Ever since the Tories broke away from the EPP group in the EU parliament and formed their own, critics inside and outside the party have been seeking to exploit apparent inconsistencies between them and their "partners".
So tedious are these little scraps that we have avoided reporting on them – who really cares about the internal politics of the EU parliament, much less the machinations of a fringe group like the Tories?
The latest twist, however, has a certain amusement value. As reported by The Independent, the president of the new group, Law and Justice Party MEP Michael Kaminski (pictured), has expressed support for both the Lisbon Treaty and the Common Agricultural Policy.
This, says The Independent, "would appear to put him seriously at odds with David Cameron who is strongly opposed to the treaty which he wants to put to a referendum in the UK."
Actually, it doesn't – which goes to show how little the British media understands EU parliamentary politics.
The political groups – including the one which the Tories have formed – are little more than "marriages of convenience" between disparate national parties, with very little in common. They come together at the EU level in order to milk the system, enabling them to maximise their drawings from parliamentary funds and to bid for key positions in the parliamentary structures.
Look at any of the political parties forming any of the EU groups and you will see huge national differences in policies, to the extent that you could play endless games pointing up the anomalies and inconsistencies. They matter not though.
All the group members sign up to a set of common principles, in order to satisfy the parliamentary rules, carefully drafted so as not to interfere with national sensibilities. Each national delegation then tends to run its own affairs.
Since the EU parliament has absolutely no control over EU policy, which is determined by the commission and the European Council, national policy differences between group members are of very little importance.
However, playing up the differences in order to score political points on a national stage is fair game. Thus, Baroness Kinnock is doing her own"milking", declaring that: "David Cameron needs to get a grip. The fringe is coming apart at the seams." She goes on to say: "Cameron and Hague must say where they stand. Do they agree with the leader of their group or do they oppose him and move further from reality?"
Outside the foetid bubble of micro-EU politics though, one suspects no one actually cares. After all, Kaminski is a foreigner, and who cares what they say anyway? For goodness sake, just look at him. He cannot even wear his tie correctly.
COMMENT THREAD
With one more soldier killed – yet another by an IED while on foot patrol – the total casualties for Afghanistan now stand at 196. In the deadly arithmetic of the media war, this is four short of the "magic" figure of 200, which will be the trigger for a torrent of media coverage.
With the current rate of loss, the bi-centenary could well come by the end of this week, giving the Sundays a free run. Given that we are in the middle of the "silly season" with very little competition on the news agenda, the likelihood is that the MoD will be in for a torrid time.
More on Defence of the Realm.
One has to smile, even if a little wanly, at the letter from Richard Shaw in The Sunday Telegraph today.
He refers to Booker's piece last week("Weather records are a state secret"), which reminded him of an incident in the 1970s when he was writing technical manuals for the Services.
If, as occasionally happened, writes Shaw, an author was refused some piece of information on security grounds, his colleagues would jocularly suggest that he ask either a defence journalist or the Russian Embassy.
One author, who had been asked to include in his manual a table showing the difference in barometric pressure at one foot intervals from sea level to over 100,000 feet, was apparently told that this was highly classified information which could be released only to someone with the appropriate level of security clearance.
He took the usual joke literally and rang the Russian Embassy which, to everyone's amazement, as it was during the Cold War, duly sent him the required details.
This also reminds me of a long-running controversy in the 70s about the number of incursions of Soviet aircraft into British airspace, testing our defences and reaction times. Flight magazine mounted a spirited campaign to obtain from the government details of the number of Soviet flights that had been intercepted by the RAF.
The government consistently refused to supply the information on the grounds of "national security", provoking an exasperated comment from Flight, that we "wouldn't want the Russians to know, would we?"
So it is today. Much of what the government withholds on the basis of "security grounds" is kept secret not for fear it might aid any putative enemy, but simply to keep its own citizens in the dark.
This I found when researching for Ministry of Defeat. Much of the information came not from official channels – or the British media – but from Arab "resistance" sites, which gave consistent and remarkably accurate information about the activities of British troops.
But then, there is that very funny episode in Yes Minister when Hacker wants to know what the Foreign Office is up to. He is advised to contact the Israeli embassy.
With Booker today recounting the bizarre tale of the MoD press officer suing the ministry for forcing him to tell lies, we have at least one consistent frame of reference to work from. If it comes from the lips of an "official spokesman", we can usually take the opposite for the truth.
COMMENT THREAD
It is a while since we visited the EU extradition treaty, the last time being in 2007 when we reported the case of Joseph Mendy, a black Englishman who fell foul of the Spanish police and the European Arrest Warrant.
What was particularly chilling at the time, with Frank Dobson having called an adjournment debate, was the response of the Parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Home Department, by name of Meg Hillier. "We have to have faith in our European partners," she said. "There are safeguards in place to ensure that each European country has a proper legal and judicial process to take such decisions."
Someone who most certainly will not agree with those fine sentiments is Andrew Symeou, who was deported to Greece last month to await trial for murder, where he was not allowed bail because he is not domiciled there.
This case is picked up today by Christopher Booker, under the heading "EU extradition treaty means British law no longer protects us".
He reminds us that, in 2001, when EU leaders gathered in Laeken, Belgium, to plan their next great leap forward to European integration – the ill-fated EU constitution – they also agreed on what they saw as another bold symbol of their wish to see Europe politically and legally united: the European Arrest Warrant.
At the time, our leaders were fired by the recent 9/11 outrage – or using it as yet another beneficial crisis – and agreed that the courts of any country could call on those of another to order the automatic extradition of anyone suspected of offences under 32 headings, with such crimes as terrorism, drug-running and "xenophobia" high on their list.
Even then, as we well recall, fears were expressed that such a summary shortcutting of normal legal procedures might lead to serious injustices. Not all of the EU's judicial systems (to put it mildly) rest on the same ideas of justice.
But even those most worried about the dangers of this system, writes Booker, could scarcely have imagined a case like that involving the extradition to Greece of a 20-year old British student, Andrew Symeou.
There follows a tale of skullduggery and violence by the Greek police which Booker recounts in full but, despite Mr Symeou's case was taken up by various bodies including Fair Trials International, Liberty, Open Europe and the UK Independence Party, their actions have been to no avail.
With politicians of the three main parties pointedly refused to get involved, in June this year, two High Court judges proposed that the case should go to the House of Lords because it raised legal issues of "public importance". But the Law Lords refused to hear it because it did not raise "an arguable point of law of general public importance".
So it was that on 23 July, Mr Symeou was deported to Greece, where he was not allowed bail because he is not domiciled in Greece. He was imprisoned for some days in concrete cells in Zakynthos, locked up with illegal Albanian immigrants in intense heat and taunted for being British, until he was last week transferred to another prison near Athens.
His parents, allowed to speak to him through bars, say he is not taking his ordeal well. He could be held in prison for up to 18 months before trial, although this week his Greek lawyer hopes to win a further plea for bail.
Concludes Booker, little could Tony Blair and his fellow European leaders have imagined in 2001, when they blithely agreed to strike a blow against terrorism by agreeing to the Arrest Warrant, that this was what it would come down to in practice.
All traditional British beliefs in protecting the liberties of the subject have been thrown out of the window. Mr Blair – and all those other politicians who acclaimed the Arrest Warrant and have refused to comment on Mr Symeou's case – can really be proud of what they have done.
But then, what is the liberty of British citizens – or even justice – when compared with the inestimable benefits of our membership of the European Union?
COMMENT THREAD
Headline of the day is the prediction from the incoming Chief of General Staff, General Sir David Richards, that Britain’s mission in Afghanistan could last for up to 40 years.
This finds its way onto the front page of The Times drawn from an exclusive interview with the man in the same paper, and then copied out in most dailies.
The interview itself is disappointingly thin, majoring on hagiography and personal detail, giving very few clues as to how Richards intends to operate as CGS. We gather he is a "man of action" and that he is "politically savvy" and that he is not going to present a "shopping list" for military equipment on his first day in office.
But clues there are that he is going to be a very different CGS from his predecessor Gen Sir Richard Dannatt. The immediate difference is that while Dannatt went to Sarah Sands of The Daily Mail for his first interview, while Richards goes to The Times.
Another major difference is that Dannatt used the opportunity, in October 2006, to call for a withdrawal from Iraq, thereby giving sustenance to the emerging Mahdi Army, which then knew that it could win the day as long as it kept up the pressure.
Richards, on the other hand, is borrowing from the same strategy of building up the host country security forces, as "our route out militarily", but then adds that Afghan people and our opponents need to know that this does not mean our abandoning the region.
"We made this mistake once," he says. "Our opponents are banking on us doing it again, and we must prove them wrong." Reading the runes, that is a tacit, if highly camouflaged criticism of his predecessor. It is also tactically sound. You should never concede the game openly, even if you do intend to quit.
Our new CGS, we are told, is a man who is also committed to Afghanistan, and determined to win, even if that can only be defined as not losing. His prediction of a 40-year war, therefore, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. He is simply talking the talk. But we may also have a man who can walk the walk.
COMMENT THREAD
I actually laughed. Now I must go and mow the lawn ... haven't done it for three weeks, then I'll get down to some serious blogging.
Meanwhile, they're thinking about a new Taliban chief in Pakistan. Rantburg considers the options.
On a sombre note, Tom Newton Dunn reports on the Jackal deaths. "Three hero Paras killed in Afghanistan were in a lightly-armoured Jackal vehicle" – while the Ridgebacks gather dust.
Quite.
COMMENT THREAD
A defence journal which censors this then publishes this. That is what the defence industry understands by a free and open debate.
Read more on Defence of the Realm.
David Hughes, The Daily Telegraph'schief leader writer, is waxing outragedabout Quentin Davies, complaining that he is blaming defence procurement delays and cost overruns on a government of which he was actually a member.
Thus, in what Hughes calls "a shameless piece of sophistry", he has Davies identifying "the real problem" in as the last Conservative Government which had made such a mess "that we are still living with the consequences."
More on Defence of the Realm.
Three soldiers from the Special Forces Support Group, on patrol in Lashkar Gah, bringing to 14 the number of soldiers killed in this vehicle type.
More on Defence of the Realm.
Following the Channel 4 News lead on the Gray report yesterday, the BBC has allowed procurement minister Quentin Davies (pictured) to deny that the report has been suppressed
Despite this "non-suppression" though, more details are emerging, not least via the unlikely medium of a BBC clog which has obtained a slide presentation of the Gray report. Among other things, the slides charge that the "Ministry of Defence does not really know the price of any kit, and project management does not exist in the Department."
With the procurement minister in full flow, this has elicited a halfway sensible comment from theCoffee House clog (which proves it is possible) to the effect that: "the slides point to long-term structural problems within the MoD, which will take an enormous effort for a future Tory government to reverse."
Suddenly, therefore, defence procurement is on the map, with the leader in The Daily Telegraphairing its views on the "procurement scandal", noting that: "The problems at the MoD still run very deep indeed." The Times also takes a robust view, declaring:
The problem is that the military chiefs want everything they see in the sweet shop and the officials and politicians can't say no. When they run out of money, as they always do, orders are merely postponed, which raises costs and stores up more problems.That is indeed one of the problems, but only one. Readers of DOTR will be aware of many, many more, none of which are referred to in any of the current media commentary. Having "discovered" procurement for themselves, they have no need for mere blogs.
However, at least the media are dimly aware that there are systemic problems. Maybe, just maybe, they can stay the course and more Tory MPs might start asking the right questions. And maybe pigs will start flying as well, but what we have is a start.
COMMENT THREAD
The Daily Mail informs us (and this must be the first time in many a long month that I noticed anything in the news that is of any interest whatsoever in that paper) that Lord Patten (former Tory MP, former Governor of Hong Kong, former Eurocrat, now Chancellor of the University of Oxford) may well be interested in becoming the EU Foreign Minister, should such a position come into existence on theConstitutional Lisbon Treaty becoming law.
This, Ms Kirsty Walker tells us helpfully, has rather annoyed the Boy-King of the Conservative Party as it is that party's settled policy to oppose the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty or, at least, to make sure that it is not left there.
So the first question is will this mean that there will be calls for the whip to be removed from Lord Patten as he is opposing party policy.
The second question is inevitably about the Shadow Foreign Secretary: does Mr Hague ever listen to himself? This was his comment on the possibility of Lord Patten (who is not campaigning for the job, oh dear me, no) being tapped by the hand of fate:
Speculation about who should fill a post whose shape we do not yet know is certainly unwise and, given the nature of European politics, likely to be unhelpful to any possible candidate.That sounds like he is worried about Lord Patten spoiling his chances by declaring his interest too early. Does this mean that our William is not on message either when it comes to the Conservative Party's attitude to that pesky treaty?
As for me, I cannot think of a better person than Lord Patten to bloviate on the subject of European foreign policy, which does not exist as there are no European interests. He will look very good in all those meetings. Well, no worse than all the other Eurocrats.
Oh and by the way, I do not think former Prime Minister now totally forgotten international statesman Tony Blair has any chances of becoming European Council President, so there is no reason why Lord Patten should not be Foreign Minister.
COMMENT THREAD
Rupert Murdoch "the billionaire media mogul" is fed up with giving away his product free of charge on the internet and, according to The Guardian and others, plans to charge for all news websites by next summer.
This follows his "global empire" taking an eye-watering £2bn net loss for the financial year to June, hit by huge writedowns in the value of its assets, restructuring charges and a dive in commercial revenue. Thus, Times and Sunreaders are going to be expected to pay for content, via a mechanism as yet undisclosed.
The received wisdom, of course, is that users will not pay for news and comment on the internet (or, indeed, many other intellectual products) and, so far the media industry has been relying on the advertising and sponsorship model for its revenue stream. But, with the downturn in advertising revenue, even Midas Murdoch is clutching for pennies.
Murdoch says he has completed a review of the possibility of charging and that he is willing to take the risk of leading the industry towards a pay-per-view model: "I believe that if we're successful, we'll be followed fast by other media," he says.
Maybe he is right – the man did not get mega-rich by picking losers, and if anyone can make it work, he can.
However, the man – like the rest of us – is up against cultural values. Strangely, none of us would expect to go to the supermarket and help ourselves to groceries, without thought of paying, yet the value of intellectual property is so often discounted. The grocers get rich and the philosophers starve.
Murdoch complains that: "Quality journalism is not cheap," and he is dead right – not that the proprietor of such papers as the News of the World can know much about quality journalism. In fact, not even tat comes cheap – you still need someone to produce it.
The game is given away when Murdoch reveals that the charging model will be extended to red-top tabloids such as the Sun and the News of the World. He says he is keen to capitalise on the popularity of celebrity stories: "When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical," he tells us.
Maybe that is the secret – produce tat, pile it high and sell it cheap. There may be enough punters out there to make it pay. But when it comes to "quality journalism" though, we suspect that that declining commodity will go begging.
COMMENT THREAD
Gerald Warner makes the op-ed page today, in a quintessentially silly season story, taking on Stryker McGuire, the American journalist who first gave currency to the concept of "Cool Britannia".
McGuire has run his eye over Britain in a more critical mood, writes Warner, and what he sees is decline. Post-imperial debility has finally caught up with this sceptr'd isle: our public debt is soaring towards a record high; we are about to be eclipsed by "giant emerging economies like China and India"; our defence budget is unsustainable; we cannot afford to renew Trident; and the engine of our "soft power" – the financial sector – will not recover its former pre-eminence.
Always a good read, Warner has nevertheless missed the point, as indeed has McGuire. What we are reading is not a Britain in decline, but the emergence of two nations, the private sector and the public-supported sector.
One is in decline, with people cutting back and looking to a gloomy future, as against an increasingly profligate and expanding public sector. This sector is draining money from the real economy while delivering less and less, with greater inefficiency and bureaucracy, its ambitions unrestrained as it puts out its hand for more and more money to feed its spending habit.
In a tiny way, that is what the MPs expenses row was about – a privileged few, feeding of the state, spending more on their expenses than many people earn – those people who have learned again the virtue of prayer, uttering silent invocations to their own personal deities as they tap their PIN numbers into the hole in the wall in the hope that it will deliver money instead of a curt, impersonal refusal.
That is the sense of the divided nation – a cynical disillusioned rump who watch their masters piss money against the wall, talking glibly about billions and spending millions as if they were small change, while the average Joe is counting up the "shrapnel" at the end of the week to see if he can afford a packet of fags and a lottery ticket – not that he is allowed to smoke the fags down at the increasingly empty boozer that he used to frequent.
This is not, therefore, about whether Britain is "great" any more. It is about seeing your own country being taken over by an alien breed that seems to regard our money as their own, to be handed over to them as of right, to feed their profligate, wasteful lifestyles – a country that is not ours any more but which belongs to our gilded masters to use as their own plaything. In that respect, the "great" is neither here nor there. It isn't even Britain anymore. We are strangers in an alien country that was once our own.
COMMENT THREAD
Just 24 hours after the Ridgeback story broke, the situation now looks very different. We got it completely wrong.
Read more on Defence of the Realm.
One does not need to dwell too long on this. Channel 4 News this evening ran as its lead an item on an internal MoD report which reveals that £2.5 billion is being wasted on equipment each year.
This is a report by Bernard Gray, a former MoD official, commissioned by John Hutton last December. It was supposed to have been published before the Parliamentary recess but has been withheld, supposedly because it was "too embarrassing".
There is a brief summary in The Times which offers some limited detail, but since the report has not been published, there is very little to go on.
What the report does though is reinforce the thesis made again and again on this blog (and DOTR), that there is no cash shortage per se in defence. Simply, the budget is being chewed up by massive waste and inefficiencies.
Further, we argue that, even if there was a cash shortage, there would be no point in throwing money at defence. Given the dire state of this department, all that would happen is that it would waste even more.
Clearly, the case is made for a massive reform of the MoD, not only in terms of how it spends money – which, I suspect is the focus of Gray's report – but also what it is spent on.
In the interim, however, we need to kick the mantra of "underfunding" into touch. Sort out the waste and incompetence – and then look at the department again, with a critical eye, working out what is really needed and how to deliver value for money.
And we can understand Liam Fox wanting to make political points – as he does here, saying that: "This is a damning indictment of twelve years of incompetence. By trying to suppress this report, the Prime Minister has demonstrated that he cares more about the reputation of Labour than he does about the wellbeing of the Armed Forces."
Fox, however, needs to display a little more sophistication, if not sense. Many of the procurement issues that are currently draining funds started under the Conservative watch – and John Major's Tories left the procurement system in a colossal mess.
He needs to understand that getting value for money out of defence has defeated virtually every government since the war – irrespective of party – and thus should be looking for the systemic faults, rather than making cheap points. In less than a year's time, he or his successor is going to be in the hot seat and exactly the same problems are going to materialise. Creating hostages to fortune at this stage is not going to make the reform task any easier.
COMMENT THREAD
The Ridgeback story seems to be descending into high farce. On the one hand, we have the Evening Standard telling us that the MoD is rushing the three remaining vehicles (six went last night) to Afghanistan after the "transport bungle".
On the other, we have the Press Association retailing a new, "washes whiter" statement from the MoD saying that the "military trucks waiting to be shipped to Afghanistan" were never intended to be used by British troops until the autumn.
It is insisting that the vehicles were never meant to be used by 19 Light Brigade, which is currently responsible for British operations in Afghanistan. They will instead, says the MoD, be operated by troops from 11 Light Brigade, which takes over in October.
In keeping with their reputation for honesty and truth, an MoD spokeswoman denied that this statement represented a "U-turn" and said it was a more accurate reflection of the situation based on "updated information".
Meanwhile, the story has been picked up by Iain Dale, who charts a further intervention by Liam Fox. He has sent a letter to defence secretary Bob Ainsworth (pictured), asking for clarification of the delivery schedule for these vehicles.
Just a tiny little niggle remains though. If the vehicles are not intended for service until the autumn, why is the MoD now rushing them to theatre? This surely cannot be because their presence has been spotted and reported in the media? Could it be that they are not Ridgebacks?
That could explain why they have been classified as "secret" – nothing to do with the coating, asThe Times asserts. And it would also explain why they are being spirited away so quickly - before someone makes a positive ID.
As for the "incompetent" MoD ... this would put it in a different league.
COMMENT THREAD
EU News from Iceland tells us that the number of Icelanders who oppose EU membership is growing steadily. The government or, at least, that part of it that is in favour of that membership is not happy.
The author, Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson, has told me that there has been a certain scarcity of poll results about opinion on EU membership through the spring and summer despite the plethora of events. You may think all sorts of things but I couldn't possibly comment.
Oh yes, before I forget: the boss is not happy with me because I do not link often enough to Your Freedom and Ours, which I ought to be doing through that twitter thingie at the top. I hate twitter thingies, I am afraid. The only time I saw any use to them was in Iran where demonstrators and other oppositionists could send information out fast and without any hassle. The Shepherds Bush insurrection is gathering momentum.
COMMENT THREAD
That an organisation could be that incompetent is beyond human comprehension. But, the MoD has managed it.
Says The Sun, another brave British soldier was blown to pieces in Afghanistan yesterday (in a vehicle, as yet unspecified) - the 192nd victim, with no end in sight to the carnage. It continues:
Our troops are risking life and limb for a cause politicians insist is vital to the interests of UK security. If so, it needs to be waged with vigour, determination - and unswerving commitment. Without the wholehearted support of the state they are sent to defend, how can we ask our soldiers to fight and die for it?It is very hard to understand what the hell is going on here ... do they want to lose the war? Are they trying to get people killed, collecting body bags, like people used to collect Green Shield stamps?
Yet after eight bloody years, there is little evidence that anyone in power - from the Prime Minister down - has their heart in it.
UPDATE: Iain Dale has a story about ministers needing to get a grip on their civil servants. Quite!
Read more on Defence of the Realm.
Picked up by The Sun and The Daily Mail is the story of John Salisbury-Baker, the MoD press officer who is suing the ministry for being forced to tell the public "lies" about the war in Iraq.
He is claiming that the trauma of having to "defend the morally indefensible" – such as "telling the media that army vehicles such as Snatch Land Rovers were equipped to withstand roadside bombs" has given him post-traumatic stress disorder.
What comes over from the detail is the way press officers were used to "hold the line" and to keep embarrassing comments away from the media.
Salisbury-Baker was employed at York's Imphal Barracks and it was his job was to visit bereaved families immediately after they had been told that "their loved ones were dead."
Ostensibly there to provide the families with "a shield" to help them deal with media interest after the deaths had been made public, his real job was to act as a minder, to "steer them away from sharper questions from reporters about equipment."
His partner Christine Brooke has made a statement on his behalf, saying that said: "John is an honest, sensitive and moral person and having to peddle Government lies that soldiers in vehicles such as the Snatch Land Rovers were safe from roadside bombs has made him stressed."
She adds that, "He was particularly plagued by the thought that some of the bereaved families he was visiting might have previously believed their loved ones were safe because of what he himself had said to the media ... He felt responsible. He felt he was having to defend the morally indefensible. The vehicles clearly did not give adequate protection from bombs."
Speaking earlier with Sue Smith, mother of Pte Philip Hewett, who was killed in a Snatch in al Amarah in 2005, she told me this only confirmed what they (her family) knew at the time – that the MoD had been consistently lying to them about the safety of the Snatch. Her own Army visiting officer, she learned, had been given instructions to "shut that woman up".
Many people with dealings with the MoD media officials often wondered how their press officers could sleep at night. Now, it appears, one of them could not. Salisbury-Baker has been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and is pursuing a claim for disability discrimination on the grounds that the stress of what he was being asked to do effectively made him disabled.
Needless to say, an MoD spokesman said it would be "inappropriate" to comment at this stage. That must be the nearest thing to the truth the MoD has been for a long while.
COMMENT THREAD
Something which perhaps should be given more publicity than it is getting is the bizarre story retailed in The Financial Times about the urgent action taken by HMG to zero rate carbon credits to put a lid on VAT fraud.
That carbon credits – the ultimate "snake oil" product – should have become a major vehicle for VAT fraud is hugely ironic, but one is not comforted by the FT's assurance that: "Losses to the exchequer so far are unlikely to have exceeded a few hundred million pounds."
Er ... "few hundred million pounds"? If this had been a robbery of that magnitude, it would be spread all over the front pages. So why the diffidence? This is major-league theft – real money, straight out of our pockets.
Such is the seriousness of the situation that the Treasury is warning that "there now exists a substantiated and increasing risk of the UK becoming a major target for the fraudsters during the next few months". It had taken the action even though changes to VAT need to be agreed by the EU Commission, without even waiting for formal approval.
The scam, it seems, also has international dimensions, with similar action having been taken by France and the Netherlands, pre-empting what is feared to be fraud on an industrial scale, with billions at risk.
This, however, is the tip of the iceberg, exposing yet another vulnerability in a system massively prone to fraud which has cost the exchequers of EU countries billions.
Yet the scale of the fraud is matched only by the degree of under-reporting in the media, which seems not to register the magnitude of this crime and the fact that we are indeed talking about real money. This is not a victim-less crime.
The real problem, though, is the inherent nature of VAT itself and the only long-term solution is to abandon the system completely. Yet that very system is locked into the very heart of the EU – another colossal failure of the project. That, presumably, is why no one wants to talk about it.
And that, this time, the fraud should be perpetrated on the back of what amounts to another fraud – carbon credits – should give us all pause for thought.
COMMENT THREAD
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