Gordon Brown declared a "breakthrough" in climate change talks as EU "leaders" named the price of tackling carbon emissions. Subject to formal endorsement in presidency conclusions being prepared in Brussels, "Europe" has agreed to make a conditional offer to the rest of the world at global environment negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
This is according to The Independentwhich tells us that Merkel wanted to keep the exact cost out of the package, but the final text puts the cost at €100 billion a year (£89.6bn). The EU's combined share would be between €7-10bn (£6.2bn - £8.96bn) a year by 2020. The UK share works out at about £1bn a year by 2020.
So there you are ... Mr Brown goes to Brussels and gets the "colleagues" to agree to lifting £1 billion a year out of our pockets, to give to "impoverished" countries like India, presumably so that it can maintain its standing army of 1.4 million, keep funding its space programme and buy its next aircraft carrier.
No doubt there will be enough change left over to buy a new fleet of Mercedes for African despots, and a batch of Kalashnikovs for the peace-loving Palestinians. We now await a climate change policy from the Taliban.
No wonder Brown is looking so pleased with himself.
COMMENT THREAD
The answer's over the door.
When people overstate happenings that aren't necessarily climate change-related, or set up as almost certainties things that are difficult to establish scientifically, it distracts from the science we do understand. The danger is they can be accused of scaremongering. Also, we can all become described as kind of left-wing greens.
Sir David King, The Times, 30 October 2009
Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King said last week. He said the Earth was entering the "first hot period" for 60 million years when there was no ice on the plane and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life".
The Independent on Sunday, 2 May 2004
If all the ice on Greenland were to melt, sea level would rise by seven metres. Is that likely to happen? Well I was saying six years ago unlikely [but] I'm afraid that that's having to be revised... 80 percent of our human population lives within less than a one metre rise of sea level so imagine the destabilisation of our geopolitical system with a sea level rise of the order of one or two metres. And that is on the cards I'm afraid.
Sir David King, London, 19 June 2008
COMMENT THREAD
Thousands of polling stations would be closed and voting hours reduced under a plan to cut the cost of elections, says The Times.
Other proposals include cutting staff, replacing polling cards with e-mail requests, increasing candidates’ deposits, fixed-term parliaments and reducing security at election counts.
This is seen as a threat to democracy by "campaigners", who are hotly contesting the ideas, which have been put forward in a working paper by the Ministry of Justice.
As always though, the point is being missed. These are elections for toothless MPs, who have no power and whose only function is to take their orders from Brussels. We might as well abandon the elections altogether and turn the Houses of Parliament into a museum of democracy.
We no longer have a democracy, so why go through the pretence of having elections?
COMMENT THREAD
We learn from diverse sources that the Luftwaffe is to join the RAF in a fly-past over London next year to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. The symbolism is of rapprochement but it should not escape notice that, with the constitutional Lisbon treaty in force, there is a deeper symbolism.
The Luftwaffe, flying free rein in our skies, will be a fitting and timely reminder that Germany has finally achieved, through the European Union, that which it was unable to achieve through force of arms – the subjugation of Great Britain.
The RAF may fly alongside, but the national symbol of the roundel which graced WWII aircraft will be meaningless. We will no longer be an independent state – not that we have been for some time, but the current treaty is the coup de grace.
Of course this sounds terribly melodramatic, and I have never been one for Nazi conspiracy plots as the genesis of the EU. The fact is that Germany too ceases to become an independent state, alongside the other 26 nations of the EU, including ourselves. Formally, we become provinces of the Greater European Empire, our capital in Brussels, our supreme court in Luxembourg and our peripatetic parliament dining variously in Brussels and Strasbourg.
By then, we will have a new provincial governor, a man by the name of David Cameron. He will be allowed to keep the title of prime minister, although his true role is that of a member of the European Council, presided over by the new Emperor of Europe, to whom he will be responsible,de jure as part of the UK's treaty "obligations".
He may occasionally report to the toothless, neutered Westminster parliament, stuffed with "Cameron's cuties", but only in the manner of a provincial governor keeping the vassals informed of the diktats of his masters.
And, by this account, Mr Cameron will be perfectly happy with his own subordinate status. Mary Ellen Syon, in her own blog, remarks that "David Cameron's position on the Lisbon Treaty has just moved from the deceitful and ambiguous to the dishonest and contemptible."
With the Czech president ready to sign the thing, she writes, Cameron has been forced to say more than just "we will not let matters rest" if the treaty is in force when and if he becomes prime minister. And what he is now saying, in effect, is that he will not have his government do anything to change the effects of the treaty on Britain.
His line, Syon adds, is not that the Tories will promise to pass a law giving a "referendum guarantee" on all future transfers of power to Brussels. There are about three big things wrong with that statement, she says, but start with number one: it implies that the transfers of powers to Brussels in the Lisbon Treaty and early treaties should therefore stand. All Cameron is now saying is that he will stop any more shifting.
In truth, we never expected anything else from Cameron. It was always on the cards that he would sell us out, just as has every prime minister from Heath onwards – over 40 years of continuous betrayal.
So, next year, as we gaze into the skies – or peer at the idiot's lantern in the corner of the room – and see the Luftwaffe in flight over London again, we can reflect that we have all been betrayed, the peoples of Germany as much as the peoples of Great Britain.
We need to see the Luftwaffe and the RAF united in a common cause, turning their guns on our masters in Brussels, Whitehall and Berlin. They are our enemies now.
COMMENT THREAD
Had you noticed that the vast preponderance of (English speaking) blogs dealing seriously with Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to be either US or Canadian? The British blogs - and especially the political blogs - seem to have dived for cover.
There is an element of national pride at stake here. Just because Miliband wants to walk away from foreign policy does not mean we have to. So, once again, it's Afghanistan and Pakistan for us ...
A serious topic of conversation in Indian political circles is the very real possibility of Pakistan breaking up, the tenor of the discussion being not "if" but "when". If it happens, it is felt that a key element will have been the proliferation of Taliban groups beyond the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and into the Pakistani heartland.
We have a look at what is happening over on Defence of the Realm.
Tony Blair's chances of becoming the EU's first president were fading tonight, says The Times, as opposition to the move grew across Europe and France and Germany failed to throw their weight behind him.
Much as we would like it to happen, as it would give a "face" to our vassal status under the constitutional Lisbon treaty, the thought of that leering visage representing "Europe" is proving too much for the "colleagues".
Thus, we are told, the case for Emperor Blair came under attack from European leaders on both right and left at the European Council in Brussels, despite an appeal from Gordon Brown to the European Socialists to "get real" about the merits of Mr Blair.
There is no word on an alternative, but the current prime ministers Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands and Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, as well as Wolfgang Schussel, the former Chancellor of Austria, are being touted as possible candidate.
A grey little apparatchik is much more in keeping with the ideas of the "colleagues" – someone who is at one "biddable", completely communautaire and not so dominant as to clash with Merkel or Sarkozy.
Jean-Claude Juncker, in fact, would fit the bill admirably. He would be on the line to Berlin for permission to wipe his backside after going to the toilet, while France would control the toilet-paper rations, making for a "double lock" on his freedom of action.
For all its 27 members, France and Germany – the "engine" of integration – still call the shots. Without them, Blair is dead meat. Hail Emperor Juncker!
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