The money is stopped when the Commission feels that countries have failed to meet its rules and regulations on the allocation of cash. Most of the problems relate to agricultural payments.
The figures are in a National Audit Office in a report published today (but not yet available online) on Britain's use of EU funds. Auditor general Amyas Morse has qualified his opinion of the 2008/9 accounts, saying there was "a number of significant accounting and other issues" which the Government needed to address.
On the other hand, though, giving this amount to the EU will certainly help it pay for Galileo. Is this Euroslime Dave's way of slipping them the dosh on the sly?
But then there's little Dave's Localism Bill. Baroness Margaret Eaton, chair of the Local Government Association (LGA) says it must be changed or councils could be fined more than £1bn by EU.
The LGA is concerned about plans to make local authorities pay EU fines when targets on air quality and recycling rates are not met nationally. But with the current wave of cuts, councils will have to raise council taxes or cut more services – worse still, the problem could happen very soon because the government is already exceeding air pollution targets and could be fined £300m. Other EU directives could take this figure to £1bn.
"The potentially billion pound fines from Brussels are for breaching national targets, which were agreed by central government with the EU," Eaton says.. "Changing the goalposts now to make councils liable for fines is unfair to them and unfair to the local residents who may have to foot the bill. The government must amend this unfair, unworkable, dangerous and unconstitutional legislation."
So, £2 billion extra on the way to the EU - much of it from local taxpayers? That'll do nicely, Dave.
COMMENT THREAD
Before turning to the issues, however, one must note the headline, "Naomi Campbell's lawyers can't get libel success fee in key EU ruling", and perhaps share Greenslade's embarrassment – as he bears no responsibility for it, and will not have seen it until it was published.
The point here, of course, is that the Court of Human Rights is not an EU institution, but time and time again we get ignorant – to the point of stupid –newspaper staff (usually sub-editors) writing these headlines, which are plainly and obviously wrong.
Yet, for all their famed fact-checking and the rest, they not only get it wrong, but continually get it wrong, entirely impervious to any attempts to correct them. No wonder the press is a failing industry – it is staffed by low-grade morons who do not know their proverbial arses from their elbows and, more dangerously for them, seem incapable of learning from experience.
Talking about low-grade morons, that brings us to the real target of this piece, George Monbiot (aka Moonbat – but "ocean-going shit" will also do), who took such rabid delight in our problems with The Sunday Times and latterly The Sunday Telegraph.
It was this latter newspaper which caused Booker and I so many problems for withdrawing the article we wrote and offering a lame non-apology to that galactic-sized shit Rejendra Pachauri, for us daring to tell the truth about the crook.
It was then that I noted that, using the biggest crooks in the libel business, known to Private Eyereaders as Carter Fuck, Pachauri had done a "no-win, no-fee" deal, known technically as a conditional fee arrangement (CFA). This, with a special insurance scheme introduced under the last administration, enables excrement like Pachauri to go to law and stack up colossal fees. Says Greenslade:CFAs have proved to be enormously controversial since their well-intentioned introduction more than a decade ago. They were supposed to offer people who could not afford legal fees access to justice. They would, for example, be able to pursue libel actions (which are not covered by legal aid).
Recently, I then noted, Carter Fuck had represented a minor celebrity in a libel case, gaining £15,000 in damages – for which they had charged £350,000 costs. In matters of detail, I got that wrong – but I was relying on an MSM journalist for my source.
Increasingly, however, they have also been used by people wealthy enough to pay lawyers including "celebrities". Even that wouldn't be a problem, but it is the way in which CFAs operate that has alarmed news organisations.
Without labouring over the arcane details, a CFA allows a solicitor to charge a client the usual fee plus, if the case concludes in victory, an uplift known as a "success fee". These can amount to 100% uplift on the regular charge. There are many other factors, such as insurance to protect clients from heavy legal costs should they lose, but let's not go there.
The damages were actually £3,500, paid to Naomi Campbell, and the legal costs totalled £1.1 million, which included a success fee of £280,000. Needless to say, the event was hailed by the odious Carter Fuck as a "victory for privacy". The Daily Mirror, which had to pay the costs, however, was "outraged". And, Greenslade tells us, it's fair to say, the outrage was shared by publishers, editors and newspaper lawyers from every newspaper.
Actually, there was more than "outrage" – there was fear as well. As I wrote in respect of The Sunday Telegraph, the difficulty facing the paper was that, when having to deal with an unethical law firm which has been given a writ to stack up open-ended costs, going to law to fight even a good case can be perilous and expensive. Even a win stands to cost several hundred thousand pounds, in your own costs. If you lose, the costs can run to millions.
Faced with this blackmail, I wrote, it is easier for the newspapers to cut their losses. Which is exactly why The Sunday Telegraph offered its "non-apology". The risks for newspapers going to law, or defending their own journalists, had become prohibitive. We were hung out to dry by the newspaper in which we had placed our trust.
Anyone with an interest in maintaining free speech and the freedom of the press was appalled by this development and, interestingly, The Guardian was as much concerned by the effects of the Naomi Campbell judgement and CFAs, with its editor Alan Rusbridger going public on the issue. But that didn't stop Guardian columnist Moonbat making hay, capitalising on what his own boss had complained was challenging any "reasonable notion of free expression".
However, as we have come to learn, greenies like Monbiot are not in the least interested in the concept of free speech – and neither are his troll friends, who jabbered with excitement when The Sunday Telegraph caved in to the crook.
But this judgement, which now effectively outlaws "success fees", redresses the balance slightly. It makes it much less likely that newspapers will have to cave to blackmail pressure and puts Moonbat back in his cage where he belongs.
COMMENT THREAD
I have received an e-mail from the kindly and well-meaning Lydia Macey, the marketing assistant for International Armoured Vehicles, the body which is organising an international exhibition for arms dealers in London next month.
She also refers me to the company blog, which, interestingly, features Major General Moore, Director of Equipment Capability (Ground Manoeuvre) in the Ministry of Defence, a man who has done so much damage to the Army that one wonders whether he actually works for the enemy (sorry - I've just realised, he does ... he is employed by the MoD).
Anyhow, the e-mail requests that I "write a short blog to go on our blog page about a topic in the defence industry and incorporate a bit about our armoured vehicle event". The reward is "a free press pass to the Conference & Exhibition", which is not quite in the same league as an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris and a steak dinner in the shade of an Armoured Personnel Carrier, which is how I got to meet my last batch of arms dealers.
Nevertheless, I am sorely tempted. It would get me out of the house, and I think I deserve a good jolly, looking at new toys, even if it is at my own expense. This is an extremely prestigious and well-organised exhibition, and the tickets are much coveted. A press pass is worth several times its weight in gold.
However, I thought I would consult with my readers before succumbing to these blandishments, to see what the general mood was. Should I give in to such bribery and corruption, or not?
COMMENT THREAD
The next Cabinet meeting will be like an episode of Casualty. (Minus the lame duck, already making an unexpected and rapid recovery.) But now that the air has been cleared, Fianna Fáil is a united shambles, lurching forward with renewed confidence toward electoral oblivion.
So the plucky Taoiseach has survived a vote of confidence in himself. This means he can hold his head high and walk unaided to the political knacker's yard in a few months' time.
Now that really is delicious - political invective to savour.
COMMENT: NEW POLITICS THREAD
I've had the story for the week but, in a moment of charity, gave it to a contact in the hope that he could exploit it with the media. It got no further than England Expects - which is good enough, but not what I had hoped for. But then, the British media has been notoriously slack, over the years, when it comes to reporting on this project.
The basic story should have got wide coverage – far wider than it did. It involved a man called Berry Smutny, the head of a German firm, OHB Technology. He was working on the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system, being built as a rival to the US GPS system, and had called it a "stupid idea" being pushed by France for military reasons.
This comment was in a leaked US diplomatic cable, sent in October 2009 from the US embassy in Berlin and obtained by WikiLeaks. It was then picked up and released by Aftenposten.
Smutny, whose firm had been jointly awarded a €566 million contract to develop 14 satellites for the system, had condemned the project as "a waste of EU taxpayers' money championed by French interests." He claimed the EU desire to develop a redundant but alternative to GPS was "spearheaded by the French after an incident during the Kosovo conflict when the US military 'manipulated' GPS to support military operations."
Since this time, he said, France had aggressively corralled EU support to invest in Galileo development - in order that their missile guidance systems are free of any GPS reliance. Smutny added that the irony for German investment in Galileo is that some of France's nuclear missiles are aimed at Berlin. More to the point though, much precision-guided conventional ordnance relies on GPS, and that is where the money and power is.
We hardly needed Wikileaks to tell us this, of course. Former defence minister Michèle Alliot-Marie admitted the French military involvement in December 2004, more than six years ago now. Even then, she was stating the obvious. We had by then worked that out for ourselves.
This and much else has remained unreported, with us having to endure endless lies from the EU, faithfully parroted by the British government: Galileo was a civilian system and had no military applications. The military dimension has been almost completely ignored by the British media and such is its venality (shared by much of the European press) that it only starts taking an interest in Galileo when it can be linked to the "tee-hee" drivel from Wikileaks.
Thus, what has driven the current interest is not the issue itself, which is far too "boring" for wuzzies in the London editorial offices. What gets them throbbing with excitement, as it always does, is that the story now has a "human interest" component. Smutny has been suspended from his job for being so candid, and it is that which gives it "legs" - Wikileaks has claimed a scalp, and the luvvies love it.
That Smutny has lost his job in itself tells you something. The euroslime can commit all sorts of indiscretions and rob the taxpayer blind, yet they get to keep their jobs. But one word against the EU's spendthrift vanity project and you are out on your ear.
Adding a little meat to the story, though, is an intervention from the EU commission. It is telling usthat it needs another €1.9 billion on top of the supposed €3.4 billion already spent, in order to complete the project. But this only gets a look in as padding, because the wuzzies have got their human interest "hook".
Needless to say, both estimates are what are known in the trade "horse manure" – as we havealready observed on this blog, many times and many years ago. The EU has spent far more than €3.4 billion, as sums have been secreted through national budgets and the EU's multi-billion research budget. On top of that, the European Space Agency has been pouring in money via the back door.
As to the €1.9 billion to finish the job, this is so unrealistically low that one could easily dismiss it as fantasy or incompetence on the part of the EU commission. This, however, is not the case. It is not incompetence but another deliberate, structured lie, on top of a raft of deliberate, structured lies, where the commission has misled the public about the nature of the project and its cost.
This was a project that the commission originally told us would cost €1.1 billion of public money. It then gave a solemn guarantee in the year 2000 that no public subsidy would be needed after 2007, when the system was supposed to be up and running. Four years down the line from then and it is nowhere near - the latest fiction is 2014 ... in your dreams.
At the time, of course, the commission was hoping for €2.5 billion of private investment, but when that arrangement fell through (largely because of the totally unrealistic projections for cost recovery), the whole of the development costs were dumped on European taxpayers. The British have paid a substantial share – probably in the order of about £1 billion so far, over and above normal contributions - although it is difficult to be exact. The euroslime, as always, cook the books.
To ask merely for another €1.9 billion, though, is to perpetuate the lie. In January 2008 a secret report leaked from the German government, long before Wikileaks was in business, estimated the total development and deployment cost could rise to €10 billion. But, given that the US is having to pay about €5 billion just to upgrade its GPS system – which has long been in operation – even €10 billion looks wildly optimistic.
Smutny himself told US officials that in his opinion the final cost would balloon to around €10 billion, yet the commission is still playing its dire game of underestimating the total cost. The strategy is then to come back for more, in dribs and drabs, applying moral blackmail at each stage.
The story thus far, which we have been covering since the very start of this blog back in 2003, has given us a unique insight into this project, and we have been consulted widely (and quoted) by the foreign media. But the blog, and this issue, has been largely ignored by the British media, even when I produced the Bruges Group pamphlet on the system in July 2004, stressing the military dimension.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, for its comment in today's paper, The Daily Telegraph this time goes toOpen Europe, which has just woken up to the current developments. Its director, Mats Persson, comes up with the incredibly lame observation that Galileo "is a textbook example how not to run a technology project", all on the back of a series of weak, derivative pamphlets, such as this. Not least, they seriously downplay the military dimension.
The point about Galileo as a "technology project" though, is that, had the commission been open about the costs and the problems from the outset, it would never have been approved. Hence, it has been quite deliberately built on a foundation of lies. A "textbook example of how not to run a technology project," therefore, doesn't even get close to describing this raid on taxpayers' funds. It is nothing short of corporate theft.
For the moment, though, the Cleggerons are going through the motions of being appalled by the costs, and will put up a token resistance. But after the posturing, a formula will be devised, through which the EU will end up getting its money. The project will go ahead - no way are the British going to be allowed to stop it, and Euroslime Dave wouldn't want to anyway.
But what is absolutely crucial to appreciate is that Galileo never was a "technology project", per se. It always was and is a military project. And French military ambitions are staked on getting it through. But there is also a very strong commercial element - for the French.
An independent satellite positioning system is vital to underpin French sales of military technology to China. That is an issue which has come up again recently, with the EU (i.e., the French) seeking once again to lift the arms embargo on China which, by no coincidence, is a co-funder of Galileo, alongside India and Israel. The French can't sell current military systems that rely on the American GPS, as the signal can be shut down or degraded if US interests are threatened.
Despite this, you will not see the media put two and two together. Not even the great Daniel Hannan will tell you anything about it. He prefers to parade his ignorance on the subject, preparatory to us getting screwed once again. Even now, he is back in full flow, missing the point entirely and revelling, as do all the chatterati, in the "delicious" WikiLeak "revelation". That is all these fools can see, and that is why the French have found it so easy to pull the wool over our eyes.
We are sheep being led to the slaughter and all the stupid little wuzzies can do is titter over Wikileaks.
COMMENT THREAD
A group of eminent Indians has said in an open letter that corruption is on the rise and "corroding the fabric of the nation", reports the BBC. The group, including industrialists, bankers and judges, warned of "widespread governance deficit almost in every sphere of national activity". Yet this is the country to which we have given over £1 billion in aid, giving overall 29 percent of its total development aid, in circumstances where even the odious Guardian is worried about where the money goes.
This is the country of Rajendra Pachauri, from whom we take advice on global warming, and to whom we are giving £10 million to be spent on his pet institute, TERI, despite irregularities in its UK accounts. And from all that, it is difficult to work out which is more corrupt (or venal) – the donor or recipient country. But either way, we have better things on which to spend our money. Unlike charity, corruption should not begin at home.
COMMENT THREAD
I was not expecting to be writing about the Okhotsk Sea today, but in yesterday's account there were warnings that the crisis was not quite over. And indeed that is the case, with Voice of Russiaobserving that the rescue operation "will not be over today". Conditions appear to have deteriorated sharply and, last night, the four-ship convoy covered "no more than three miles". A helicopter is out reconnoitring the ice situation today.
Once again, we are left to piece together the story from diverse sources (with no input from the Western media). From TASS we learn the intriguing detail that the Bereg Nadezhdy fish carrier needed refuelling, an operation that appears to have been been completed. She now "stays on the ice waiting for her turn for the pilotage", we are told. We also get an idea of the weather, said to be "favourable" with the wind about 20 miles per hour and the air temperature at -10°C.
But there is also the detail, then added, that "further movement is impossible due to the engine malfunction on the Bereg Nadezhdy ship and the lack of fuel".
It is then to Ria Novosti that we turn, finding that strong winds and heavy ice floe in the area are making difficulties. Weather conditions in the area are normal, but strong winds are "causing quick shifting and thickening of ice floe", which has "seriously hampered" the rescue efforts. This seems to be the 1983 shipping crisis all over again, when wind-driven ice-floes also thickened suddenly, causing ice to close round the ships, too fast for them to escape.
There is this still no indication when the ships will be totally in the clear, and you get some hint also that this is creating political stresses, with a report that Putin has "serious problems" in controlling his self-serving bureaucratic machine. He "may pretend to be in charge of the rescue operation in the Sea of Okhotsk," the report says, "but in fact it is directed through the bargaining between the company owning the fishing fleet and the company that owns the ice-breakers."
Oblivious to all this then comes Roger Howard in The Daily Telegraph telling us that "regional sea ice is retreating fast, threatening to raise global sea levels, destroy traditional habitats and ways of life, and accelerate the rate at which the planet as a whole is warming up".
Notwithstanding the flash of scientific illiteracy (since when does melting sea ice raise sea levels, global or otherwise?), the sailors trapped in the Okhotsk Sea would be surprised to learn that "regional sea ice is retreating fast." While Howard points to the "silver lining" to come out of global warming, causing an ice retreat which allows exploitation of oil, gas and mineral reserves, this current crisis underlines the fickle nature of the ice.
There are very great dangers in working in this region, as today's events demonstrate. Nature still has the capacity to surprise.
COMMENT THREAD