Our new government - by Richard... Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Our new government - by Richard... Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Given how much excited our little hacks get when there is even a minor reshuffle in our provincial government, it really is quite interesting how little attention is paid to the selection of a completely new government.

When I think about it – which is not more than about twenty times a day – the genius (if it is that) is in calling the EU commission a "commission". It all sounds so harmless and anodyne. If they called a spade a bêche, however, it would be called the "EU government" – but that would give the game away.

In any case, our media is really only interested in provincial politics, so that lot in Brussels could run up the Jolly Roger and declare themselves the supreme rulers of the universe and the Westminster lobby would still be more interested in their own local soap opera.

Thus we see in The Daily Scarygraph "Ministers urged to take action against bank charges". But the masters of the universe have already spoken ... ministers can't do anything unless Brussels lets them.

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A stunning victory? - by Richard...

"British banks win 'stunning' victory in landmark ruling on overdraft fees", says The Daily Telegraph, amongst the many media sources to comment on the ruling by our "Supreme" Court.

HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Lloyds are among seven lenders who had asked the Court to halt a challenge to their fees brought by the Office of Fair Trading, but there is more to the ruling than meets the eye.

According to the judgement handed down, the issue depended "on the correct interpretation (in its European context) and application of Regulation 6(2) of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 SI 1999/2083."

However, we then see that: "The 1999 Regulations were made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 in order to transpose into national law Council Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts."

The "victory” then, is one for EU law – which completely goes against the grain of expectations. As for the "Supreme" court, all it was doing was interpreting the diktats of our masters in Brussels. But, as always, in none of the MSM accounts does one see any reference to this. 

The Times rails that the "decision is bad for consumers and competition" but it does not tell us why it was made. The invisible "elephant in the room", as always, is positively thriving.

Thus we get Money Mail assistant editor James Coney lamenting "If OFT can't decide bank charges are unfair, who can?" The answer, of course, is "the EU stoopid". But we are not allowed to know this.

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Scary - by Richard...

On the ball as always, with the latest orthodoxy, Reuters is happily reassuring us (itself) that the revelation of a series of "embarrassing" e-mails is not a "game changer". 

The proof of this assertion comes with the cast-iron, copper-bottomed mantra which wards off all evils, the answer to life, the universe and everything ... "experts believe ... ". Ranking alongside "scientists say ... ", these mantras are the modern equivalent of garlic used to ward off the devil (aka sceptics).

With the terror of doubt thus banished, the agency intones that a "report by a group of leading scientists ... " tells us global warming is accelerating and that world sea levels could rise at worst by two metres a year. This is supposed to be "grim reading". This is matched - of course - by the "the daily scare" from the nation's global warming comic. Yet, what the warmists do not seem to understand is that the more they shout, the less people believe.

To many readers of the MSM output, this constant diet of alarmism is more like a comedy turn, as they pile in to call time on editorial boards which seem to have their heads stuck firmly in the sand. Even Moonbat got over 1000 comments, mostly ripping him apart.

When the CBS News blog also starts taking it seriously, you know something is afoot, but there is a long way to go. The pols are still on a different planet. "Don't you think it's scary," a ministersaid yesterday, "that 55 percent of people don't believe global warming is man-made?"

The problem though, that these people have their own tame propaganda organs, even though evidence is accumulating that global warming is most definitely man-made – but not as we know it. That is really scary.

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Rolls-Royce minds? - by Richard...

One does not always agree with Patrick Cockburn, who was one of the many journalists who covered the Iraqi war and occupation from the very start.

Like so many of his colleagues, he was transfixed by the greater drama and violence in the US sector. He thus took his eye off the ball, misreading what was going on in the south – mislead in part by the official disinformation which the British were churning out.

However, his "take" on the first day of the Chilcot inquiry seems spot on. It suggests, he writes, that British mandarins of the day had little more idea of the mechanics of Iraqi politics than the most rabid and jingoistic neo-cons in Washington.

What is so striking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he writes, is that the British foreign policy establishment seems to have lost its sense of what is dangerous and what is not. It may be that following dutifully behind the Americans is so ingrained that the capacity for independent judgement has atrophied. Cockburn adds:

In both Washington and Iraq before the invasion of 2003, there was a sense of British politicians and officials being slightly out of the loop. Perhaps this was inevitable once Mr Blair had promised to support the US regardless. But it is unfair and not very useful to blame Britain's misfortunes over Iraq all on him. It was British foreign policy-makers as a whole who seemed to forget the dangers of fighting wars in countries they had not taken the trouble to understand.

The accuracy of this is very evident from retrospective analysis. Even to this day, many official commentators believe that the insurgency in the South started to develop after the violence erupted in the US zone, and was in part triggered by it.

But before the British had even occupied Basra, the Shi'a were planning a take-over, first of the south and then of the whole country. First, in Basra, they conducted a merciless campaign of ethnic cleansing, driving out the Sunni – which the British did nothing to stop.

Then, under the leadership of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army fought first the rival militias and then, increasingly, the British, in an attempt to dominate the region. 

Writes Cockburn, of the Inquiry , which heard from Sir William Patey, head of Middle East policy at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at the time – plus two other mandarins - "At no time, going by their evidence, did British officials in 2003 realise that the invasion of Iraq meant revolutionary change in the region." As so many times before, these "Rolls-Royce minds" of the FCO have been vastly over-rated.

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Mandy who? - by Richard... Tuesday, November 24, 2009

"Climate scientist at centre of leaked email row dismisses conspiracy claims", headlines The Guardian. This is Phil Jones, but then he would, wouldn't he?

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Scare of the day - by Richard...

Life would just not be the same withoutThe Daily Telegraph and its "scare of the day".

The paper's latest offering is that levels of greenhouse gases have risen every year since detailed records began in 1998. And Michel Jarraud, the head of the World Meteorological Organisation, is warning that the pace of increase is quickening. Announcing the agency's analysis of data for 2008, he said: "Concentration of greenhouse gases continued to increase, even (increased) a bit faster ... Action must be taken as soon as possible." 

Jeepers! The man has ten year's of data and he wants to stop the planet? On the other hand, he could read the Wall Street Journal, and then go away and boil his head. But then, how would The Daily Telegraph fill its pages?

Don't count on the US electronic media to fill the gap though. It seems it is swimming in thatNorth African river.