Is nothing sacred? - by Richard... Saturday, September 26, 2009

Is nothing sacred? - by Richard... Saturday, September 26, 2009          

eureferendum.blogspot.com

One of those icons of British engineering and inventiveness is the Bailey bridge. Nothing stands still, of course, and the design has been updated and improved, now called the Mabey logistic support bridge (pictured in Afghanistan) - but it remains recognisably the same basic design as its predecessor.

Sadly now, that icon is irredeemably tarnished as its current manufacturer, the Reading-based Mabey & Johnson, has just been convicted of bribery and, according to The Independent, fined £3.5 million plus costs. It has also been forced to give an undertaking to repay some of its bribes, the whole package of fines and costs setting the company back over £5 million.

The company has admitted to parting with so-called "white man's handshakes" totalling £1 million, thought to have helped it harvest contracts worth £60 million, mainly in Africa, Bangladesh and Jamaica. It also pleaded guilty to "making funds available" - more than £365,000 - to Iraq between May 1, 2001, and November 1, the following year, breaching the UN sanctions against Iraq, securing a £2.56 million contract.

There is one mitigating factor, in that the company reported its own transgressions to the Serious Fraud Office, triggering an investigation and the prosecution, but only after it had left a paper trail of incriminating documents, leaving no doubt of its criminality. One wonders whether the confessions were simply to pre-empt action which would have happened anyway.

That apart, the warm glow of pride one feels when seeing a Bailey bridge in use is no more. Like so many things, this feat of engineering will forever be associated with the stench of corruption.

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Watchdog of the watchdog - by Richard... Friday, September 25, 2009

Israeli government press office director Daniel Seaman tells The Jerusalem Post: "I think it's for the benefit of professional journalism. Bloggers have become the watchdog of the watchdog - they fulfil an important role in ensuring that the media adhere to their roles."

To put the quote in context, Seaman is talking about the work bloggers do "in defending Israel and uncovering fraudulent claims against the Jewish state". But the sentiment has a wider application – watching the watchdog is something which many bloggers do well. It is a very necessary job.

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The naming of names - by Richard...

Michael Yon is back with an excoriating condemnation of the MoD publicity machine in Helmand, lifting the lid on a little-discussed but vitally important aspect of the conduct of the war there.

Speaking with a defence correspondent this morning about it, he could not conceal his delight that Yon had done the deed, with a long account of the behaviour of one particular officer running "Media Ops" in Camp Bastion.

Yon states the behaviour of this officer has been "particularly problematic" – but fights shy of naming him, "so as not to tar and feather someone for his entire life when he still has a chance to change his behaviour".

Others, who have had the misfortune to suffer his ministrations are less optimistic – or charitable, and have no difficulty in recognising Major Ric Cole (pictured) as the man who, single-handedly, seems intent on destroying the reputation of the British Army.

Yon readily acknowledges that many soldiers in the British Media Ops are true professionals who strive constantly to improve at their tasks and work very well with correspondents. Their professionalism and understanding of the larger mission - ultimate victory - provide an invaluable service to the war effort. But, he says, there are a few who should not be in uniform and it takes only one roach leg to spoil a perfect soup. And that "roach" is Major Ric Cole.

Yon recounts how the Major and he were driving in Camp Bastion around midday when it was very hot. A British soldier ran by wearing a rucksack. He was drenched in sweat under the blazing, dusty desert. Yon smiled because it was great to see so many soldiers who work and train hard.

Yet the Major cut fun at the soldier, saying he was dumb to be running in that heat. Writes Yon, "I nearly growled at the Major, but instead asked if he ever goes into combat. The answer was no. And, in fact, the Major does not leave the safety of Camp Bastion." He continues:

That a military officer would share a foul word about a combat soldier who was prepping for battle was offensive. Especially an officer who lives in an air-conditioned tent with a refrigerator stocked with chilled soft drinks. Just outside his tent are nice hot and cold showers. Five minutes away is a little Pizza Hut trailer, a coffee shop, stores, and a cookhouse.

This very Major had earned a foul reputation among his own kind for spending too much time on his Facebook page. I personally saw him being gratuitously rude to correspondents. Some correspondents - all were British - complained to me that when they wanted to interview senior British officers, they were told by this Major to submit written questions. The Major said they would receive videotaped answers that they could edit as if they were talking with the interviewee.

This behaviour is not only gratuitous, it is dangerously harmful. Yon rightly states that it is essential to underscore the importance of the "Media Ops" in the war. When Media Ops fails to help correspondents report from the front, the public misses necessary information to make informed decisions about the war.

But if Cole is the "roach" leg, the king roach is the boss of Media Ops in Afghanistan, Lt-Col. Richardson. Says Yon, Richardson is doing more damage to the war effort than the Taliban media machine. By perpetrating falsehoods that undermine our combat capacity, Richardson has helped the enemy. He thus writes:

Some of the smokescreens are less important but they are demonstrative of the pattern: On 20 August a, CH-47 helicopter was shot down by a Taleban RPG during a British Special Forces mission. Richardson reported that the aircraft landed due to an engine fire. Some hours later, while I was on a mission nearby, the Taleban were singing over the radios about shooting it down. I heard the rumble when the helicopter was destroyed by airstrikes. The Taleban knew they hit the helicopter. So who is Richardson lying to? Not the enemy … unless the enemy is the British public.

We have met some of the efforts of Lt-Col Richardson before – defending Panther's Clawand the Viking, always touting the approved line.

Quite how serious this is Yon himself points out. The British people are demanding truth and they deserve accountability. They aren't getting it from Camp Bastion, he writes. Given the importance of the home front, it is impossible to stress how important it is that we are able to judge what is going on out in Helmand. For a long time, we have known that we are not being told the full story – or even part of it. For its contribution to that failure, "Media Ops" – with Major Cole and Lt-Col Richardson in particular - is losing us the war.

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Yellow journalism - by Richard...

I had an impassioned telephone conversation with Mrs EU Referendum last night, who is staying with her elderly mother recovering from an operation on her eyesight. 

The proximate cause of her ire was the juxtaposition of two events. Earlier that day, she had read in one of the tabloids of a toerag who had been treated to a £7,000 safari holiday at the taxpayers' expense, on the grounds that his social worker thought it might help sort out his criminal behaviour – only to have the scum get caught within days of his return doing some nefarious act.

Later that day, Mrs EU Referendum had been confronted with a distressed young lady at the door of the residence, her clothes smeared in human excrement, apologising that she could not come in as she had to go home to change her clothes and bathe.

The young lady in question was a peripatetic care worker, charged with visiting elderly mother. On her previous call, however, her charge, a very elderly confused man living on his own, had managed for reasons unknown to soil himself very badly. Perforce, the young lady took it upon herself to clean him up as best she could, unaided, thus transferring some of the substance to herself.

For this, the lady in question – doing a task for which most of us would require a king's ransom – was paid the minimum wage. How was it, demanded Mrs EU Referendum, that public money could be lavished on the dregs, yet people who were doing such important jobs, of such great value to society, were rewarded so poorly?

While agreeing with both propositions, I somehow sensed that I was not going to get anywhere pointing out that if we stopped lavishing amounts sending the dregs on safari holidays, care workers were not necessarily going to get increased wages. Public finances simply don't work that way.

Similarly, I am not going to get anywhere pointing out that the linkage made today by The Daily Telegraph - giving the "duck house" an airing again - between the lavish pay and expenses of MPs and the "failure to equip troops on the front line" is also flawed. Reducing the emoluments of our parliamentary representatives would not in any way resolve the defence equipment issue. And any money thus released, even if it found its way into the defence budget, would be a drop in the ocean.

However, in many respects, the Daily Telegraph linkage is not only deeply flawed, it is fundamentally dishonest. Saying that isn't going to get me anywhere either – once the yellow press is in full flow, the baying crowd takes over and nothing will shift the narrative.

Having spent a lifetime in pursuit of lost causes, though, I might as well persevere, and thus have the dubious pleasure of watching my hit-rate drain into the sand, confirming the obvious – that the reason yellow journalism is so prevalent is because it is popular. People like being shocked and mortified and, especially, to have their prejudices reinforced. Truth is always the first casualty.

Rehearsing the issues, firstly, the MPs expenses issue was and is a crock. As we wearily pointed out, the expenses system was part of the overall pay package, calculated in exactly the same way many commercial packages are devised, total remuneration being a combination of "pay and perks". 

That it was dishonest and hypocritical is not disputed, but the system goes back to the 70s and was well know to the journalistic fraternity. Its existence stems as much from the political cowardice of successive governments, which have avoided confronting the highly-charged subject of MPs' pay, and our own hypocrisy, at one demanding untold virtue from our representatives, yet refusing to consider what levels of reward were appropriate.

As to the "failure to equip our troops on the front line", time and again we have pointed out, with innumerable examples, that this is not a question of finance. The big problem, put at its most inelegant, is that the MoD is pissing money against the wall, buying the wrong equipment, at inordinate cost, with huge wastage and inefficiency, compounded by gross incompetence.

When it comes to the linkage, therefore, the reality is totally skewed. Our troops are not badly equipped because MPs are drawing excessive expenses. In many respects, our troops are badly equipped because MPs are not doing their jobs properly – which is an altogether different proposition.

On this, we drew an unfortunate but appropriate parallel, pointing out that the total annual cost of MPs' emoluments was approximately £100 million – almost exactly the same amount that the Army had spent on the dangerously useless Pinzgauer Vectors, the unsuitability of which was obvious before even the order had been placed.

Yet that same purchase had been applauded by the cross-party group of MPs on the Defence Committee – a group which has routinely failed adequately to question defence expenditure and bring it in check. One intervention, to block this insane purchase, could have saved the entire amount expended on MPs in a whole year – and there are many more examples of where MPs could and should be saving us a fortune by holding the executive to account.

In other words, the real issue is not what MPs are paid, but what they do for their money. In many respects, it is their failure to do the job for which they are paid which has led to the general dissatisfaction with them. But, in focusing on pay rather than performance, the wrong issue has been tackled and the outcome has left parliament weakened, less able to do the job for which it supposedly exists.

Here, therefore, the media have no cause for self-congratulation. The yellow press has consistently failed to address the equipment issue in an intelligent and adult fashion, running its own narrative which bears no relation to the situation on the ground. And here we go again, with the media going for the cheap shots, missing the point again.

Meanwhile, young ladies on minimum wages are daily performing unspeakable tasks in our name, and toerags are being sent on taxpayer-funded jollies. Oh! And did I say that this young lady was a Ukranian immigrant, a qualified nurse in her own country, whose qualifications are not recognised here? Where do you start on trying to make things better?

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Carbon chaos - by Richard...

The European Court of Justice has come up with a delicious ruling that rather throws into confusion the EU commission's plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions pollution through its Emissions Trading Scheme.

Under the scheme set out in Directive 2003/87/EC (as amended), individual member states were required to set quotas for their national emissions. However, so loose were the rules that some member states, Poland and Estonia amongst them, were rather more generous with their quotas than the commission thought fit – entirely defeating the object of the exercise, which was to force industry to reduce its CO2 output.

Fortified by righteous indignation, the commission thus issued a direction to the errant member states, in the form of a Commission Decision on 26 March 2007, instructing them to cut back their quotas. Although they reluctantly complied, Poland and Estonia, supported by Hungary, Lithuania and the Slovak Republic, lodged an appeal with the ECJ against their enforced 27 and 48 percent cuts.

This was, of course, defended by the commission, and – at some great cost to its long-suffering taxpayers – the goody two-shoes United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And to the dismay of both, on Wednesday the court found in favour of Poland and Estonia, annulling the commission decision – in its entirety.

Interestingly, Poland's complaint had been that data on which it had based its calculations to determine its allowances had been rejected by the commission, which had then replaced it with its own in order to come up with a lower allowance. This the court ruled, the commission was not entitled to do, and had exceeded its powers. It was only entitled to review the calculations to ensure that they had been drawn up in accordance with the directive.

Despite that, the news has had the BBC twittering, with its environment correspondent lamenting that the court ruling is another setback for the EU carbon markets. It certainly does not bode well for the EU's effort to persuade the US into a global carbon market, he says.

Fearful that the carbon market will now be swamped by excess allowances issued by the Poles and Estonians, driving down the price still further – and with appeals pending from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania - the commission has decided on a rearguard action.

Plucking from the judgement something which, on first sight does not appear to be there, environment commissioner Stavros Dimas claims that the court ruling requires the commission to re-evaluate its decision on Poland and Estonia. That it was going to do and, in the meantime, he declared, "those countries are not allowed to issue any additional allowances beyond those created in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme." 

On the basis that the commission is never wrong even when it is wrong, Dimas is suggesting that its re-evaluation was unlikely to lead to any major change in the quotas already imposed for 2008. Nonetheless, there are four more disputed years, up to 2012, so the game is far from over.

And, just to add further entertainment, Berlusconi has sent a letter to Barroso seeking to renegotiate Italy's quotas. With the commission considering whether to appeal against the current ECJ judgement, he is likely to get short-shrift, but this cannot but help add to the "carbon chaos" which is dragging the EU's attempts to save the planet down into the mire.