear populations not declining is bound to get the warmists riled, so today Booker is playing to the gallery, writing about … polar bear populations not declining.

Add a tilt at St David the Attenborough, the BBC, Greenpeace, Friends of t5he Earth, WWF and Al War, light blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance, and watch the fun on the comments threat, as the warmists come storing out of their burrows, spitting and snarling with fury.

Pity the poor dears that their holy icon, the polar bear, is alive and well in the Arctic, the population currently greater in extent than at any time in 30 years. But such a vital part of the anthropogenic warming myths is the symbolism of polar bears under threat that the warnists can't afford to ignore the challenge.

So we develop a new sport to cheer up the dull Sundays at the far-end or a long, cold winter … warmist-baiting. There should be and award for it. Booker would win it every year.

UK politics: Tories should behave like Tories?

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:51:50 +0000

One can only marvel at the lead editorial headline in The Sunday Telegraph, telling us that "true Tory policies" are the way to head off UKIP. It leaves us only to ponder whether to succumb to the overwhelming urge to dissolve in insane giggles, or to sink even further into our profound depression.

It was shortly after the elevation of David Cameron to the leadership of what we were to call the "not-the-Conservative-Party" that my then co-editor wrote that some (of us) were feeling "very glum" indeed.

Of David Cameron, she wrote, he expressed "no hard ideas" and seemed "to have few real opinions". Such that he did have tended to be of "the discredited post-war statist, nay, socialist variety". He was also "full of emotional touchy-feeliness", which sat oddly with his Etonian tones and carriage. The trouble is, Helen wrote:

… that people who vote Liberal-Democrat are unlikely to vote for a Conservative Party that is wanted and needed by the rest of the country. In fact, they are unlikely to vote Conservative at all. And even if they did, the possible numbers would be far outweighed by the deserting Conservatives.

By 29 December 2005, I was writing of "The Strange Death of Politics", illustrating my piece with a cartoon from The Daily Telegraph (below), noting that it said it all about the Conservative Party. And nor were we alone. David Green, then director of the think tank Civitas, was writing a week later of missed chances. It was then clear that we were settling down for a prolonged policy vacuum.

Never being reticent at making our views known, our reward was to be banned from commenting on Conservative Home as its then proprietor Tim Montgomerie instigated a rigorous pro-Cameron line that brooked no criticism of their favourite. When that was not enough, Tim removed the link to EU Referendum, and we were cast into out darkness.

Now, more than seven years later, as electoral defeat looms, and UKIP is snapping at the heels of a tired, dispirited Tory party, little Timmy is still banging the drum, having been careful to take out his own personal insurance policy, with a job on the editorial staff of The Times.

All those years ago, Cameron stood at the despatch box jeering at Blair, telling him – to wild applause of his own side, "You were the future once". And now, the Mail on Sunday is openly talking of a new coalition between Labour and the Lib-Dems. That is the future now.

Apart from kicking any chance of an EU referendum into touch, this – we are advised - might just turn out to be the greenest government ever. Just as the paper offers hard proof that "finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along", we face "more subsidies for renewable energies and wind farms, tough decarbonisation targets and perhaps the reining in of plans to expand gas power production and shale gas development".

That, if nothing else, will be Tim Montgomerie's legacy, and while the Telegraph can glibly write about Nigel Farage, UKIP's "smiling assassin", the true assassin of the Tory Party has been David Cameron, aided and abetted by his vacuous "modernisers" and their fellow-travellers.

The sad thing about all this is that we saw it all coming way back in 2005, and only now are bubble-dwellers – as Cameron faces his inevitable defeat – beginning to realise that the Tory Party is on a countdown to oblivion.

The Mail on Sunday suggests that we may look back at this weekend as the moment that marked the start of the first national coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats for close to a century. That is as may be, but the another milestone was on 6 December 2005, when David Cameron won the leadership of the Conservative Party.

Eurocrash: Cyprus - a massive own goal

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:22:40 +0000

German newspapers are all over the Cyprus situation, many of them currently running the story as page lead on online editions. Approval of the move EU move, though, is hard to find, as the developments are greeted with a mixture of alarm, incredulity and criticism.

Spiegel, for instance warns of the compulsory levy ensuring "massive trouble", with bank customers "outraged". There are even doubt as to whether the Cypriot parliament will agree.

But there is little choice on offer. The country has the choice to accept the package, and thus to prevent a chaotic national bankruptcy, or reject it, and then accept the consequences, says the deputy chairman of the conservative ruling party Democratic Rally (DISY) Averof Neophytou. The Green MEP Georgios Perdikis speaks of a "lose-lose situation".

That said, today is a bank holiday in Cyprus, and a parliamentary vote planned for yesterday has been transferred to this day, while the banks remain closed. So uncertain is the outcome of the vote that there is talk of keeping the banks closed on Tuesday as well, to avoid "a stampede of outraged savers".

To try to soften the blow, attempts are being made to open talks to renegotiate the deal, even if Angela Merkel and her finance minister are defending the bailout plan in public. But there is no certainty that the Bundestag will back her.

Crucially, Die Welt calls the rescue "wrong and risky", not least for the effect if will have on Spanish and Italian sentiment. "Who can now say that Spanish or Italian banks will not proceed under Cypriot model?", it asks.

Effectively, this is a massive "own goal" in the part of the eurozone as, in one fell swoop, the "colleagues" have destroyed will little vestigial trust there is in the banking system. You can not blame any Spaniard, if he puts his money s under the mattress, says Die Welt. And thus is exacerbated the banking crisis.

Handelblatt has detail on the proposed renegotiation, which will attempt to exclude small savers, exempting sums less than €25,000.

The British government, meanwhile, has moved quickly to protect the deposits of military and government personnel who are stationed in Cyprus. "We are going to compensate anyone who is affected by this bank tax. People who are doing their duty for our country in Cyprus will be protected", says George Osborne.

Putting the whole affair in perspective is Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which talks of the destruction of trust. "For euro-based investors, there is no more security for their savings", the paper says.

Pointing out that Cyprus has a minute economy, smaller than the Saarland, and that the "colleagues" are claiming there is no systemic risk to the eurozone, where central bank balance sheets fall in the trillion range, it questions why such dramatic action has been over a loan of €10 billion, the amount being advanced to Cyprus.

So many things simply do not stack up that that the ECB is seen to be stoking up fear of contagion – especially as Greek savers are heavily exposed. This does not touch the banks or deal with the underlying problems. It is a tax on wealth.

Thus does Die Zeit believe that we have reached a new stage in the eurocrisis. The rescue has turned into a "nail-biter". No one is now prepared to predict what will happen next.

COMMENT: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

Media: a free press? In your dreams, Melanie

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:24:15 +0000

It was Humbert Wolfe who said, "You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to".

Worlfe was born in Milan, Italy, in 1885, of a Jewish family, but was brought up in Bradford, West Yorkshire and was a pupil at Bradford Grammar School. He was one of the most popular authors of the 1920s. The quote comes from the Uncelestial City published in 1930.

And now, in the wake of Leveson and in anticipation of a Commons vote tonight, Melanie Phillips pitches in on behalf of her employer, to plead for the continued privileges of this multi-million business sector.

Interestingly, the press is never so voluble as when it is defending its own privileges, to which effect it will always call in aid the higher cause of defending democracy. However, as we have observed earlier, so much of that is self-serving cant.

Not least, as we said then, while the press bleats about its "vital role in a democracy", it has presided over – and largely supported – the steady transfer of power to the anti-democratic European Union. The Daily Mail , which now so assiduously champions press freedom is one of those newspapers which supports the UK's continued membership of the EU.

The press wants it "freedom" only to preserve its license to maintain the status quo. It is not, and never has been interested in the needs and aspirations of its readers. It is concerned only to shape opinion and to contain dissident thought, protecting the establishment of which it is part.

Thus, while we would not wish to see the press hampered even more than it is – for anything which gives the executive more power is a bad thing – the special pleading we are hearing is unconvincing.

The only sensible response to the current furore is to wish them a plague on all their houses. The interests of the press are not our interests, and the likelihood of the press ever going out on a limb to protect our interests, over and above their own, is nil.

EU politics: the elephant in the refuse tip

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:11:10 +0000

New research from the Local Government Association (LGA), we are told, finds landfill charges will cost taxpayers almost �750 million next year, even though the amount of household waste being sent to landfill by councils is set to fall for the tenth year in a row.

The LGA say the eleven percent automatic increase is being used to fill the "black hole" in Treasury's books, and will only lead to money being diverted away from local services.

Mike Jones, Chair of LGA's Environment and Housing Board, said: ‘Since central government started collecting the money generated through landfill tax they will have almost quadrupled the charge from �24 to �80 a ton.

This, he complains, equates to almost six times the average rate of inflation, yet none of this extra money is being invested in developing our waste infrastructure or helping us hit our recycling targets.

But nowhere do we hear Mr Jones tell us that the reason this tax has been levied is to force local authorities to meet EU targets under the landfill directive. One might have more sympathy with Mr Jones if he did, especially if you add the extra cost of the fruitless recycling.

And this, as Raedwald points out, has special relevance, as there is no market for much of the recycled material anyway.

Eurocrash: Germans on the make

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:01:16 +0000

The Cypriot parliament was supposed to vote on the bailout package yesterday. But it didn't. They maybe will vote today, unless they don't. Meanwhile, the banks are staying closed until Thursday.

The "colleagues" have allowed the Cypriot government a little more flexibility on how they structure their bank raid, exempting sums under €20,000. But, looking at the faces of these women (above), any Cypriot politicians venturing on the streets might measure their lifespans in nanoseconds.

Says Marchel Alexandrovich, at the brokers Jefferies, though: "what should really worry European policymakers is not the €5.8 billion in money which is being extracted in Cyprus, but the €2,754 billion of deposits in the Spanish banking system". Of that, €182 billion comes from deposits outside the euro area. And that can very easily find different homes to go to.

Not least, there is the Russian money and Putin is a seriously unhappy bunny on behalf of his friendly neighbourhood oligarchs. , His view of the levy is that it is "unfair, unprofessional and dangerous". A promised bilateral loan of €2.5 billion may now not materialise.

Surprisingly, even the Turks are unhappy. Although they don't recognise the Greek Cypriot government., and have almost zero commercial links with the Greek side, the EU is Turkey's biggest trading partner and the turmoil has affected the value of the Turkish lira, cutting 0.9 percent from its value.

The euro, predictably, hasn't done too well either, losing a full one percent of its value against the dollar – a three-month low.

But there is one great beneficiary from all this – the Germans. Die Welt reports that the rush of investors to buy German government bonds had brought Finance Minister Wolfgang Sch�uble an interest rate saving of at least €15 billion.

This is because the federal government has to refinance annually about one-fifth of its debt €1.3 trillion debt mountain each year by issuing new securities. Servicing the interest cost around €30 billion. But for the crisis, though, this sum would be even higher.

And, according to calculations by the Kiel Institute for World Economics (IfW), this so-called "safe-haven" effect will get stronger as the eurocrisis persists. By 2023, the federal government will have saved about €80 billion, from reduced interest, compared with pre-2009 levels, when the crisis started.

Rather than getting so angry, therefore, Cypriot grannies should be comforted by the thought that Angela Merkel is saving a lot more than they are having to find. Somehow, though, one gets the impression that they are not as enthusiastic as they might be.

Some people are so hard to please.

COMMENT: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

EU politics: a growing sentiment

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:19:40 +0000

Whatever else there is to say about the Cyprus situation, it is fair to say that it has turned out to be a PR nightmare for the "colleagues" – with this AP photograph doing the rounds (above). This has been an enormous boost to the anti-EU cause.

COMMENT: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

Media: lone bloggers not under threat

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:51:12 +0000

There has been a certain amount of concern as to whether bloggers might be caught by the proposed press regulations, and thus be exposed to crippling fines. However, in the debate last night in the Commons, the position was made clear by culture secretary Maria Miller.

A clause inserted into the coming Bill makes the law apply only to a "relevant publisher". Such a publisher would have to be publishing news-related material in the course of a business, the material would have to be written by a range of authors and it would have to be subject to editorial control.

These tests, says Miller, "would exclude a one-man band or a single blogger". The clause added is "specifically designed to protect small-scale bloggers", she said. Lone bloggers clearly do not meet the criteria necessary to include them in the regulatory maw.

However, online news sites such as Huffington Post, may well be caught in the net. Thus, if anything, this new law will have the effect of levelling the playing field between the clogs and the independent bloggers.

I am sure that is an unintended consequence, but I am not going to shed any tears if parasites such as Huffpost find life a little more difficult.

EU Regulation: a glimpse of UNECE

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:35:35 +0000

An intriguing article in the loss-making Guardian tells us that "MEPs will vote on proposals for a new testing standard that would weed out practices that misrepresent cars' fuel efficiency".

The story is so utterly, bizarrely wrong that it took me quite a while to track down the actual facts, and this the newspaper illustrates once again the slender understanding British journalists have of European Parliament procedures. But, in this case, it also lifts the lid on the alternative world of ours, giving us a glimpse of that part of world government managed by UNECE.

The Guardian story starts by picking up a story run last week by the paper, which tells us that car manufacturers are manipulating fuel efficiency tests. A campaign group, we were then told, was complaining that carmakers exploit loopholes in EU law to achieve favourable but unrealistic miles/gallon results.

Obviously wanting to report developments, the paper now tells us that "the EU has taken a step towards reforming [these] vehicle tests", with "a vote on reforms to the system in an influential committee of MEPs on Tuesday".

Cited in this respect is Lib-Dem MEP Fiona Hall and that gives us the clue to what is going on. She is rapporteur for an opinion delivered by the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy for the Environment Committee, "on the proposal for a regulation amending Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 to define the modalities for reaching the 2020 target to reduce CO2 emissions from new passenger cars".

What's this got to do with proposals for a new testing standard, you might ask, and the answer would be "not a lot". The proposed regulation is not about testing standards, and the responsible committee is not Hall's industry committee, but the environment committee.

However, what Hall does in her "opinion" is point out that there is "the growing gap between type-approval and real-world emissions from new passenger cars", which is "largely due to the methods which car manufacturers use when measuring CO2 emissions according to the current test cycle procedure".

She therefore, adds, "It is vital to address this discrepancy, not least because CO2 reductions directly translate into fuel savings for consumers and lower oil imports", and then states that she would "like the Commission to review, by 2014, the EU's regulatory test procedure for measurement of specific CO2 emissions established under Regulation (EC) No 715/2007 and its implementing measures".

So, we have a proposal for a regulation which is not about vehicle testing, which is being handled by the environment committee of the European Parliament. In response to this a member of another committee offers an opinion on the regulation, expressing a wish for the Commission to review the regulatory test procedure.

The opinion was voted on by the industry committee yesterday and this, according to The Guardian, is interpreted as: "the EU has taken a step towards reforming [these] vehicle tests", with "a vote on reforms to the system in an influential committee of MEPs on Tuesday".

Facile this claim may be, the paper then goes to report that the Commission "plans to follow the new �nternational procedures which are currently being negotiated by the informal United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) working group on worldwide harmonised light vehicles test procedure (WLTP) in Geneva".

These negotiations, we are told, are expected to conclude by 2014, but Hall want the Commission to update the EU test cycle by January 2015, regardless of whether or not the new UNECE test is finalised.

Here, then, is an acknowledgement that UNECE is actually making rules which the EU is following, about which we reported in detail last January.

Needless to say, the Guardian hasn't got it right, because it talks about an informal UNECE working group, with Hall thinking that the Commission can by-pass this procedure and act unilaterally.

Thus – not unusually – we have an MEP as well who doesn't know the procedure. This is harmonisation on a global scale, these current negotiations involving the EU, Japan and India, working alongside the United States EPA.

The procedure is very far from being informal. UNECE is calling the shots and, in the fullness of time - sometime around 2015 - its test will be implemented by the EU. But you will never learn of this from the Guardian, although at least it does now know of the existence of this higher regulatory body.

Eurocrash: the cat and mouse wags the dog

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:50:09 +0000

In response to the Cypriot parliament rejection of the EU's "rescue" plan, Handelsblatt sounds almost baffled.

A tiny island, with the economic power about half the size of Bremen, it notes, is playing a game of cat and mouse with the second largest economic power in the world. By comparison, the GDP of the eurozone is more than 550 times as large as that of Cyprus.

Mixing metaphors outrageously, it then presents this cat and mouse player as the tail wagging the dog, nevertheless recoding the words of the chairman of the ruling party Disy, Averof Neofytou. He speaks openly of how critical the situation is, declaring: "We are on the verge of a disorderly bankruptcy".

Clearly struggling with the enormity of it all, Handelsblatt now has Cyprus racing "straight for the abyss". This, I suppose, is multi-tasking , while playing cat and mouse and wagging the dog, Cyprus also finds time to race for the abyss, although how it manages a straight path while doing so much else must remain a mystery.

And just in case you missed the impression that it was, the paper also tells you that the Cyprus crisis is getting worse, adding that the vote against the rescue is "a catastrophic political defeat for conservative president Nikos Anastasiadis".

The vote is far more catastrophic for the "colleagues" though. Having declared Cyprus of systemic importance, to let it now collapse is unthinkable. The disastrous effect on its own credibility, especially in relation to Spain and Italy, would be irrecoverable. Their word would no longer have any value at all.

For the moment, the island's economy is being kept afloat by the same mechanism which kept the wolf from the door – the so-called Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA). Beyond that, the "colleagues", famous for never having a "plan B", don't seem to have anything else on offer. No one has ever said "no" to them in such unequivocal terms.

But if they continue to insist on the compulsory levy, it would wreck the European principle of community and solidarity. Cyprus as a financial centre would be buried and destroyed Yet there is no real alternative - other than the sale of the natural gas that can be realistically exploited only in years.

So, as the demonstrators in Nicosia shouted with joy at the news from their parliament, there must have been some very glum faces in Brussels.

Possibly, Russia will come to the rescue. Finance minister Michael Sarris is leading talks in Moscow with Russian officials today, and he may come back with a bag of roubles. It may be either that, or don't come back at all – roubles or rubble, so to speak.

And then there is another hurdle. There is yet another day to go before the Cypriot banks open. It there is no levy in place, the government is going to find it hard keeping bank accounts frozen. But it is going to find it very hard to prevent a run on the banks.

Events will be watched very closely across the world, but nowhere more closely than in Spain and Italy. One false move to add to the many others will give "contagion" a new meaning, as cash pours out of the coffers of the banks in these two states.

This makes it hard to disagree with former governor of the Cyprus central bank, Anthanasios Orphanides. He concedes that there has been a "very serious blunder" by eurozone governments. They are, he says, "blackmailing the government of Cyprus to confiscate the money that belongs rightfully to depositors in the banking sector in Cyprus".

Orphanides thinks we are witnessing the slow death of the European Project, but we've been witnessing that for so long that one can never be sure. If nothing else, though, it is going to be very interesting indeed to see how the "colleagues" get themselves out of this mess.

COMMENT: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

Climate change: look out the window

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 07:58:23 +0000

The wuzzies are getting seriously upset about the removal of explicit references to global warming from the national curriculum, up to the age of 14. The loss-making Guardian, exhibiting its usual lack of perspective, goes so far as to call this a "betrayal".

Meanwhile, a day from the Spring equinox, we gaze upon a white-clad world, for the second time this week, as the global warming descends from the Heavens. So who would want to be a teacher preaching about global warming in this weather? They have enough problems as it is without trying to explain to street-wise kids that the planet is heating up.

Better to let sleeping snow lie.

Media: freedom of the press is undeserved

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:29:49 +0000

We've heard a lot about press freedom recently, and Simon Jenkins writes powerfully on the adverse effects of the proposed new regulation. But even he doesn't ask what press freedom is for.

Many, including Jenkins, write about the importance of investigative journalism, although that argument is much overcooked. Newspapers themselves have slashed editorial staffing levels, and massively increased workloads, to the extent that this form of journalism is a shadow of what it once was. What the government has done or proposes to do is nothing compared with what the newspapers have done to themselves.

This aside, the main purpose of newspapers is to provide news - particularly on what our governments are doing. The essence of a supposed democracy is that we should be informed about such things, good and bad, routine and exceptional, interesting and boring.

On the other hand, if the newspapers don't report the news, or miss out on hugely important issues, then it is fair to ask why there should be such a thing as "freedom of the press".

If it is, as it is turning out to be, freedom to peddle soft porn, celebrity gossip, the lurid, the exceptional and the bizarre – all in the interests of maximising advertising revenue, then that freedom isn't worth having. For all their bleating, newspapers have no right to special treatment or privileges.

And here we confront reality. For the last two days (Monday and Tuesday), agriculture ministers from the 27 EU members states have been meeting in Brussels to hammer out a "common position" on CAP "reform". And what happened is important on several levels.

Firstly, still after all these years, CAP spending is the largest single component of the EU budget, amounting to 40 percent of expenditure. Secondly, the policy has a major effect on our countryside, its health, its economy and its visual amenity. Thirdly, Britain always tends to do badly out of the negotiations, and we have our new man out there – Owen Paterson.

Those reasons and many more suggest that the press should be following the issues and reporting in detail. But, unless I have missed something, I cannot find a single report of the meetings in the current online editions in any of the major British newspapers.

Away from the specialist farmig media, one ends up with the Irish press or the likes of the Rheinische Post in Germany before one finds a simple report of the proceedings.

Bluntly, the performance of the British media on this and so many other issues is a disgrace. The industry is falling down on its most basic tasks, failing to perform the core functions for which it is supposed to exist. It deserves no favours from us.

Eurocrash: "all the mistakes that were there to make"

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 22:56:57 +0000

That is the view of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. He has accused the EU of behaving "like a bull in a china shop", making all the mistakes that were there to make, "including the undermining of confidence in the financial institutions as a whole, not only the Cypriot".

Nevertheless, the world is full of people wise after the event, and one would never take Russian politicians at face value. They are hardly paragons of virtue. However, even the venerable Handelsblatt is counting the mistakes. The cardinal error, it says, was the intended compulsory levy on deposits of less than €100,000.

This error is attributed partly to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Sch�uble, who called for Cypriots to make personal contributions to the bailout, totalling €5.8 billion, but left it open as to how the money should be collected. It was then Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiades who proposed charging depositors with less than €100,000.

By this means, we are told, he protected higher level depositors, but was thus seen as penalising small savers.

There may, though, have been more to this than meets the eye. Doubtless, a large number of offshore "investors" place their cash via resident nominees, disguising their true origin. And there has been some suggestion that they use multiple accounts, keeping each deposit below the €100,000 level in order to take advantage of the deposit guarantee scheme.

Whatever the real reasoning, the blame-game is in full spate, along with the usual crop of statements of the obvious. Says Berenberg chief economist, Holger Schmieding: "The real Achilles heel of monetary union is that it is not yet sufficiently well-established for there to be confidence in the future of the euro". You can see why this man is a chief economist.

Quote of the week, though, comes from Heidi Moore of the loss-making Guardian. "What happens in Cyprus doesn't stay in Cyprus? ", she asks. Rhetorically, she then tells us that this would have implications for the EU, and, to the extent that it reveals how the EU works. It also has implications for the US, she says.

One is not sure quite how Cyprus could leave Cyprus, but in the world of the Guardian, I suppose, anything is possible. But she might actually be referring to Cyprus leaving the euro, in which case, I wish I could get paid for writing that this "would have implications for the EU". You have to be a real expert to work that one out.

Nevertheless, Moore too thinks it all a "fiasco", and when the europhile luvvies in this newspaper all that sort of thing to be said, then we are at last getting somewhere.

Closer to the ground, Kurt Kister comments for Sueddeutsche.de, telling us that, despite the apocalyptic scenarios, a Cypriot bankruptcy is quite unlikely. There will be a kind of bridging solution, he says.

Hardly anyone in Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Nicosia itself has a real interest in making Cyprus leave the euro or even the EU. So you will probably find a compromise, with perhaps even loans from Russia or elsewhere, says Kister.

For all the pyrotechnics, that it probably the truth of it. A ten billion loan, and change, does not threaten Europe. The situation will be resolved. But things will never be quite the same again.

COMMENT: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

UK politics: the irrelevance of the budget

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:17:32 +0000

I am not sure whether it is a reflection of the times, or indicative of he way I feel about British politics, that the budget speech – once a great event in the British political calendar – almost completely passed me by.

Part of that is simply a measure of George Osborne. I have never been able to take him seriously as a chancellor and, on the basis of his current performance, my cynicism is perfectly justified. He never looked as if he was going to get a grip on the economy and, with debt spiralling out of control, there is no indication that he ever will.

The other part rests with a position of the United Kingdom, discordant and fractured, as a satrapy of the European Union, where so much of our fate depends not upon the actions of our own politicians, but on events elsewhere. Currently, the situation in Cyprus has potentially a greater impact on our wellbeing than the mouthings of the vacuous Osbone.

The very event of the budget, however – and this one in particular - highlights the failings of our system of government, and its inherent lack of democracy.

Here we have a coalition government, for which no one voted and which holds office without an electoral mandate. It is represented by an appointed chancellor who on the day stood up to tell me (and my fellow citizens) what I would pay his government by way of taxes and other charges, irrespective of whether I approve, or can even afford to pay.

This is many things, but it is not democracy. It does not even bear any semblance to democracy, and will not until the people of Britain – like the people of Cyprus – stand in the streets with "no" painted on the palms of their hands, and mean it.

But then, when the people in this instance, do take a stand, the bully-boys move in. With an impasse over the so-called "rescue" (others call it theft), the European Central Bank is telling Nicosia it has until Monday to agree a bailout with the EU and IMF.

Failing that, it will cut off funding from the "Emergency Liquidity Assistance" (ELA), an ultimatum which, if enforced, could see the island's banks driven into bankruptcy, crashing the local economy and causing untold misery.

For the ordinary citizens of Cyprus – and the many thousands of British and other expats – this must be both confusing and alarming. Events seem to be spiralling out of control and they are the flotsam cast on the beach by the storm.

In fact, though, they are more powerful than they think. Already, they have stopped one attempt at grand larceny, and while the big brave ECB might be throwing its weight about from the comfort of its air conditioned offices in Frankfurt, it knows full well that if Cyprus goes down, the shock waves will reverberate around the world, causing untold damage to the EU's single currency. Much of the bully-boy tactic, therefore, is bluff.

Something of that comes over in the latest piece from Reuters, which talks of eurozone officials acknowledging that they are "in a mess" over Cyprus, and discussed imposing capital controls to insulate the region from a possible collapse of the Cypriot economy.

That, in itself, would be a colossal admission of failure. It would breach one of the core principle of the EU treaties – the free movement of capital. Whatever the hurt to the people of Cyprus, the damage to the eurozone would be far greater. Which external investors are going to leave their money in peripheral euro countries, when there is a risk of having their funds frozen?

And, while the markets appeared sanguine about the collapse of the Cypriot economy – which, after all, is only worth about €17 billion a year – they will be less happy about the prospect of capital flight from Italy and Spain. That is where the real risk lies.

No sooner, therefore, did we get the blood-curdling threats from the ECB, therefore, then Spiegel announced a new deal in the making. The political parties, it seems, have agreed on the formation of a fund to rescue the island from bankruptcy. This is a "solidarity fund", comprising a pooling of assets from pension funds and the Church, with the idea of the levy discarded completely.

On this basis, the people have prevailed, from which there are important lessons. Firstly, our rulers cannot be trusted to properly manage their respective economies and, secondly, when push comes to shove, the people have to take to the streets to put them in their place. Thirdly, when they do, the politicians cave in.

In Britain, we are very far from sorting out our own, but anyone who believes that the economy here is any better managed than it was in Cyprus is really not of this world. So, where Cyprus leads, we will undoubtedly be following. If nothing else, arithmetic is on our side. There are more of us than there are of them.

Media: more "accuracy" from the Mail

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:03:11 +0000

A tragic accident during a police exercise in Berlin had two Super Pumas landing in sequence near the Olympic Stadium on the Maifeld, the first of the pair – according to Berliner Zeitung - being hit by what looks to be a Eurocopter EC155B, as it came into land.

Witnesses report that the first Super Puma helicopter landed smoothly on the snowy Maifeld. Shortly thereafter, the second Puma landed at a distance of about 30 meters. The pilot had waited until the whirling snow had settled. The third pilot, flying the Eurocopter, had apparently not as much patience. His aircraft crashed into the still-rotating blades of the first Puma.

This, however, is translated by the Daily Mail into a crash between two Puma helicopters - each with 25 police officers in them - even though the photographic record clearly shows one of the stricken machines to be a very much smaller Eurocopter.

This brings us back again to Leveson telling us that mainstream journalists have "a powerful reputation for accuracy" while bloggers and tweeters were "no more than electronic versions of pub gossip".

Once again, though, the Mail offering is another powerful reminder that you simply cannot take anything the legacy media tells you at face value. At the very least, you need to triangulate, referring to independent sources, before an account can be accepted.

Then, one has to observe, if a newspaper cannot even get a simple account of an accident right, what reliance can be placed on accounts of more complex events, where technical issues are involved, and a degree of understanding is required?

Sadly, the answer is all too obvious. Nothing, but nothing can be entirely trusted.

Eurocrash: the irrelevance of the budget

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:20:14 +0000

EU regulation: the sledgehammer to miss the nut

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:31:29 +0000

Most of us are familiar with the EU's waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEE) directive, aimed, or so they say, at reducing the quantity of electrical and electronic waste produced, and to promote reuse, recycling and other forms of recovery.

One wonders, though, whether this regulation is not a little misplaced, when – according to an intriguing piece in Saarbr�cker Zeitung, much of the equipment would not need to be discarded, if it wasn't for the deliberate strategies of consumer goods manufacturers.

The paper rehearses a familiar scene: the warranty expires and the machine breaks down. Everyone has experienced it but consumer experts believe that this is not accidental. They suspect there is a system to this, in order to force customers to buy new products.

Jocularly, I have many times suggested that certain equipment is fitted with a "self-destruct" chip, programmed to make an appliance break down the moment the warranty ends.

And now, a Green parliamentary group commissioned study effectively conforms the suspicion that things lasted longer in the past. Whether printers, headphones, washing machines, coffee machines or electric toothbrushes, manufacturers build weaknesses into the designs and use materials of poor quality to ensure that their products break or wear out faster.

The authors of the report estimate that artificially reducing the usable life of equipment could cost Germans as much as €137 billion, assuming that households spend about a tenth of its budget for wear-prone devices.

The existence of this scam was demonstrated in one type of computer printer. The manufacturer had incorporated a counter and a system to cripple the machine after a certain number of pages had been printed. After resetting the counter, the printer worked perfectly again.

Electric toothbrushes were another example. They often contain batteries that cannot be replaced and the charging function is rapidly exhausted. The device must be discarded and a new one purchased.

With laptop computers, the researchers found that housings and built-in components were often glued, making repairs so difficult and expensive that they were largely uneconomic or impossible.

Headphones are yet another example. Cable breaks due to inferior workmanship are now common under normal use, to the extent that they have become the norm. Washing machines suffer broken heaters because of fatigue, which is now the most common cause of breakdown, the frequency of that defect having risen significantly in recent years.

Rigging spares availability is also practised. For instance, door handles for appliances are often not available separately; when they break, the customer has to buy the whole door. Zippers, shoes, textiles, office chairs and many other consumer items are designed not to be capable of economic repair.

My particular b�te noir is electric kettles (pictured). Heating elements seem to last no time at all and cannot be replaced – even if spares were available, which they are not. Consumers, therefore, are forced to replace otherwise perfectly good kettles.

And the point that the Greens make – rightly for once – is that this planned obsolescence creates huge piles of unnecessary rubbish. However, where we depart from the Greens is in suggesting that, rather than pursuing laws to deal with the discarded product, it might be better to address this issue. Doubling the average life of consumer products would, perforce, halve the waste.

The Greens are calling for clear guidelines "for the reparability and interchangeability of parts", but another strategy would be to devise statutory minima for warranties. For most products, it would be relatively simple to ascertain a reasonable life, and if manufacturers were obliged to replace short-life machines, free of charge, we might see a change of attitude.

Unspoken, but nonetheless implied, is a rebuke to those who argue for light-touch regulation. We all have our stories to tell, and in addition to the kettle sage, I recall having to spend several hundred pounds replacing an undamaged windscreen wiper assembly, simply because a small but vital rubber grommet had perished.

Then there was the computer monitor which failed because a simple component overheated, but which cost more to replace than the cost of a new monitor. When I took it to a specialist in the hope of repair, he guessed what was wrong, before even opening it up.

As always, therefore, the corporates rob you blind. Slick PR presents them as the consumer friend, but their ultimate objective is to take as much money from us as they possibly can, in return for as little as the market will allow. Where price competition is strong, they simply find other ways of rigging the market.

Between them and us lie the regulators, but it is our misfortune that we are saddled with the EU as a regulatory body. It seems to have a genius for making the wrong sort of regulation, to cover the wrong contingencies. Theirs is the doctrine of the "sledgehammer to miss the nut", so that we end up paying for the regulatory costs as well as being cheated by our suppliers.

Leaving the EU would not guarantee us sensible (or even better) regulation, but at least it would enable us to try a different tack.

EU regulation: the sledgehammer to miss the nut

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:49:56 +0000

One wonders, though, whether this regulation is not a little misplaced, when – according to an intriguing piece in Saarbr�cker Zeitung, much of the equipment would not need to be discarded, if it wasn't for the deliberate strategies of consumer goods manufacturers.

The paper rehearses a familiar scene: the warranty expires and the machine breaks down. Everyone has experienced it but consumer experts believe that this is not accidental. They suspect there is a system to this, in order to force customers to buy new products.

Jocularly, I have many times suggested that certain equipment is fitted with a "self-destruct" chip, programmed to make an appliance break down the moment the warranty ends.

And now, a Green parliamentary group commissioned study effectively conforms the suspicion that things lasted longer in the past. Whether printers, headphones, washing machines, coffee machines or electric toothbrushes, manufacturers build weaknesses into the designs and use materials of poor quality to ensure that their products break or wear out faster.

The authors of the report estimate that artificially reducing the usable life of equipment could cost Germans as much as €137 billion, assuming that households spend about a tenth of its budget for wear-prone devices.

The existence of this scam was demonstrated in one type of computer printer. The manufacturer had incorporated a counter and a system to cripple the machine after a certain number of pages had been printed. After resetting the counter, the printer worked perfectly again.

Electric toothbrushes were another example. They often contain batteries that cannot be replaced and the charging function is rapidly exhausted. The device must be discarded and a new one purchased.

With laptop computers, the researchers found that housings and built-in components were often glued, making repairs so difficult and expensive that they were largely uneconomic or impossible.

Headphones are yet another example. Cable breaks due to inferior workmanship are now common under normal use, to the extent that they have become the norm. Washing machines suffer broken heaters because of fatigue, which is now the most common cause of breakdown, the frequency of that defect having risen significantly in recent years.

Rigging spares availability is also practised. For instance, door handles for appliances are often not available separately; when they break, the customer has to buy the whole door. Zippers, shoes, textiles, office chairs and many other consumer items are designed not to be capable of economic repair.

My particular b�te noir is electric kettles (pictured). Heating elements seem to last no time at all and cannot be replaced – even if spares were available, which they are not. Consumers, therefore, are forced to replace otherwise perfectly good kettles.

And the point that the Greens make – rightly for once – is that this planned obsolescence creates huge piles of unnecessary rubbish. However, where we depart from the Greens is in suggesting that, rather than pursuing laws to deal with the discarded product, it might be better to address this issue. Doubling the average life of consumer products would, perforce, halve the waste.

The Greens are calling for clear guidelines "for the reparability and interchangeability of parts", but another strategy would be to devise statutory minima for warranties. For most products, it would be relatively simple to ascertain a reasonable life, and if manufacturers were obliged to replace short-life machines, free of charge, we might see a change of attitude.

Unspoken, but nonetheless implied, is a rebuke to those who argue for light-touch regulation. We all have our stories to tell, and in addition to the kettle sage, I recall having to spend several hundred pounds replacing an undamaged windscreen wiper assembly, simply because a small but vital rubber grommet had perished.

Then there was the computer monitor which failed because a simple component overheated, but which cost more to replace than the cost of a new monitor. When I took it to a specialist in the hope of repair, he guessed what was wrong, before even opening it up.

As always, therefore, the corporates rob you blind. Slick PR presents them as the consumer friend, but their ultimate objective is to take as much money from us as they possibly can, in return for as little as the market will allow. Where price competition is strong, they simply find other ways of rigging the market.

Between them and us stand the regulators, but it is our misfortune that we are saddled with the EU as a regulatory body. It seems to have a genius for making the wrong sort of regulation, to cover the wrong contingencies. Theirs is the doctrine of the "sledgehammer to miss the nut", so that we end up paying for the regulatory costs as well as being cheated by our suppliers.

Leaving the EU would not guarantee us sensible (or even better) regulation, but at least it would enable us to try a different tack.

EU regulation: the sledgehammer to miss the nut

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:52:47 +0000

One wonders, though, whether this regulation is not a little misplaced, when – according to an intriguing piece in Saarbr�cker Zeitung, much of the equipment would not need to be discarded, if it wasn't for the deliberate strategies of consumer goods manufacturers.

The paper rehearses a familiar scene: the warranty expires and the machine breaks down. Everyone has experienced it but consumer experts believe that this is not accidental. They suspect there is a system to this, in order to force customers to buy new products.

Jocularly, I have many times suggested that certain equipment is fitted with a "self-destruct" chip, programmed to make an appliance break down the moment the warranty ends.

And now, a Green parliamentary group commissioned study effectively conforms the suspicion that things lasted longer in the past. Whether printers, headphones, washing machines, coffee machines or electric toothbrushes, manufacturers build weaknesses into the designs and use materials of poor quality to ensure that their products break or wear out faster.

The authors of the report estimate that artificially reducing the usable life of equipment could cost Germans as much as €137 billion, assuming that households spend about a tenth of its budget for wear-prone devices.

The existence of this scam was demonstrated in one type of computer printer. The manufacturer had incorporated a counter and a system to cripple the machine after a certain number of pages had been printed. After resetting the counter, the printer worked perfectly again.

Electric toothbrushes were another example. They often contain batteries that cannot be replaced and the charging function is rapidly exhausted. The device must be discarded and a new one purchased.

With laptop computers, the researchers found that housings and built-in components were often glued, making repairs so difficult and expensive that they were largely uneconomic or impossible.

Headphones are yet another example. Cable breaks due to inferior workmanship are now common under normal use, to the extent that they have become the norm. Washing machines suffer broken heaters because of fatigue, which is now the most common cause of breakdown, the frequency of that defect having risen significantly in recent years.

Rigging spares availability is also practised. For instance, door handles for appliances are often not available separately; when they break, the customer has to buy the whole door. Zippers, shoes, textiles, office chairs and many other consumer items are designed not to be capable of economic repair.

My particular b�te noir is electric kettles (pictured). Heating elements seem to last no time at all and cannot be replaced – even if spares were available, which they are not. Consumers, therefore, are forced to replace otherwise perfectly good kettles.

And the point that the Greens make – rightly for once – is that this planned obsolescence creates huge piles of unnecessary rubbish. However, where we depart from the Greens is in suggesting that, rather than pursuing laws to deal with the discarded product, it might be better to address this issue. Doubling the average life of consumer products would, perforce, halve the waste.

The Greens are calling for clear guidelines "for the reparability and interchangeability of parts", but another strategy would be to devise statutory minima for warranties. For most products, it would be relatively simple to ascertain a reasonable life, and if manufacturers were obliged to replace short-life machines, free of charge, we might see a change of attitude.

Unspoken, but nonetheless implied, is a rebuke to those who argue for light-touch regulation. We all have our stories to tell, and in addition to the kettle sage, I recall having to spend several hundred pounds replacing an undamaged windscreen wiper assembly, simply because a small but vital rubber grommet had perished.

Then there was the computer monitor which failed because a simple component overheated, but which cost more to replace than the cost of a new monitor. When I took it to a specialist in the hope of repair, he guessed what was wrong, before even opening it up.

As always, therefore, the corporates rob you blind. Slick PR presents them as the consumer friend, but their ultimate objective is to take as much money from us as they possibly can, in return for as little as the market will allow. Where price competition is strong, they simply find other ways of rigging the market.

Between them and us stand the regulators, but it is our misfortune that we are saddled with the EU as a regulatory body. It seems to have a genius for making the wrong sort of regulation, to cover the wrong contingencies. Theirs is the doctrine of the "sledgehammer to miss the nut", so that we end up paying for the regulatory costs as well as being cheated by our suppliers.

Leaving the EU would not guarantee us sensible (or even better) regulation, but at least it would enable us to try a different tack.

EU regulation: the sledgehammer to miss the nut

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:57:51 +0000

One wonders, though, whether this regulation is not a little misplaced, when – according to an intriguing piece in Saarbr�cker Zeitung, much of the equipment would not need to be discarded, if it wasn't for the deliberate strategies of consumer goods manufacturers.

The paper rehearses a familiar scene: the warranty expires and the machine breaks down. Everyone has experienced it but consumer experts believe that this is not accidental. They suspect there is a system to this, in order to force customers to buy new products.

Jocularly, I have many times suggested that certain equipment is fitted with a "self-destruct" chip, programmed to make an appliance break down the moment the warranty ends.

And now, a Green parliamentary group commissioned study effectively conforms the suspicion that things lasted longer in the past. Whether printers, headphones, washing machines, coffee machines or electric toothbrushes, manufacturers build weaknesses into the designs and use materials of poor quality to ensure that their products break or wear out faster.

The authors of the report estimate that artificially reducing the usable life of equipment could cost Germans as much as €137 billion, assuming that households spend about a tenth of its budget for wear-prone devices.

The existence of this scam was demonstrated in one type of computer printer. The manufacturer had incorporated a counter and a system to cripple the machine after a certain number of pages had been printed. After resetting the counter, the printer worked perfectly again.

Electric toothbrushes were another example. They often contain batteries that cannot be replaced and the charging function is rapidly exhausted. The device must be discarded and a new one purchased.

With laptop computers, the researchers found that housings and built-in components were often glued, making repairs so difficult and expensive that they were largely uneconomic or impossible.

Headphones are yet another example. Cable breaks due to inferior workmanship are now common under normal use, to the extent that they have become the norm. Washing machines suffer broken heaters because of fatigue, which is now the most common cause of breakdown, the frequency of that defect having risen significantly in recent years.

Rigging spares availability is also practised. For instance, door handles for appliances are often not available separately; when they break, the customer has to buy the whole door. Zippers, shoes, textiles, office chairs and many other consumer items are designed not to be capable of economic repair.

My particular b�te noir is electric kettles (pictured). Heating elements seem to last no time at all and cannot be replaced – even if spares were available, which they are not. Consumers, therefore, are forced to replace otherwise perfectly good kettles.

And the point that the Greens make – rightly for once – is that this planned obsolescence creates huge piles of unnecessary rubbish. However, where we depart from the Greens is in suggesting that, rather than pursuing laws to deal with the discarded product, it might be better to address this issue. Doubling the average life of consumer products would, perforce, halve the waste.

The Greens are calling for clear guidelines "for the reparability and interchangeability of parts", but another strategy would be to devise statutory minima for warranties. For most products, it would be relatively simple to ascertain a reasonable life, and if manufacturers were obliged to replace short-life machines, free of charge, we might see a change of attitude.

Unspoken, but nonetheless implied, is a rebuke to those who argue for light-touch regulation. We all have our stories to tell, and in addition to the kettle sage, I recall having to spend several hundred pounds replacing an undamaged windscreen wiper assembly, simply because a small but vital rubber grommet had perished.

Then there was the computer monitor which failed because a simple component overheated, but which cost more to replace than the cost of a new monitor. When I took it to a specialist in the hope of repair, he guessed what was wrong, before even opening it up.

As always, therefore, the corporates rob you blind. Slick PR presents them as the consumer friend, but their ultimate objective is to take as much money from us as they possibly can, in return for as little as the market will allow. Where price competition is strong, they simply find other ways of rigging the market.

Between them and us stand the regulators, but it is our misfortune that we are saddled with the EU as a regulatory body. It seems to have a genius for making the wrong sort of regulation, to cover the wrong contingencies. Theirs is the doctrine of the "sledgehammer to miss the nut", so that we end up paying for the regulatory costs as well as being cheated by our suppliers.

Leaving the EU would not guarantee us sensible (or even better) regulation, but at least it would enable us to try a different tack.

Energy: the fast approaching crisis

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:38:05 +0000

As we gaze on the worst global warming of the season, with driving snow and deep drifts, so come the now ritual warnings about shortage of capacity, on top of which – with the unseasonable weather, we face a gas crisis as supplies near exhaustion.

I do not think, we could have made it clearer for longer that this crisis was coming. It was predictable and it was predicted, and now galloping down the high street, ready to afflict us all. Rarely have we seen such a serious, collective failure of policy, across the board, encompassing politicians of all colours.

When we end up shivering in the dark, it will be entirely due to the incompetence of our leaders, with the complicity of our media which, despite its preening and posturing, has never properly held them to account. We have been governed by fools, in the company of charlatans And there are no excuses. They got it wrong.

Eurocrash: a war of nerves

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:27:43 +0000

In an unprecedented move, Handelsblatt is running a live blog as its lead item, dedicated to the Cyprus crisis. The fate of the country, it says, is "on a knife edge", the rescue a "war of nerves". The eurogroup has made it clear that it will not accept Nicosia's "Plan B", and its so-called "solidarity fund". The Cypriot parliament has adjourned, and a government spokesman has said, "the next few hours will decide the fate of Cyprus". If nothing changes, says FDP Bundestag member Frank Sch�ffler, "the unification of Europe will be destroyed". He is right in the sense that the "colleagues" have far more to lose than Cyprus. This is a huge game of "chicken". Who will swerve first? COMMENT/: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

Climate change: and the snows kept coming

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 22:37:29 +0000

It actually started snowing at about 7.30 am on Friday morning. It continued without a break into the night and, at the time of writing, had snowed continuously for 18 hours. With no sign of it abating, it is set to continue into Saturday and, with drifts already about two feet deep, there is little prospect of travelling far, and none at all by car.

That is the problem with this district. Most of the residential roads are privately-owed (known as "unadopted"), which means they are unpaved, and unserviced. We never see a gritter or plough and never get help with snow clearance.

Thus, while the main road is still open (just - but down to one lane), it is almost impossible to reach it. As for public transport, who knows? Information normally is unreliable. Thus, while I was due in London today for a conference with Campaign for Independent Britain, this looks a very dubious prospect.

But the fact that I should be writing of such matters on 23 March is utterly bizarre. Last year at this time, we were in the throes of a drought, and the temperature on this day peaked at 21�C in part of the region. Today, in this area, it will struggle to reach zero, with the wind-chill dragging it down to a bitter minus seven.

And last year, the warmists were in full spate about their precious climate change, despite the fact that their predictions had been for cool wet winters and hot dry summers. In fact, we got a long dry winter, running into a dry spring, with a glorious few weeks of warmth which then settled down to a long, cold and excessively wet summer.

That dragged on into a wet autumn and early winter, then turning to snow, more snow and even more snow. Although it never lasts, it has been frequent. This is our eighth separate episode of snow this season. And it would be a brave warmist who stood up and started preaching about climate change. People are heartily sick of the cold. It seems forever since we last had a prolonged spell of good weather.

Still though, the local council spends about �300,000 a year on the salaries of climate change officials. Send them here with shovels in their hands, and they might be some use. Send them to preach, and we would happily lynch them. Instead, the council will be here shortly with its hands out for our money, and we must pay them or go to jail - all so that we can keep these climate change officials paid.

So, we are heartily sick of our council as well - not that they give a tinker's cuss. They take our money whether we like it or not, while we freeze. But who dare call it climate change? Not their climate officers, for sure. They really would be lynched.

Energy: gas rationing

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 09:39:03 +0000

Britain faces the prospect of gas rationing for the first time, says the Independent as a perfect storm of prolonged cold weather and disruptions to Norwegian supplies push the energy grid close to breaking point.

Households and businesses have turned up the heating in recent weeks to keep warm in the unseasonably cold weather. It is this, it claims, have run gas reserves so low that there is a very real prospect of running out in the coming weeks if the cold snap persists.

But what the paper doesn't seem to realise is that gas is already being rationed. Mains pressure has been reduced. Householders are finding that gas ovens are taking longer to cook food, while fires burn less brightly. And companies with interruptible supply contracts are already on notice for Monday, that gas will not be available.

And, of course, it is not helping that the coal estate is being shut down, although we are currently getting 42 percent of our electricity from coal, compared with 20 percent from gas. In a week's time, the equation will have changed yet again and the generators could be in real trouble.

If we actually avoid power cuts, it will be by the skin of our teeth. But the nation is on notice. More and more, predictions are coming fact and we are looking at "when" not "if".

Climate change: the snow fields of Bradford

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:28:02 +0000

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: the way forward

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 23:06:47 +0000

Yesterday, I was supposed to be speaking at a conference organised by the Campaign for Independent Britain, on the subject of the EU referendum. Unfortunately, the weather made it unwise to attempt the journey to London, which means I was unable to deliver my speech. However, I did undertake to post a shortened version of my intended address on this blog, so here it is.

If there is an immediate way forward on the vexed question of an EU referendum, it is to pray that we do not have one. Should it ever happen, it is almost certain that it will be rigged in one, if not several ways. Whatever passed for the "no" option would be framed in such a way that it would either be impossible take as a rejection of the EU, or would it look so unattractive that the majority would reject it.

Whichever way it was framed, therefore, we would lose. And in so doing, the cause of euroscepticism would be set back a generation. Most likely, we would see the EU collapse before the British people summoned up the energy again to call for a withdrawal. The EU would leave us, rather than us leave it.

Part of the reason, I suggest, why this situation prevails – but only part – is that the eurosceptic movement has never fully developed. It remains wedded selling the negative, arguing for leaving the EU, instead of putting the case forcefully for a credible alternative that means something to the ordinary voter.

For sure, there have been many learned argument about how much better off economically Britain might be if we leave the EU, and some of the arguments might even be true. But, for most people, it is not so much that they are not persuasive. The whole subject leaves them cold.

Thus, although the eurosceptic community might get worked up about free trade agreements and the rest, no more than a tiny majority is in the least bit interested. Only a tiny fraction of people know the difference between a customs union and a free trade area. Possibly, even fewer care.

It is always possible, though to fill spaced between the adverts in newspapers, pointing out how terrible the EU is, how much it costs, how much red tape it causes, and even how many Polish labourers are camping on our doorstep as a result of our membership of the EU.

But when push comes to shove, all but one of the major national newspapers, almost all of the local newspapers, and all the broadcast media, are in favour of our continued membership of the EU. All the major political parties, support our memberships, the majority of the unions, the business community and even supposed "eurosceptic" think-tanks such as Open Europe.

Come a referendum campaign, it is a given that they will all support the government line. The "yes" campaign" will be well organised, well funded, and supported fully by the establishment, relying heavily on fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to carry it message.

The "yes" campaign" will not make the case for staying in the EU – it will simply point out the perils of leaving, relying on the so-called status quo effect. And that effect will be the deciding factor. People will voter against uncertainty, for conformity. In referendums, that is the most powerful of all motivators, and the government will ensure that it works in its favour.

For us to prevail, therefore, we are need a new strategy. We could even say that we actually need a strategy, having lacked one in the past, and still lacking one in the present. We need what I would call the "Stokes precept", from Richard Stokes, the Labour MP for Ipswich, who on 15 October 1940 told the House of Commons in a debate on war aims that it "... is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one, and the sooner that [is] stated the better".

What we need to do is address the "what's in it for me? " factor, presenting them with such an overwhelmingly positive outcome from our leaving the EU that any downside, by comparison, is of such small importance that it is worth taking the risk.

Looking at that from a personal perspective, I have often argued that there is little to commend leaving the EU if the outcome was simply to take back powers from Brussels and hand them over to the same establishment which gave them away in the first place.

If the EU has been a secret revolution, along the lines of Orwell's Animal Farm, where man has been replaced by pig, only for pig to become man, giving powers back to Whitehall and to the gatherers of expenses in Westminster, is simply replacing pig with man. It gets us nowhere. It achieves nothing for the ordinary voter.

Clearly, we must have a better offer than that, and perhaps the way forward is to recognise that the EU is not about trade, or other peripheral issues, but about the way be are governed. Trade is only incidental to the EU, a means to an end, that end being political integration. The EU is a system of government, and already it is our supreme government. It only real ambition is to become even more powerful.

Therefore, what seem to be obvious is that, in order to fight one form of government, we must come up with a new and different form of government as a counter. It is no use offering more of the same, or the party-dominated structures which have lost support and lack any credibility.

Further, since we so often complain about the lack of democracy inherent in the EU system of government, we need to offer people real democracy as an alternative. And here, more of the same doesn't cut it. We complain that European Commissioners are not elected, but in fact the are nominated my members of elected governments, and their appointments are approved by elected MEPs.

How is that worse that having an unelected prime minister, appointed by a political party, governing via a coalition for which no one voted? We could not have voted for it, as it did not come into being until after the general election.

Interestingly, the EU – which pretends to itself and others that it supports democracy – builds "representative democracy" into the Lisbon Treaty, thereby rejecting any form of direct democracy. Putting power, real power, in the hands of the people is not something the centralist, authoritarian EU could live with.

Some of us, thus, have already been thinking along the lines of a positive approach to the EU problem, coming up with "Referism" and latterly the Harrogate Agenda". Each of these offers improvements on the status quo in the form of direct democracy. And it is here that there possibly lies the real antidote to the EU, fighting lack of democracy with real democracy, rather than simply more of the same.

The point here, is that, unlike a political party, which accepts the rules as they stand and merely offers variations in detail, by way of different policies, to enthuse the majority of people we really need to go back to fundamentals. The EU's original objective was to make Europe and thereby the world a better place. If we are going to fight fire with fire, we need similar high-minded ideals.

This, though, will not be enough. If the opposition's main weapon is FUD, we must have a means of neutralising it. And here, we need a element of pragmatism which has not always been evident in the eurosceptic movement.

Recognising this, we have been looking at the application of Article 50 and a measured, negotiated withdrawal. This may not have the attraction to eurosceptics of the "big bang" amicable divorce, with the immediate repeal of the European Communities Act, but it does have the merit of eliminating the FUD factor.

This is where rejoining EFTA comes in, together with remaining in the EEA. If we do these things, plus repatriate all the EU legislation, our status the day after we leave will be exactly the same as the day before.

Given that it is impossible to unravel forty years of integration overnight, we are best off taking our time, and if it takes a decade to secure a clean break, that would be time well spent. After all, UKIP have spent twenty years trying to get us out of the EU without success. Ten yes more, for the certainty of withdrawal is not a bad bargain.

This, then, effectively defines our strategy – a two-pronged attack. On the one hand, we devise an alternative to the EU that related to the ordinary voter and offers a real difference in the way we are governed, increasing democracy in the system. And, on the other hand, we address the fear factor, neutralising it as a weapon and thereby weakening the status quo effect.

Inevitably, this will take time. To start from scratch with what amounts to a new contract between the people and government, is going to take work to define. A great deal of effort will then be needed to spread the word, in such a manner that it takes deep root. Superficial publicity will not achieve this aim.

Fortunately, it looks as if we will have the time. The chances of our getting a referendum in the near future are next to nil. Even Mr Cameron's promise could hardly be fulfilled before 2017, and that depended on his being able to form a government after the next election.

This looks increasingly unlikely and, it seems to me that as long as Miliband thinks he can gain office without needing to match Mr Cameron's election promise, he will not do so. The earliest probability of a referendum, therefore, looks to be some time after the next election but one – some time after 2020.

This may seem a long time to wait. But, in fact, strategy takes time. It takes time to develop it, and it takes time to change minds. In 1945, there was a strong caucus in favour of developing European integration. It took until the early sixties before this became settled government policy, and another decade before the UK joined the European Communities.

In pursuing their objective, the European integrationalists benefited from clear aims and a clarity of purpose, which the eurosceptics have never been able to offer. And still it took them decades. Taking the time out to define and develop our strategy, therefore, seems to me to be the best way of using the time available to us.

And there we have our choice – prepare to win, or carrying on with the "business as usual" model which will, in the fullness of time, guarantee yet another defeat.

Two Bookers for the price of one

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 23:13:13 +0000

The weekly column is up, plus a treat – Booker interviews Owen Paterson. I'll review both later this morning.

Booker: payback time on energy

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 13:16:41 +0000

It's digging out day today. I spoke to a couple of our neighbours who tried to get out yesterday, and failed. Others made it, but it was touch and go whether they would get back. On balance, it was the right call not going to London, although I'm sorry to have missed the fun.

But the very fact that going to London was potentially such a perilous venture brings us straight to the Booker column, where he remarks on the coldest March since 1963, and on the continuing snowfall.

Alongside that, we have the news that there is barely 48 hours' worth of stored gas left to keep us warm, while the head of our second-largest electricity company, SSE, has warned that our generating capacity has fallen so low that we can expect power cuts to begin at any time. It seems the perfect storm is upon us, writes Booker.

The Mail on Sunday is running the weather on its front page, asking, "When will it ever end?". It notes that 2,000 extra deaths were registered in the first two weeks of March, and over three thousand in February.

Campaigners at Age UK, which says 26,000 people die needlessly in winter every year, said the current weather could prove deadly for thousands more. Director general Michelle Mitchell said: "Colder, harsher winters tend to lead to an increase in life-threatening conditions such as heart attacks and strokes which in turn leads to a high rate of excess winter deaths". For every one degree drop in average temperature, there are around 8,000 extra deaths.

Even to this day, though, the warmists quote the great European heatweve of 2003, claiming 70,000 deaths as a direct result of the heat.

Extrapolate the excess deaths in the UK this season, to come up with a Europe-wide figure, and doubtless it will far exceed the 2003 figure. Yet the warmists are silent about the effects of the cold, and especially about their ambition to increase the price of energy to promote reduced use, supposedly to cut CO2 emissions.

It is this grotesque mishandling of Britain's energy policy by the politicians of all parties that Booker comments upon, brought about by the pursuit of their "childish chimeras of CO2-induced global warming and windmills". This. says Booker, "has been arguably the greatest act of political irresponsibility in our history".

Three more events last week brought home again just what a mad bubble of make-believe these people are living in. First, under the EU's Large Combustion Plants Directive, we lost two more major coal-fired power stations, Didcot A and Cockenzie, capable of contributing no less than a tenth to our average electricity demands.

Then we saw a French state-owned company, EDF, being given planning permission to spend �14 billion on two new nuclear reactors in Somerset, but which it says it will only build, for completion in 10 years' time, if it is guaranteed a subsidy that will double the price of its electricity.

Finally, of the triumvirate, hidden in the small print of the Budget, were new figures for the fast-escalating tax the Government introduces next week on every ton of CO2 emitted by fossil-fuel-powered stations, which will soon be adding billions of pounds more to our electricity bills every year.

Within seven years this new tax will rise to �30 a ton, and by 2030 to �70 a ton, making it wholly uneconomical to generate any more electricity from the coal and gas-fired power stations that last week were still supplying two thirds of our electricity.

Put all this together and we see more starkly than ever the game the Government is playing. It knows that no company would build wind farms unless it is given subsidies that, in effect, nearly double or treble the price of its electricity. The Government will only get CO2-free nuclear power if it promises it an equal subsidy. And now the Coalition is also hell-bent on driving our much cheaper and more reliable coal and gas-fired plants out of business, by imposing a carbon tax that will not only eventually double the cost of their electricity, but also make it impossible for them to survive.

So mad is this policy of "double-up all round" that it is driving even the largest and most efficient power station in the country, Drax, capable of supplying seven per cent of all the power we use, to switch from burning coal to wood chips, imported 3,000 miles across the Atlantic from the US. And how has the Government forced Drax to do this? By giving it a subsidy on wood chips that doubles the value of its electricity, while putting an increasingly prohibitive tax on coal.

This is all insane in so many ways that one scarcely knows where to begin, except to point out that, even if our rulers somehow managed to subsidise firms into spending �100 billion on all those wind farms they dream of, they will still need enough new gas-fired power stations to provide back-up for all the times when the wind isn’t blowing, at the very time when the carbon tax will soon make it uneconomical for anyone to build them.

So we are doomed to see Britain' s lights going out, all because the feather-headed lunatics in charge of our energy policy still believe that they' ve got to do something to save the planet from that CO2-induced global warming which this weekend has been covering much of the country up to a foot deep in snow.

Meanwhile, the Indians are planning to build 455 new coal-fired power stations which will add more CO2 to the atmosphere of the planet every week than Britain emits in a year.

Thank you, David Cameron, leader of "the greenest government ever", Booker concludes. Thank you, Ed Miliband, father of the Climate Change Act, the most expensive suicide note in history. Between you, you seem determined to switch off our lights, lock the door and throw away the key. We owe you more than we can say.

Eurocrash: Cyprus – now or never?

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 23:23:16 +0000

The one thing you can guarantee about the "colleagues" is that they love their cliff-hanger dramas, the midnight meetings and the last minute settlement. Thus, after watching the Cyprus situation all day, with all sorts of deadlines come and gone, we're no further forward than we were yesterday, or the day before, or the day before, or …

Meanwhile, Chicken Little is screeching round the courtyard in Brussels, with frenetic talk of the island nation being the first to leave the eurozone. But that, the "colleagues" could never allow to happen, and nor can they risk bringing down the entire European banking system for a paltry €10 billion – not even a rounding error in terms of the wider European economy.

And that is why Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, has a much stronger hand to play than many commentators allow. Potentially, the "colleagues" have much more to lose than he does.

However, before we get to the end play, and an outcome that is to an extent pre-ordained, we must go through the theatre which so characterises EU politics. Everything is for show with the posturing entirely for public consumption, while the real negotiations proceed apace, behind closed doors.

For the moment, though, there is no resolution. They game must be played out to the bitter end, for the final compromise that will see Cyprus remain in the eurozone, with another glorious fudge in place. That is the one certainty in a sea of uncertainty. The rest, as they say, is detail.

COMMENT: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

UK politics: "I have never been a huge fan of Cameron"

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:30:06 +0000

Obviously, the way to get on in life is to brown-nose The Leader on his way up, and then forget everything you said when he is on his way down.

The above is Tim Montgomerie on 6 December 2009, the fourth anniversary of David Cameron becoming the leader of the Conservative Party.

And now, little Timmy has fallen out of love. Today, he says …

How times change when you've got a nice safe job behind that Murdoch paywall.

Climate change: move over Viner

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:02:17 +0000

Well, we all remember Dr David Viner telling us that "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past". Within a few years, he told us in March 2000, winter snowfall, would become "a very rare and exciting event".

The thing about warmists, though, is they never give up. Back in January 2010, after one of the coldest winters in 30 years, we got John Hammond, a meteorologist at the UK Met Office, telling us: "Winters like this are likely to become less of a feature as we head through the 21st century".

"Colder winters". He said, "become less likely because overall the background warming will reduce the severity of them, certainly for our part of the world".

And now, in the grip of the coldest March for fifty years, with global warming thick on the ground, the fool Beddington, the government's outgoing chief scientist, is telling us that the effects of climate change on the weather were already being felt in the UK.

"In a sense we have moved from the idea of global warming to the idea of climate change … temperatures are increasing but the thing that is going to happen is that we are going to see much more variability in our weather', he says, then adding, "I think you only have to look at the last few years to see how that is actually starting to manifest itself even in the UK".

Looking out the window at the snow drifts, we can indeed see how this "climate change" is manifesting itself. But we expect no relief from the idiots the government insists on appointing as it chief scientific advisors.

Beddington's successor is Sir Mark Walport, former director of the Wellcome Trust, and a medically trained immunologist. This great sage is already imbued with warmism, telling us in 2009 that, "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not only essential to help tackle climate change, it is also an important way to improve public health".

This is also the man who, in July 2011 was adding to his voice to the complaints that the BBC was giving "too much weight to fringe views on issues such as climate change".

So, as we shiver through the unseasonable weather, hardly daring to venture out into the biting easterly wind, these fools prattle and prance with the neo-religious mantras.

Don't expect anything sensible from Walport. He is pure establishment. But then that is the joy of being a warmist – you can keep repeating the same old, same old, never having to admit you are wrong. And the idiots in government will always give you a nice cushy job.

Horsemeat fraud: is someone taking the pig?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:19:19 +0000

The Danes have been congratulating themselves over the horsemeat fraud affair, after finding that adulteration has not been at all widespread.

They have, however, been somewhat disconcerted by reports that 11 of 70 beef samples tested have shown positive for pork. In seven out of the eleven samples, the level was in excess of seven percent.

Food minister Mette Gjerskov is "outraged", saying that when there is more than one percent pork in beef, it is not carelessness with mincers and using the same knives that industry often claims. It is cheating and cheating, because there is a financial gain from using pork in the more expensive beef.

The minister is now exploring options for tighter controls, looking at whether testing can be carried out, and whether it is best to sample it before it ends up on the cold counter. Whatever else, the minister concedes that there is a need to strengthen surveillance.

One wonders though whether there is more to this than meets the eye (so to speak). There is a small price differential between pigmeat and beef, but not anything like as great as between horsemeat and beef. Adulterating beef with small amounts of pork is hardly going to make anyone going to make anyone rich, and seems hardly worth the risk.

Denmark, however, is the land of those cartoons, and where there is considerable antipathy towards the flood of Muslim immigrants. Could it be therefore, that the adulteration is driven not by the prospect of financial gain, but for other reasons.

Muslims are prohibited from eating pork, which they regard as "unclean" (including those people who don't use toilet paper) , and spiking their food with pork could be regarded as making a statement. And not a few people believe that this is precisely what is happening.

Eurocrash: Cyprus details yet to emerge

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:54:56 +0000

As you might imagine, I have been following the Cyprus situation closely, reading hundreds of English language reports, and well as many foreign language reports, and especially those in the German press.

The one thing that I come away with, though, is that there are huge gaps in the accounts. We are thus very far from knowing the truth of what has been going on, and the full text of whatever deal has actually been made. The publicly accessible information is to the rest what the tip is to an iceberg.

Of very great interest though is the account of the Sunday night negotiations offered by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which has it that Herman van Rompuy was the lead negotiator on the night.

In fact – or so we are told – the entire negotiation session was at the instigation of van Rompuy, who decided to intervene after consultations with Merkel and Hollande. And how interesting it is to see the Franco-German motor in action again.

Apparently, the eurogroup meeting earlier in the week had been so brutal that, after ten hours of battering, finance minister Michalis Sarris had been so exhausted that he could not continue. Thus it was left for the Council president to work directly with Cypriot president Anastasiadis and cut a deal.

The fascination of this development is that the negotiations have largely been seen through the filter of national players, with the Germans cast in a prominent role. It is often forgotten that the EU also fields its own players, and has its own agenda, subtly different from the member states.

In the event, it was van Rompuy who carried the day, with agreement being reached by two am Monday morning, actually very early for a crisis in Brussels.

None of that, though, helps us understand what is really going on. On the face of it, the deal reached should have the Russians up in arms – those who hadn't already moved their money – and the people of Cyprus rioting in the streets. Furthermore, because of the risk of contagion, we should be seeing some action in Spain and Italy to guard against bank runs.

Perhaps it is too early to expect a response, with people either in shock or looking to find the missing detail that would make sense of the deal. No that the banks are to stay closed until Thursday, it may take until then before the reaction sets in.

And at that point, we may well find out how well trained and organised the Cypriot riot police are. But one should also remember that the Cypriots are extremely adept at guerrilla warfare. No one in their right mind messes with the Cypriots – as the EU may yet learn.

COMMENT: CYPRUS COMBINED THREAD

Climate change: a rare and exciting event

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:51:34 +0000

The Mail is preening itself at the "brilliant discovery" from its star correspondent, Richard Littlejohn, who today tells us about Dr David Viner and his quote in The Independent from March 2000 about snowfall becoming a "thing of the past", and a "rare and exciting event".

This is all good stuff, but it might have carried a little more conviction if the Great Littlejohn and kept an eye on the blogs. He might then have discovered it appearing on this blog on 27 December 2009.

Littlejohn might also have noted that the quote was picked up by Watts up with that two days later, and has since becoming a standard part of the armoury in the war against the warmists. It first appeared in the Booker column in February 2010.

But then, we mustn't grumble. For the Mail actually to catch up with what is going on outside its own tiny little bubble is also a rare and exciting event. We should all applaud the speed with which it has come to the party … only three years late. That has to be better than never. Do we expect a new revelation on Hammond by, say, July 2016?

By the way, we've got another fall of global warming this morning. And while there is a humorous side to the warmists' stupidity, the damage they do is incalculable. Talk to Scottish farmers about the need to tackle global warming – and see how long you live.

UK politics: immigrant controls – a bag of nothing

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:14:51 +0000

Whenever a politician promises a "crackdown" on immigration, you just know that it will come to nothing.

That was certainly the feeling yesterday when David Cameron told an audience of students at University Campus Suffolk in Ipswich that world he planned to show illegal migrants "the door" and rein in welfare benefits he believes lure foreigners to live off the British state.

Specifically, he declared that certain measures would apply to "all citizens of the European Economic Area", with immigrants having to wait up to five years for social housing. And they would also be subject to tougher "reciprocal charging" requirements when using the National Health Service - meaning their own country will have to pay.

Very quickly, Cameron was accused of "the worst kind of dog-whistle politics", accompanied by reports of his pledges "unravelling" within hours of his speech.

Then, today, we have the Daily Express report that "Brussels" was threatening to block the "crackdown" before it had even started, apparently warning that his proposals – including restrictions on housing, health and unemployment support – must comply with EU free movement rules.

So, once again, we a mired in uncertainty, bumping against the limits of EU law, which circumscribe what a British government can do.

Actually, though, the restriction is not so much "free movement" as Article 18, by which "discrimination on grounds of nationality shall be prohibited". Mr Cameron can impose all sorts of restrictions on benefits, and eligibility to social housing, as long as those restrictions apply uniformly to all residents, whether British or not.

Basically, though, as long as a citizen of any EEA member state can pass what is known as the "habitual residence test", and then conform with the national eligibility criteria for any benefit or service, their entitlements must be placed on the same basis as resident British citizens.

However, Mr Cameron is making a particular play on social housing provision, declaring that, "New migrants should not expect to be given a home on arrival". He thus says he intends to introduce new statutory housing allocations guidance this spring, "to create a local residence test" which "should mean local people rightly get priority in the social housing system".

What Mr Cameron doesn't say, though, is that Local Authorities (LA) have a statutory duty to house certain categories of the homeless, which includes those who have dependent children. If immigrants who are able to pass the "habitual residence test" fall into these categories, the LA is obliged to house them, irrespective of whether they are local or not.

Very often the so-called "statutory homeless" will be housed in temporary accommodation, such as a bed and breakfast hotel. But, if eligible migrants have children or are pregnant, in common with British residents, they can only be placed in a bed and breakfast in an emergency, and there is nothing else available. Even then, the LA can only use this option for a maximum of six weeks, when they must be given more permanent accommodation.

It is unlawful for an LA to turn applicants away or require them to apply to another council because they do not have a local connection with their area. And, if applicants do not have a local connection anywhere - as will often be the case with migrants - the LA cannot refer them to another council for housing.

Of what we have seen, therefore, Mr Cameron is offering us nothing at all. What he seems to be doing is dressing up existing provisions and controls, re-presenting them in such a way as to appear to be "cracking down". In other words, it is smoke and mirrors time once again.

Climate change: the winter of our discontent

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 23:15:16 +0000

Readers will recall the tragic helicopter accident during a police exercise in Berlin last week during a heavy snowstorm, and also the pile-up in the snow on the A45 in Hesse, near M�nzenberg, a fortnight ago.

Now, courtesy of the BBC, we learn of another pile-up involving on the continent, this one on an Austrian motorway, involving 100 vehicles, leaving at least one person dead.

In passing, the state broadcaster also tells us that there is a spell of freezing weather is causing disruption across Europe, adding that an icy carriageway was a likely factor in this crash.

And this was not the only major incident. In southern Austria, at least 29 people were injured - six seriously - in two accidents inside road tunnels. The A2 motorway, which runs through the tunnels, was blocked in both directions.

Further east, there has been record-breaking snowfall in the Ukrainian capital Kiev has caused traffic chaos, which has seen many residents taking to skis instead. Minsk has also been badly hit, and three regions of Romania heavy snow has blanketing three regions, closing schools and disrupted road traffic.

The freezing weather, we are also told, has also caused chaos on Serbia's northern border with Hungary where lorries queued for hours amid heavy snowfall. Black ice coating roads in neighbouring Croatia has caused a spate of accidents.

Then, thousands of people in Hungary found themselves trapped in heavy snow after a sudden cold snap and high winds swept over Eastern Europe. Budapest has deployed tanks to reach motorists trapped by the conditions.

The heavy dump has trapped people in cars, buses and trains as dozens of major roads across the country were blocked by the snowfall.

And it isn't just that. In Germany, it is estimated that long, cold, dark winter could cost up to €6 billion in extra healthcare and lost productivity as people stay away from work sick, as well as causing terrible confusion to the humourless German police.

So long and so often have we been hearing the laments from the warmists about the perils of warning that it is about time that they stopped and gave some real though to the far greater dangers and disruption arising from cold weather, and the economic cost.

Even then, there are the hard-line warmists who believe that this spell of bad weather is directly the result of "climate change", not able to deal with the reality of a cooling planet.

Their obsession is diverting massive resources from the real problem, so much so that even at local level, English councils spending hundreds of thousands on the salaries of climate change officers cannot afford to clear the snow from the streets.

When finally, sense prevails – as indeed it must – we shall, in our winter of discontent, remember these people. The evil that men do should not live after them. We cannot afford it.

Energy: the reckoning to come

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:51:23 +0000

As gentle flurries of global warming descend again from the skies this morning - turning into a steady cascade - Booker writes in the Daily Mail on one of his favourite subjects – the coming energy crisis.

Not entirely coincidentally, the front page tells us to expect �286 in green taxes on energy bills by 2020. Already, we are told, we are paying �112 on an average bill of �1,267.

In fact, it is going to be a lot more than that – the Mail is relying on government figures. But what is terrifying here is that ministers have swallowed the green mantra – that increased costs will be offset by efficiency savings, with DECC claiming that the increase will be offset by efficiency savings of �452 a year.

There is no meeting of minds here. We are dealing with energy secretary Ed Davey. He refuses to see past his own departmental propaganda, into the real world, and simply repeats his mantras, not budging an inch.

But what really takes the biscuit is Labour's energy spokesman Caroline Flint, who roundly criticises the energy policy, declaring that, "the Government's underhand attempt to mask the real impact of its policies on families' energy bills is shameful".

Yet this is the same Labour that, under Ed Miliband, launched the Climate Change Act, with the near-unanimous support from all sides of the House. When it comes to energy policy, therefore, there is not much to chose between the lot of them. They are as bad as each other.

Sadly, that typifies modern politics. There are only a very few policy issues where there are any real differences, and those differences are not enough to make the difference. All parties are tarred with the same brush. Effectively, that leaves most people with a feeling of powerlessness, and explains why so many people are walking away from the political system.

But energy policy, like so many other aspects of government, cannot be fudged forever. When the lights do go out – and that looks more likely than ever – there will be a reckoning. There will have to be.

Modern society cannot function without cheap energy and successive governments which have deliberately sought to increase costs for no good reasons need to be brought to account.

UK politics: David Miliband resigns - do we care?

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:06:02 +0000

Do we actually care that David Miliband is quitting as an MP? And does it matter that he is putting the taxpayer to the considerable expense of finding a replacement – not that it will make a blind bit of difference.

South Shields was first represented by Labour ever since 1929, when JamesChuter Ede took the seat with a majority of 40, only to lose it to the Liberals in 1931, who regained the seat with a stonking ten thousand majority.

Ede took it back in 1935, fending off a challenge from the National Labour candidate as well as the Liberal, possibly benefiting from the opposition vote being split. He kept it in 1945, and the seat has stayed Labour ever since –giving them a near 80 years of unbroken tenure.

In the last election. Miliband polled 18,995 votes, as against 7,886 for his Conservative rival, and 5,189 cast for the Lib-Dems. UKIP did not stand. The overall turnout was 57.7 percent, giving young David a mandate from just 30 percent of the electorate.

One assumes that UKIP will field a candidate for this thoroughly irrelevant contest, hoping to repeat the Eastleigh "success" of beating the Tories into second place. In South Shields, this is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, although UKIP have always struggled to maintain a presence in the North-East, and have yet to gain an MEP in this region.

However, BNP did quite well in to General, polling 2,382 votes, many of which are potentially transferable to UKIP, assuming that BNP does not stand again. But with Lib-Dem support in the constituency eroding (the party lost five percent at the General), it looks a shoe-in for Labour. Nevertheless, the fight for second place should provide some entertainment.

Eurocrash: keep calm and look forward to Easter

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:04:31 +0000

Gradually, more details are emerging on the background to the Cyprus bailout. Handelsblatt isn't the first or the only one, but it is offering one of the clearest reports, alleging that large amounts of money were withdrawn from Cyprus just before the shutters came down.

Amongst the accounts cleaned out, it seems, were those of senior officials from the Cypriot banks and the government, and the suspicion is that they have been transferred to another EU country.

The Cyprus Parliament President Giannakis Omirou is examining the suspicion that unusually high remittances were made abroad, with greater cash withdrawals than there should have been.

Omirou has requested a list of the transfers in recent weeks and is also examining the government in Nicosia to see whether large sums were transferred abroad as the banks closed and the online banking was locked down.

The extent of the capital outflow has been so huge that the Cypriot banks need far more money than just the money customers had withdrawn from ATMs.

S�ddeutsche relays a suggestion that there were up to ten billion euros deposited by Russian citizens. Other estimates put the sum at double and more, but it is difficult to determine precisely how much, as so many of the origin of many deposits are concealed in shell companies.

Top of the list of destination countries is Malta (pictured) and it is now known that Cypriot law firms were recommending to their foreign customers with companies in Cyprus to maintain accounts in Malta. This trend increased dramatically after the first speculation about the involvement of savings in the bank bailout.

Furthermore, an international law firms based in Texas sent targeted e-mails to Cypriot companies, telling them: "Malta has a strong financial sector, a good growth rate and low government debt".

Apparently, firms in the Isle of Man and Latvia are also taking in refugee funds from Cyprus and there are also reports that there has been a substantial inflow of funds from diverse sources into Jersey.

Back in Cyprus, a massive convoy brought five billion euros in cash in from Larnaca Airport to the Central Bank in Nicosia after it has been shipped in, preparatory to the banks reopening today. The news is that withdrawals are to be limited to €300 a day, with transfers abroad capped at €5,000 a month.

If the bird has already flown, though, it maybe that the crisis is by no means over, as there may be insufficient in the banks to deliver the sort of cash the "colleagues" are expecting. And then there is the little matter of Luxembourg, which may also be in line for some corrective action.

Meanwhile, with Cypriot riot police standing by to keep order, anti-German sentiment is growing, leaving Germany to complain that the "colleagues" are not defending it against unfair criticism.

Solidarity is required, FAZ concedes, but just because the German government insists on a return, it is pilloried. One can only wonder at Mrs Merkel's composure in the face of the insults she has had to put up with, the paper says. Comments are often "negative and rude".

Germany, it says, is living the Thatcher experience. European governments used to hide behind the British prime minister, because they dare not say the things she said openly. Now the federal government is being blamed for a policy that is in line with other EU partners.

So, says Handelsblatt, "keep calm and look forward to Easter", when the markets close. Sounds like a plan … better than most.

Energy: after the thieving bankers

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:03:55 +0000

The Daily Express is trying to steal a march on the Mail in the outrage stakes, highlighting on its front page the latest example of corporate greed. This time it is Centrica directors, milking �16 million in salaries and bonuses from the cash mountain acquired by British Gas.

Chief executive Sam Laidlaw raked in almost �5 million, with his salary of �950,000 topped up with bonuses and long-term share awards of over �2.6 million, plus benefits. Outgoing British Gas managing director Phil Bentley saw his total remuneration leap to �3.1 million in 2012 from �2.1 million a year earlier. His basic salary was �635,000.

Head of power generation Mark Hanafin, finance director Nick Luff and North American boss Chris Weston each received between �2.5 million and �3 million.

Critics, we are told, described these payments as "excessive greed", but that's a new one on me. What is excessive greed? Greed, by definition, is excessive.

One is also less than impressed by the mouthings of sundry trades unionists, including TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady. The paper has him saying, "At a time when the poorest households are struggling to make ends meet and are spending over a quarter of their incomes on fuel bills, these huge payouts are insensitive beyond belief".

Nevertheless, O'Grady has a point – and even more so does Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, declaring, "It is obscene and is the straw that could break the back of corporate excess".

He adds, "Enough is enough. This excessive greed sees casino bankers and the corporate elite running British business pocket millions while working people struggle to pay their soaring household bills. It must stop. As Britain goes through the worst March weather in half a century, the sun shines brightly on Centrica's bosses while those struggling to pay the bills shiver".

Yet, in this country, the government objects to caps on executive pay, and the people don't have a choice - unlike Switzerland. But, since the EU is proposing controls, this plays into the hands of the evil empire. It is taking a populist approach to the issue, where the British government is loathe to act.

Mr Cameron, therefore, would be unwise to ignore this. There is a string and genuine resentment of the pillaging of these corporate thieves. No one with any sense has any objections to executives of major enterprises being well paid, but multi-million salaries and bonuses paid to corporate employees are theft, pure and simple.

What the powers that be possibly don't appreciate is the message this sends out, and the moral implications. How can the State condemn, or rightfully punish, the anyone stealing property, when it condones theft on such a vast scale?

And, while the State might tolerate this situation, politicians need to be aware that public patience is limited, and resentment is growing. "Last chance saloon" doesn't even begin to describe it.

Climate change: if in doubt, photoshop

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:17:42 +0000

The German media (such as here) is having great fun with the municipality of Kiev. It has recently been stricken with record snowfalls, invoking a flood of complaints about the lack of snow clearing.

In response to the complaints, the administration on 26 March posted on its website a glorious photograph of three of its snowploughs, clearing the streets to let the traffic through (above).

Spotted by Facebook user Jaroslaw Debeli, though, there were slight problems with the photo. It came not from Kiev, capital of Ukraine on 26 March, but from Moscow on 29 November 2012. In an attempt to conceal its identity, Russian license plates and other telltale detail had been digitally obscured.

Despite this, a spokesthing for the city government dismissed the image as a "technical error". The web administrator responsible "was probably tired because he had been working non-stop for several days", the spokesthing said.

Clearly the British authorities could learn from this. Complaints of failure to clear snow can so easily be addressed by posting photos of successful snow clearance from other eras.

After all, since Dr Viner told us that snow was "a thing of the past", this snow cannot be here. It must be virtual snow, in which case virtual snowploughs are the obvious answer.

EU politics: an amending budget

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:10:20 +0000

Left over from yesterday is the latest in the ongoing battle of the budget, this round concerning the 2013 tranche.

Already set at €132.8 billion, the Commission has cone up with an "amending budget", adding another €11.2 to that figure, in an attempt to by-pass the cap on the multi-annual spending target. It would represent an 8.4 percent increase over the level already agreed in December, pushing annual EU spending to its highest level ever.

The extra funds must be approved by both the European Parliament and the Council – the latter by qualified majority voting – which means that the UK cannot block them, even though Downing Street has pledged to fight the proposal which would cost us about €1.2 billion.

The European Parliament, which has been calling for extra funding, is most likely to approve the amending budget, and is threatening to block the multi-annual agreement unless the Council caves in, something about which Schultz has made himself abundantly clear.

Meanwhile, the Commission is not pulling any punches. "This cannot come as a surprise", EU budget commissioner Januz Lewandowski says, referring to the current gap between projected income and commitments. "The ostrich policy can only work for so long: postponing payment of a bill will not make it go away".

Britain's Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Greg Clark, has nevertheless described the Commission's proposal as totally unacceptable. "It is extraordinary that the Commission should demand an increase in the EU budget that is bigger than the rescue package that was agreed for Cyprus earlier this week," he says.

And the point made is a good one. Considering all the hullabaloo there has been about €10 billion to the Cypriots, for the Commission to dump another €11.2 billion on the tab is more than a bit tiresome.

Lewandowski, though, is unrepentant. In recent years, he says, EU budgets had been "increasingly below the real needs based on estimates from member states". Now this is creating a "snowball effect" of unpaid claims transferred to the following years.

This is what originally proved to be the breaking point on the multi-annual budget, with the Parliament refusing to take a hit in order to pay outstanding bills. Now it is coming back to haunt Mr Cameron, further eroding his budget "victory" last year.

The interesting this is that the use of the amending budget was flagged up in November 2010, and the funding gap was highlighted last October. Then, we wrote that, when the "colleagues" come round with their begging bowl, Mr Cameron is going to have to find about �1 billion to put in the kitty.

Thus, Lewandowski is absolutely right. This shouldn't come as a surprise. But that does not stop it being a major embarrassment to Mr Cameron. The last thing he wants is to have to find another €1.2 billion for the EU, or the prospect of demonstrating his impotence when it comes to trying to stop the "colleagues" taking it.

But Mr Cameron want to stay in the EU and, if he does, political embarrassment is part of the personal price he must pay.

Eurocrash: the end result

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:29:51 +0000

As predictable as the sun rising in the morning, EU officials are using the latest crisis as an argument for "more Europe". This time it is EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier, who has demanded as a consequence of the Cyprus crisis, that the management of the eurozone should be strengthened.

Monetary union become needs dedicated "Ecofin" type body, merging the offices of the eurogroup chairman and the EU economic affairs commissioner.

Strangely, he gets short shrift from the chairman of the Union Group in the Bundestag finance committee, Hans Michelbach (CSU). He rejects the idea, saying that this "is another flimsy attempt to expand Brussels centralism". This does not solve the problem, he says. Rather, it threatened to proliferate problems.

Such a lack of enthusiasm for further integration might seem a bit odd, although some Germans are still feeling bruised by the bad press they are getting. "Germanophobia is unfair", declares Spiegel.

However, before you decide whether it is safe to go out, check out FAZ Robert Menasse and Ulrike Gu�rot proclaim: "Long live the European Republic". No nation state can solve problems alone, they say, but it is the lack of democracy in Europe that prevents it coming into its own.

This is one of a raft of articles on the same theme. The pursuit of European political integration is very far from dead.

Spiegel though has other fish to fry, telling us more about the run of money out of Cyprus.

The banks there are saying it was impossible to prevent all money slipping out of the country, despite the account freeze. Much of the money was withdrawn from overseas, where Cyprus had no authority. Branches of Cypriot banks in non-eurozone countries such as Russia and Britain do not answer to the European Central Bank. Their liquidity is controlled by central banks in those countries.

What is priceless, though, is the magazine's comment that their defence is "nothing less than a voluntary admission of impotence". Holders of smaller savings accounts, it says, have been unable to access much of their money for almost two weeks, companies have been unable to pay their suppliers and across the country people are concerned that their salaries will not arrive on schedule on the first of the month.

Meanwhile, rich businesspeople and those with connections overseas have been able to transfer their money into foreign accounts, says the magazine. And that is the reality of the European Union. For all the talk and the high aspiration, it's about the little man being shafted.

Climate change: Met Office advice "not helpful"

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:54:01 +0000

One can almost concede that the BBC has done something useful, in seeking out the Met Office's unpublished three-monthly outlook produced at the end of March last year.

Then, the Met Office predicted average rainfall and "slightly" favoured drier than average conditions. Yet, between March and April 2012, the UK experienced an extraordinary shift from high pressure and drought to low pressure and downpours.

After the embarrassment experienced by the Met Office following its infamous "barbecue summer" forecast of 2009, the state meteorology service had ceased publishing its seasonal forecasts. But it still made them available to contingency planners and government bodies, such as the Environment Agency.

However, it has admitted that the advice it issued was "not helpful". The words of its analysis later confessed: "Given that April was the wettest since detailed records began in 1910 and the April-May-June quarter was also the wettest, this advice was not helpful".

In a note to the government chief scientist, the Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo sought to explain the difficulty of constructing long-distance forecasts, given the UK's position at the far edge of dominant world weather systems. She said last year's calculations were not actually wrong because they were "probabilistic".

This is a wonderful intellectual sleight of hand, allowing the Met Office, like so many bureaucracies, to deny that it ever gets anything wrong. And this is perhaps more necessary than most people think.

As Booker points out in his 3 October 2009 column, one reason why their short-term forecasts are often so comically wrong is that, as the Met Office likes to boast, they are produced with the aid of the same super-computer used to provide the IPCC with its predictions of what the world's climate will be like in 100 years' time.

According to the Slingo doctrine, these forecasts are not actually wrong, because they too are "probabilistic". Most, likely, though, they are just about as helpful as the quarterly analyses, which by the Met Office's own admission, means not helpful at all.

Nevertheless, in the way of things modern - as Autonomous Mind so often points out, this does not stop it awarding its staff handsome performance bonuses. For her forecasting performance in 2011/12, Slingo was awarded a bonus of �25-30,000 on top of her �135,000 annual salary.

The nature of the beast, however, can be deduced from her responses on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, this morning, when she admitted that a serious pressure on water resources in March last year did mean a "slightly enhanced risk" of the drought continuing into April.

"I felt it was right to emphasise the risk of dry conditions continuing as a precautionary principle", she added, justifying this by saying that: "We have to look over a large number of events and I think on about 65 percent of occasions we do give indeed very helpful advice".

Basically, flipping a coin gives a fifty percent probability of giving "helpful advice", which means that Slingo gets her bonus for the extra fifteen percent, over and above random. Nice work if you can get it.

Immigration: eroding national solidarity

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:43:19 +0000

Mass immigration erodes our national solidarity, complains David Goodhart in his "controversial new book".

But, while we would not begin to disagree with that premise, does not Mr Goodhart realise that this is the intended purpose of mass immigration. From all sides, nationalism is under unprecedented attack, and no better weapon has been devised by the internationalists and surpranationalists than unrestrained immigration.

That does not stop Goodhart having some good ideas but, since he misdiagnoses the problem, his nostrums necessarily lack power. First and foremost, we need to rehabilitate nationalism, and repossess it from the so-called "hard right".

Only a confident nation state can properly manage its borders, and set the acceptable parameters for permitting entry. Immigration policy cannot properly be defined by any other body, as it is the very existence of borders which defines the nation state, and only a fully functioning nation state will protect them.

Eurocrash: corruption at the heart of the Cypriot crisis?

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:03:14 +0000

It was Tuesday when I was writing that there were more details on Cyprus yet to emerge. That was a fairly safe prediction, but the point I was trying to make was that there is more to this "rescue" than meets the eye, and the real reasons for the behaviour of the "colleagues" has yet to emerge.

We might be getting a little closer though with the revelations breaking in the Greek press, conveyed also by ekathimerinini.com and in Spiegel.

These tell of an unhealthily close relationship between the Cypriot banks and politicians, and with political parties and trades unions. Thus we hear that the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki, between 2007 and 2012 gave loans amounting to millions to these groups, without in any way seeking full repayment.

The Bank of Cyprus wrote off the €2.8-million loan given to a hotel with ties to the communist-rooted Progressive Party (AKEL) and forgave significant portions of many other loans.

A national labour union is said to have been forgiven €193,000 of a €554,000 loan. An unnamed company was forgiven €110,000 from a €1.83-million loan, a prominent MP of the centrist Democratic Rally (DISY) party saw €101,000 of a €168,000 loan written off and a company owned by the brother of a former minister of the conservative Democratic Party (DIKO) had €1.28 million of a €1.59-million loan written off.

Several other MPs and the mayor of large city allegedly had significant portions of their loans forgiven by Bank of Cyprus. Companies linked to a member of the bank's board, to the daughter-in-law of a DIKO deputy and several others also appear to have been offered significant loan relief by the Bank of Cyprus.

As for Laiki Bank, it is said to have written off several loans taken out by AKEL and DISY MPs. The bank appears to have written off $5.8 million in debt from a company whose majority shareholder is said to be a well-known Cypriot politician. The ex-wife of a senior ministry official and a company owned by a local ambassador appear to have been benefited.

These details, apparently, are only the tip of the iceberg, and more are expected to emerge.

The Greek newspaper Ethnos writes that the current details raise "significant political and moral issues" that could have a "serious legal repercussions". Most of all, though, they may shed light on why Cypriot banks had been allowed to behave the way they did, pushing the economy over the edge.

This may also explain why the "colleagues" took the action they did, possibly with the foreknowledge that this was not a straightforward bailout. Awareness of deep-rooted, systemic corruption could have dictated the path.

For the moment, the Cypriots are being extraordinarily calm about recent developments, and some feelings are being expressed that external intervention was necessary. The island nation may have needed more than just a financial rescue, which could put a completely different complexion on the events we have been witnessing.

Eurocrash: corruption at the heart of the Cypriot crisis?

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:03:54 +0000

Water: hungry directors to support

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 17:11:53 +0000

Although there has been a great deal of attention paid to domestic energy costs recently, less has been focused on the depredations of the water companies, which have been stealthily increasing their charges.

However, this was picked up by The Daily Express last Wednesday, when it told us that the average annual water bill is due to rise to �388, with effect from Easter Monday.

Overall, there has been a 3.5 percent increase, year-on-year, approved by water regulator Ofwat, yet another increase to service the corporate behemoth. Certainly, our local provider, Yorkshire Water, needs the money, its holding company having to find �800,000 in salary and pension contribution for its "highest paid director", which presumably is CEO Richard Flint. That leaves Yorkshire Water to pay the bonuses, which would put Mr Flint into the million pound bracket.

According to Ofwat chief executive, Regina Finn, the increase in charges is "driven by inflation" and "will pay for investment in the industry". But what neither Ofwat nor the Express tell us is that water bills have all but doubled in the last ten year. In 2003, we had to find �157.28, and now Mr Flint needs �293.84 as our contribution to his pension fund.

The happy world of the water industry, though, is populated with smiling customers reading their bills (above, from a YW corporate brochure), with Yorkshire Water telling us, "We deliver our services to customers at a price they are willing and able to pay, whilst providing investors with returns that attract long-term investment". The fact that, if we want a water supply, we have no choice whatsoever, seems rather to have escaped them.

But, at least, the water companies do seem to have a choice about whether they pay tax. As the Observer reported last year, three of Britain's biggest water companies paid little or no tax on their profits while generously rewarding their executives and investors. Thames Water and Anglian Water paid no corporation tax on the profits made from their utility businesses.

According to the monitoring organisation Corporate Watch,Yorkshire Water, with a turnover of �893.6 million made an operating profit of �303.3 million, but paid only �2.9 million in corporation tax. This it achieved through artificially adding to its debts by taking high interest offshore loans, via its intermediate owner Kelda Holdco Ltd, thereby reducing its taxable profits in the UK.

But then, when your owners are investment funds based in the US, UK and Singapore, and the HSBC, acquired for the princely sum of �3 billion, one must take every little advantage on can, including a quiescent Ofwat which seems quite happy to allow its charges to maximise the use of tax havens.

Thus are water companies treasured for their "stable cash-flows and sizeable dividends", which can continue for as long as they are so easily allowed to milk their customers. And we are supposed to believe that private ownership of our assets is somehow better?

Booker: dodgy chief scientists

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:23:02 +0000

I am not sure the link will work for those who haven't signed up to the new paywalled Telegraph, but we'll try to keep to the tradition of posting the lead story of the Booker column, even if it can't be read online.

Last week, writes Booker, as Britain and much of Europe were struggling through the coldest spring in decades, Sir John Beddington marked his retirement from his �165,000-a-year post as the Government's chief scientific adviser by touring the television and radio studios to terrify us all once more with his all-too-familiar message of how we are threatened by runaway global warming.

Thanks to climate change, the litany runs, we now face ever more disruption to our weather, ever more floods, droughts, hurricanes, blizzards and all the rest. Whether it is too cold or too hot, too wet or too dry, we are meant to believe that it's all our fault and we must bring the climate back under control.

In fact, it is far from clear why Sir John, as an expert in population biology, should be regarded as having any authority to pronounce on such matters. A year or two back, for instance, he was telling us that by the end of this century we can expect the warmest days in Europe to be 8�C hotter than they are now, and that in America they will be 11�C hotter – claims that exceed even the wildest predictions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

What is it about these chief scientific advisers that, one after another, they are expected to come up with the same old claptrap about the future of the climate, even though their scientific specialisms give them no more obvious qualification to sound off on this subject than a chap holding forth in the pub?

Sir John's predecessor, for instance, was Sir David King, a "surface chemist" who got entangled in controversy over a seeming prediction that he made to MPs that by the end of this century, unless we curbed our CO2 emissions, the world could well get so hot that the only continent still habitable would be Antarctica.

It was he who came up with the unique claim that the extinction of the dinosaurs "55 million years ago" was caused by the world overheating thanks to soaring levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, the end of the Mesozoic era is generally agreed to have been 65 million years ago, and no one apart from Sir David ever seems to have claimed that the dinosaurs’ disappearance was due to an excess of CO2.

King's predecessor as chief scientific adviser was Sir Robert (now Lord) May, another population biologist who is a complete fanatic on global warming. He was the "top expert" called in by the BBC to address that secret seminar in 2006 when he advised its top executives that they should stop giving airtime to "climate deniers" who only take the view they do because they are in the pay of the fossil-fuel industry.

A remarkably similar line has been taken by the man who is now to succeed Sir John in the post, Sir Mark Walport. He is a specialist in immunology, who in 2011 rushed to endorse that dotty report for the BBC Trust by the snail expert Steve Jones, advising the BBC that it should show not less bias on climate change, but more.

Since it seems that the only purpose of having a chief scientific adviser these days is to parrot the official line on global warming without having any very obvious understanding of the subject, concludes Booker, isn't it time we saved ourselves �165,000 a year by abolishing this post altogether?