You do wonder - by Richard... Friday, October 30, 2009

You do wonder - by Richard... Friday, October 30, 2009

The Times, in the name of its witless hack Adam Sage , is telling is that Jacques Chirac, the former French president, has been ordered to stand trial for corruption in a case which has shed light on sleaze allegations from his time as Mayor of Paris.

In what Sage describes as an" unprecedented move", an investigating magistrate said Mr Chirac, 76, should be tried over a so-called ghost jobs scandal dating from the 1980s and 1990s.

Amazingly, Sage then tells us that the decision "will not only tarnish the reputation of the man who ruled France for 12 years, but it is likely to fuel public hostility for French politics in general."

Just who does he think he is kidding? This is the man universally known as le croc, presiding over a dung-heap of corruption for which French politics are notorious. It would be hard to find an ordinary Frenchman who had any respect for Chirac, or any for the political classes in general.

And nor will the trial ever get anywhere. In the event that procedural delays do not stall it for so long that Chirac will be dead, and honoured with a state funeral, the president of the day will almost certainly grant a pardon, making it an offence even to mention the conviction, as was the case with current EU commissioner Jacques Barrot.

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Spend another few billions - by Richard...

An early blast of winter walloped some western states with deep snow and slowly pushed into Nebraska and Kansas Thursday, bringing blizzard conditions to the eastern plains and causing treacherous roads, closed schools and hundreds of cancelled flights.

The fall storm spread 3 feet of snow and left much higher drifts across parts of northern Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, before its leading edge hit neighbouring states just to the east.

Wind-driven snow built to blizzard conditions over much of eastern Colorado. The weather service warned most area roads would be impassable Thursday night because of blowing snow and near-zero visibility.

The heaviest October snowfall in the Denver area in a decade forced the closure of hundreds of schools and businesses. Roads across the region remained snowpacked and icy. "Big storms like these, they seem to come around every 10 to 12 years," said Kyle Fredin, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

But it ain't only the snow. Low temperature records are being broken all over America. Guess we need to throw another few billions at global warming, just to be on the safe side.

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Giving away our money - by Richard...

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 (including its £1.6bn manned spaceflight 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.