In normal times, this piece wouldn't get a look-in, although it does have a certain interest, with the headline: "Heavy snow forecast to continue in wide areas". What really makes the story though is the picture.
As for the detail we learn that snow covered the city of Osaka on Friday for the first time since 2008, shutting down highways in Osaka Prefecture and Shikoku. The Meteorological Agency warns that snowfall through today in wide areas of Japan could cause traffic disruptions and accidents.
Heavy snow is expected even in relatively dry flatlands on the Pacific side of the country, and after light snow Friday night, heavy falls are forecast for today, the agency also says. But what is really interesting is that picture.
Anyway, in the Kinki region, snow starting falling Thursday night, including in lowlands. Osaka had two inches and Nara had over four by 1 pm. Friday. Both directions on the Hanshin Expressway in Osaka Prefecture were closed, while part of the Hanwa Expressway that links Osaka and Wakayama prefectures was also shut down.
But what is really interesting is that picture.
Some highways in Shikoku, readers will also be interested to learn, were blocked on Thursday night. Train services on the JR Wakayama Line were temporarily suspended due to a snow-caused glitch at Takada Station in Nara Prefecture, while trains were cancelled and delayed elsewhere in other parts of western Japan.
And apart from being fascinated with that picture, they might also be intrigued to know that eight inches of snow is forecast for the Chugoku region through today, and that lightning and strong gusts is predicted for the Sea of Japan off the Sanin region.
So what's so special about the damn picture? Ah! it's the Byodoin Temple, a World Heritage site in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture. Snow in Kyoto! Kind of neat, eh?
COMMENT THREAD
Despite Mubarak having resigned and handed over to the Army, and now reported having left the capital and travelled to his residence in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheik, the Egyptian situation is still only an echo of the 2008 food riots.
And reported by Bloomberg today is another such echo. The EU is considering taking emergency action on feed grains and sugar, to hold down surging prices and ease shortages. Its initial plan is to suspend some cereal-import duties and take administrative measure on sugar stocks which will also ease the supply situation. This is exactly what was happening in 2008, although then the Commission went further by also reducing set-aside requirements releasing more land to food production.
What is spooking the EU is that food prices rose to a record in January, with grains up 44 percent in the past year and sugar 12 percent higher, setting a new record. Thus, the Commission hopes to suck imports into the EU-27 area, a stratagem it hopes will help stabilise prices.
This is very much a beggar-your-neighbour policy, as it has prevented developing countries accessing the lucrative European market in the good times, while now threatening to suck supplies from those same markets. Since European prices in the protected market are in many instances higher than world price, the net effect may be to add to upwards pressures on the global market.
As always though, the EU commission is focused inwards, concerned only with reducing tensions on the European markets. The boarder policy issues of no immediate concern to it. It special concern is the European pig industry, where the meat market is "struggling".
Similarly, sugar users "are desperate for cheaper sugar" and want extra volume to stop the market from overheating. EU sugar stocks for food use in the domestic market may tumble to a "historical low". The overall situation has, of course, been developing from some time and, as in 2008, is not helped by the push for biofuels here, in the United States and elsewhere, to meet mandatory renewables quotas. Not for the first time, major policies are in conflict.
What is for sure though, is that food mountains are distant memories and are likely to remain so. What will not change is the EU's inept production and stock management system, which seems to be able to square the magic circle of impoverishing farmers while ensuring that there are shortages of key supplies while prices are getting higher.
And, as any economist will tell you, it takes real genius to do that - a level of genius that, despite the jubilation in Egypt, is going to make sure things do not get much better there. What we are seeing is merely the froth.
COMMENT THREAD
It's always fun to see the MSM make stupid mistakes on their website, for no other reason that they are soooooo superior about their editing and fact-checking, and so anal about us lowly blogs.
However, the headline could well be a Freudian slip, as it's one of those hardy perennials about stopping the two-ring circus of the EU Parliament, and consigning the Strasbourg operation to history. Perhaps this is Bruno Waterfield's subliminal protest at having to produce a garbage story, featuring the lowlife, Edward McMillan-Scott, for the ever-failing Daily Failygraph.
Still, it does no harm to remind ourselves that this totally unnecessary monthly trek costs £150m a year, of which the British taxpayer coughs up £28 million. That is yet another reason why we should be having nothing to do with the EU, especially as there is nothing at all we can do about it – apart from leave.
I wonder though, how philosophically, you legitimise the extortion of tax for a purpose for which no-one approves, which cannot be justified and which nobody wants to pay. And to refuse payment would be?
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