Britannia Radio

06 August 2009 10:13 AM

Note to Michelle: Jackie wouldn't have done it this way

I have to thank NBC's Washington website for this picture -- if 'thank' is what you do to someone who parks something as ugly as this in front of your eyes.
    The over-decorated monstrosity -- altogether, it reminds one of the floral tributes at a gangster's funeral -- is President Obama's birthday cake. Michelle, Malia, Sasha and 30 White House staffers were on hand to sing Happy Birthday yesterday. All as expected. But what even the Obama-loving journalists at NBC are asking is, how can a First Family thought to be so stylish come up with a cake as crass as this?
    'How'd this happen?' NBC wants to know. 'Michelle wears $540 Lanvin sneakers to plant organic veggies in the White House garden. The girls switch outfits aboard Air Force One to arrive in Paris in crisp khaki trench coats. The Obamas should be celebrating with Baked & Wired' -- that is the name of a fashionable Georgetown cake shop -- 'cupcakes topped high with icing and those little silver balls that look really cool but kinda hurt everyone's teeth nonetheless.'
   Then there is the question of the big number 44. We are told this was the President's 48th birthday. So what's the 44? His supporters point out that he is the 44th president. Fine. But why put it on a birthday cake? If the White House is trying to dismiss the suspicions of the 'birthers' -- those Americans who believe Obama may not actually have born in the United States, a constitutional requirement to be President -- then offering what looks like a muddled version of his birth date is not going to help.

05 August 2009 1:12 PM

Yet another eurocrat sucks a personal fortune out of taxpayers

The Swedish daily Dagens Industri reports today (thanks to Open Europe for spotting the story) that the EU Communications Commissioner Margot Wallstrom has earned almost €1.9m (£1.6m) during her ten years as a Commissioner.
   More, she will receive another €1.9m in retirement payments if she lives until she is 85. (I've just checked the CIA Factbook on Swedish life expectancy. At 83.26 years for a Swedish female, I'd say that, unfortunately for European taxpayers, Wallstom's chances of sucking in the full extra £1.6m are good.)
   She will also receive €450,000 (£381,000) after taxes in a one-off payment before cashing in €8,000 (£6,800) a month after taxes as a pension for the rest of her life.

  Wallstrom's job as 'Communications Commissioner' means she has been in charge of spending hundreds of millions of euros each year on pro-EU propaganda. This year Wallstrom's propaganda budget was €213m (£184m), which doesn't count the tens of millions other commissioners spend on propaganda on their own patches.

04 August 2009 11:22 AM

Slippery, slimy, rich, tentacled creatures back Lisbon. Of course.

What we have here is Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International. In other words, what we have here is part of  'a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.' And that is not me talking, that is a quote from the front page of the Financial Times.
   The paper was reporting on a US survey of both 'the general public and financially sophisticated Americans.' The survey found that the general public saw Goldman's as no better than Gordon Gekko, the villain of the 1987 film, Wall Street.  
     New York magazine recently asked, 'Is Goldman Sachs evil? Or just too good?' -- the bank reported record quarterly profits of £2.41bn in July -- while it was Rolling Stone magazine that identified the bank as a giant vampire squid, the line quoted by the FT. So Americans are well warned about Goldman's. As are the British: weeks before the FT picked up the story, the Mail's Alex Brummer had a two-page spread in the paper asking: 'As Goldman Sachs posts huge profits from the economic crisis, the question is: Did it cause the problems in the first place?'
    The only country that hasn't yet grasped the slimy nature of Goldman's is Ireland, where the Irishman Sutherland and his tentacled bank are still treated with a deference that is embarrassing to watch. Sutherland, a Dublin man educated by the Jesuits, worked his way up from being Attorney General of Ireland, to Ireland's European Commissioner. The Irish have for years thought they could glow in the reflected glory of Sutherland's vast new money and his Goldman's job. He is occasionally interviewed on the State-owned broadcaster, RTE, with the forelock tugging the Irish used to reserve only for the Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh. 
   Now Sutherland has joined as a 'patron' of the Yes-to-Lisbon lobby group, 'Ireland for Europe,' headed up by another Irishman, Pat Cox, who also went to Brussels to make his fortune (not hard, if you do enough years in the cream jug that is the European Parliament).
    Sutherland always treats anyone who doubts the alleged-fabulousness of the benefits to Ireland of its membership in the EU with a kind of bored aristocratic hauteur. This is particularly true when he talks about the democratic decision of the Irish to vote No to the Lisbon Treaty in last year's referendum. And the citizens of what is supposed to be a republic don't question his manner. They do like to be kicked with a well-shod foot. 
   But now Ireland is suffering something far worse than a recession. The country has actually met the criteria for being in a depression. The latest horror of it is that the Finance Minister last week unveiled plans to buy up €90 billion (£77bn) of bad loans and worthless property from the banks at above-market rates -- in order to save the banks from insolvency. So the Irish are in a murderous mood towards bankers just now. They are beginning to see Irish banks and Irish bankers as -- well, as giant vampire squids wrapped around the face of Irish humanity.
   I think it's time someone pointed out to them that maybe they ought to be showing a little less deference to the opinions of one of the boss squids, Peter Sutherland. 

One people, one state, one Europe. And you're paying to push it.

This isn't the worst of it, but it is bad enough. I give you just one example of the hundreds of millions of euros of taxpayers' money spent every year on pro-EU propaganda. This fellow on the left is Captain Euro ('born Adam Andros, the only son of a famous European Ambassador'), meant to be a superhero. He was invented by a firm of  'corporate vision strategists' on the orders of the European Commission. He stars in animated films paid for by taxpayers' money and which are broadcast through the internet and television. The official line is, 'Captain Euro is the symbol of European unity and values.'
    The villain opposing him is, naturally, the evil Dr D. Vider -- get it, Divider? Dr Vider is described as 'a ruthless speculator' which in Brussels code means anybody who supports the kind of free market economics the British do best and the French hate.
    Captain Euro is tripe. But the propaganda drive he represents is no joke. A report just out today from the Swedish thinktank Timbro gives 25 pages of details on how the European institutions spend hundreds of millions of euros each year on what they call 'communication,' but anyone else would recognise as pro-EU, anti-national propaganda. None of it is information, all of it is taxpayer-funded marketing and advocacy for 'an ever closer union.'
    We already know of course about the vast budget the Communications Directorate at the Commission has for propaganda. This year the amount allocated to 'DG Communication' is €213m (£184m). But as the Timbro report discloses: 'The total cost of the EU's communication efforts, however, is much larger than that. Each DG [Directorate General at the Commission] has earmarked part of its budget for advocacy efforts.'
    DG Economy, to take a good example, will this year devote £6.5m for, among other things, marketing the alleged excellence of the single currency.
    Another example is a publication called 'Investing in our common future -- the budget of the European Union,' which is a kind of happy-clappy explanation of how big an effort the EU makes to monitor the budget. Thing is, the publication makes no mention that the European Court of Auditors has year after year refused to sign off on the accounts. 'As late as 2008, the Court found that 11 percent of the €42bn (£36bn) approved in 2007 under the EU's cohesion fund should never have been paid.' But the EU's 'communication' publication doesn't mention that.
    And on it goes, all of it taxpayers' money doing nothing but pushing the 'more Europe' line that voters have rejected in every country in which they have been allowed a vote.
     Another example: for the period 2007-2013, the cultural 'Youth in Action' programme, 'to promote young people's sense of belonging and help in efforts to lay the foundations for a common European identity', has a total budget of €885m (£765m). 
   The European institutions are now using taxpayers' money to set up radio networks, television news services, to fund pro-EU thinktanks -- and to train and give prizes to journalists, which just shows some of us never turn up our snouts at a trough, no matter how politically tainted. Finance for the European Journalism Centre, a training centre, was €1m (£860,000) last year alone. And you might have seen Euronews on television. What you didn't see was any declaration that this year alone, the EU bureaucrats will give it €10.8m (£9.2m).
     In 2008, a programme called 'Communicating Europe in Partnership' was awarded €88m (£76m) to allow it to promote 'active European citizenship and a common identity.' This fits in with the purpose of euro-propaganda as defined as long ago as 1992 by one euro-enthusiast author: 'To promote the idea of European citizenship.' 
    Every opportunity is taken to spread the message. As the Timbro report shows, even the financial support the EU gives to school milk -- the EU has to get rid of all that excess milk somewhere -- comes with the obligation that the school displays at the entrance to the school canteen a large poster showing a European Union flag and text saying that the milk is subsidised by money from the EU. If the school refuses to display the political poster, the milk is withheld. Everything from free fruit to free concerts are getting the same compulsory propaganda treatment.
   On top of that is a worrying list of all the 'pro-Europe' allegedly 'independent' or 'civil society' groups that are getting millions from EU institutions. They include the European Movement, and the Centre for European Policy Studies, which describes itself as independent, but which, according to Timbro, received €6.1m (£5.2m) in support from governments and EU institutions in 2007 alone.
    And on and on the list goes. You can find the details at www.timbro.se All of the millions are taken from taxpayers, and all of it with a single aim: one people, one state.
    Which is an aim with a very European pedigree in propaganda, though we are used to hearing it in the original German.