EU losing its grip …

Monday, February 16, 2009

EU losing its grip …

We actually knew this, but it is interesting to see a piece in The Financial Times with that as its headline. Actually, it then goes on to add, "…on Caspian gas corridor", but grip is grip. The EU is gradually losing it.

The focus of this piece is the Nabucco project to pipe gas via a southern corridor from the Caspian region and thus reduce western Europe’s dependence on Russian supplies. We have written on this beforeand the issue remains as murky as ever.

But what is really interesting is that the EU bully-boy days seem to be over. It can stamp its foot and make all sorts of threats and innuendoes, but it really isn't working any more.

At the moment, the EU seems to be exploring routes for its southern gas corridor and has been sounding out Recep Tayyip Erdogan's administration and the Turkish public, to see whether Turkish territory could provide an escape route for central Asian gas, by-passing Russia. Erdogan, though, is not playing ball. He does not see Turkey as a passive vassal state, merely providing transit facilities. 

Rather, Erdogan has his own ideas about turning Turkey into a regional energy hub, buying and reselling Caspian gas to European customers. This is not at all what the euroweenies have in mind. They want to buy Azeri and Turkmen gas directly from the producers.

The problem is that Erdogan has them rather over a barrel – or a pipeline, which is just as uncomfortable. The euroweenies can't play hardball because, to get the Turks to co-operate on energy issues, they have to talk within the framework of the accession negotiations, specifically in the context of the "energy chapter" of the acquis communautaire.

Deliciously, however, it is the euroweenies themselves that are blocking these discussions, with the hyperactive M. Sarkozy rather in the frame, backed up by the ever-obstructive Cyprus. That leaves Turkey free to make its own deals, which could prove more attractive to gas producers than anything the euros have to offer – and certainly faster, leaving them high and dry.

To get round this, the euros have to do a deal, which means opening up sensitive areas of a accession talks, and getting serious about negotiations. But that is the last thing they will be able to do, which puts the Czech presidency in the interesting position of trying to broker a deal that will ultimately be sabotaged by France.

One way of other, the grand experiment really isn't working and, as reality continues to crowd in, this is becoming ever-more apparent.

COMMENT THREAD

This man is insane

We are talking here of The Lord Mandelson and one hopes that is the case. It could be much worse than that.

The said "noble" Lord is, we are told, stepping into the dispute over British jobs for UK workers by announcing a review of how the country's engineering and construction industry can achieve higher productivity to beat off foreign competitors. This review will thus look at "skill shortages" in the British engineering construction industry.

Rather helpfully (to Lord M), it is going to take three to four months, and be conducted by a fine, upstanding, totally independent figure - Mark Gibson, a senior official in Mandelson's own department, formerly private secretary to Lord Heseltine. Even now, we know where this is going.

By such sleights of hand, however, is the central issue skirted. The anger of the displaced workers that we have seen so recently had not been about a lack of productivity. They have been complaining that skilled men have been refused jobs which have been given to foreign workers.

There is a great deal more to the issue than this, and I suspect that it may be long time before we get to know what really has been going on – if ever. But if Lord M thinks that this is going to address the problem, then he is insane. Either that, or it is a gigantic smokescreen. But then if he thinks that is going to work, he is also insane.

This is an issue which is not going to go away, and no amount of finessing will make that any different. Sentiment is not going to be helped at all by this news in The Daily Express today which reports that foreign workers "are pricing out British builders" by working for as little as £2-an-hour. Desperate migrants, the paper says – often in the country illegally – are asking just £25 for a 12-hour shift, undercutting British tradesmen who are struggling to find work. 

Try as they might, no one is going to be convinced by the likes of this, with Acas happily finding that the use of "foreign workers" at the Lindsey oil refinery were not paid wages that undercut British employees.

This is not about fact – it is about perception, and even prejudice. But it was Brown who lifted the lid off a can of worms with his cry of "British jobs for British workers," and he should not be surprised if people take him at his word.

The Acas finding is going to be seen as a "whitewash", which will simply reinforce the perception that British workers are being stiffed out of jobs. Little Lord M is going to have to do a lot more than set up a cushty little review to overcome what is going to become a running sore.

COMMENT THREAD

Oddly enough ....

... I was wondering about it yesterday morning. Who, I asked myself, could have replaced Assud, the giant Jew-eating pink rabbit on the Al-Aqsa children's TV programme "Pioneers of tomorrow". You see, Assud was killed in the latest unpleasantness in Gaza, so the pretty little child presenter of this psychopathic programme, Saraa, needed another animal.

Well, I need wonder no more. Little Green Footballs and Eye on the Worldbring us the answer from the invaluable MEMRI TV. Saraa's latest companion is a teddy bear, named Nassur. Cute, eh?

Well, not quite. In line with his psychotically murderous predecessors, Nassur longs to be a suicide/homicide bomber.

Teddy bear Nassur: I have come today to the Gaza Strip. Saraa, Allah willing, I will be one of the mujahideen, one of the fighters. I will join the ranks of the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, and I will wage Jihad among them and carry a gun. Do you know why?

Child host Saraa: Why?

Nassur: To defend the children of Palestine.

You feed this to children week after week, month after month, year after year and you end up with a bunch of psychopaths, as various Arab leaders like Mahmoud Abbas have realized though somewhat belatedly. Blue Peter, this is not.

There is another aspect that we ought to be wary of and this blog has mentioned it once or twice, and that is the funding of this curious education. The truth is that we are funding it.

We have written about the report produced by the Taxpayers' Alliance (see, we are nice about them sometimes) that showed the amount of money Britain separately and as part of the European Union sent to Gaza for "educational" purposes.

It would be good to know how much of that much-advertised Gaza Appeal will go on the Al-Aqsa TV children's programme.