Every silver lining has a cloud (not) - by Richard... Friday, April 08, 2011

Every silver lining has a cloud (not) - by Richard... Friday, April 08, 2011

England and Wales received less than an inch of rain last month, a third of the long-term average, according to the Environment Agency. The situation was especially bad in East Anglia, which is home to a large amount of the country's agriculture and uses a lot of water for irrigation.

But such is the lacklustre performance of our privatised water industry – whose directors are never short of a bonus or two – that this short-term deficiency immediately translates into a massive water shortage. In the South West, Bristol Water has been forced to pump water from the Severn to conserve its reservoirs.

This, of course, is just down the road from Severn Trent Water, which a few years ago got fined for falsifying data on leakage rates.

But, having neglected their infrastructures, and instead spent billions on funding expensive and pointless EU quality directives, plus equally expensive water treatment directives, water companies are now "closely monitoring" the situation so that they can restrict the availability of the product they are contracted to supply, and for which they will continue to charge.

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Operation Amnesia - by Richard...

A piece in the Spectator this this week offers a perspective on Afghanistan should be read by everyone who wishes to claim that they are in the least bit well-informed – not least by the editors and journalists of the Spectator.

Written by Dr Matt Cavanagh, a former Cambridge don, he was during the crucial period of the current military campaign a special advisor to Des Browne and then Gordon Brown. A man from the "outside", with an academic rather than military background, thus got a unique perspective, part of which he now reveals.

Headed "Operation Amnesia", Cavanagh argues that Britain's failings in Afghanistan have as much to do with short memories as shortages of troops, noting that the transition process, from insurgency to pacification is "as much about symbolism as substance". It is designed to satisfy the desperate search for a credible "metric of progress" even as violence remains stubbornly high. Measures of territory occupied and enemy "body count" are rightly rejected as counterproductive, and more detailed assessments of the Afghan state, of its army, police, or local governors, are far from reassuring.

With delicious irony, he seizes on an example of "progress" in Lashkar Gar – an open-air concert, attended by thousands of Afghans. Such an event would have been "unthinkable" in previous years the BBC. In fact, a similar event took place in May 2008. Then, it too had been seized on as evidence of progress. 

Remarks Cavanagh, this really symbolises is how short western memories are. Few bother to read up on the past, and most are focused simply on the short period for which they are seconded to the job. Short-termism has cursed every aspect of the campaign. Journalists produce reports devoid of historical context, and are too eager to believe their briefings. Ministers, advisers and civil servants doubt that they will be around long enough to see any success, but fear that they may preside over disaster, and so adopt a risk-averse approach until they can pass the whole mess to their successors.

The military react in the opposite way, determined to make an impact in the short time they are there. This may seem more admirable, but its effects are equally perverse - especially when combined with a narrow way of thinking about how to make an impact. Large-scale, conventional military engagements predictably recur in the second half of each brigade’s six-month tour. Afghans watch the British clear and re-clear territory, but to each new batch of soldiers, it looks and feels like success.

During the Vietnam war, Col John Paul Vann put it brilliantly. "We don't have 12 years' experience in Vietnam", he said. "We have one year's experience, repeated twelve times". This could be adapted for the British military today. We don't have five years' experience in Helmand, we have six months'’ experience ten times. Successive brigades have relearned the painful lessons of their predecessors, or overcompensated for their perceived failings. Debriefings of battalion and company commanders, and attempts to harness their valuable experience, have been perfunctory.

Four years ago, when Cavanagh was working for the then defence secretary, Des Browne, he and the Secretary of State pressed senior military officers to look for ways of mitigating this short-termism: longer tours, or a staggered rotation of units, or greater continuity in the command structure. The army, then led by General Dannatt, flatly rejected the first two options. They dismissed longer tours on the basis of the strain on soldiers and their families, and rejected staggered rotation due to the importance of "a brigade training and deploying as a brigade".

The argument for "training and deploying as a brigade" appeared rather dogmatic, encouraging precisely the kind of large-scale set-piece engagements of concern. It also put the creaking helicopter and transport fleet through the added strain of mass troop rotations, and required us to keep scarce equipment in Britain so an entire brigade could train with it.

And here comes the rub. Such is the modern dogmatism and the undue prestige afforded to men in uniforms, with their merit badges, sashes and braid, all with their pretty medal-ribbons on their chests, that civilian advisers and strategists shied away from overruling the military. We, says Cavanagh, worked with the less dogmatic generals to identify a small number of senior posts (and junior posts in specific areas like intelligence) where tours of duty could be lengthened. 

We were assured that other initiatives would improve continuity, but these too were relatively minor and seemingly given a low priority. The issue of command structure got lost in wider debates about troop numbers and the looming arrival of American forces in Helmand. 

Cavanagh was "more optimistic" about the Americans’ ability to learn and adapt, although this optimism did not survive the continuing mess in Sangin, where the "transformation" of the campaign now looks like a one-off "reset" of the counter-insurgency approach rather than the start of a process of continuous learning.

That brings to a head the issue of troop numbers, the subject of such heated debate during 2009, and one most heavily miss-cast by the media, with mischievous and ignorant politicking of the Conservatives, with far too many people who should have known better standing on the sideline, cheering.

The issue, of course, is one of infinite subtlety and complexity, which explains why neither the media, opposition politicians nor the military could get it right. As someone who had a share in responsibility for those limits, however, Cavanagh explains how that the potential for troop increases exacerbated the military's dominance of what was meant to be a joint civilian-military campaign, and fed the tendency of new commanders to try to do too much. 

For three years the top brass had argued that additional troops would enable us to "thicken" our forces, increasing their effectiveness, reducing casualties, and enabling proper stabilisation work to begin. But when we sent reinforcements, it had the opposite result: an expanded footprint, increased activity, and increased casualties, to no obvious strategic effect. This may well be precisely what is happening in Sangin now.

The tragedy is that the military's obsession with troop numbers and the media's failure to challenge it (to say nothing of the party politicking by the Conservatives) have obscured the wider lessons of the Afghan campaign. 

Before the American surge, lack of troops was blamed for everything. Since the surge, the new response to any setback or criticism is that "the right resources have only just been put in place". But like it or not, the campaign is already measured in years in the minds of those who matter: the Afghan people and the public back home.

The more fundamental point is that more troops would not have ensured British success in Helmand. Where experts estimate that you would need half a million troops just to cover the ground, not even the American surge — more than ten times what we could have mustered — can ensure success by itself. 

More troops, writes Cavanagh, "will not help our militaries master the complex tribal dynamics, nor judge whether they are making friends faster than they are alienating people. More troops will not change the attitude of the Afghan and Pakistani authorities, nor create a political process that addresses Afghan grievances".

Because of these wider political problems, Britain's lack of success in Afghanistan in strategic terms cannot be blamed on the military. But at the operational level, most of the responsibility is theirs. They took the tactical decisions in summer 2006 — admittedly under great pressure — to disperse our forces across the "platoon houses" in northern Helmand. 

They chose, in the years that followed, to continue to prosecute the campaign in an expansive and aggressive manner, despite the constraints on resources and the lack of evidence that this approach had a lasting positive effect. And while they lost no opportunity to plan and lobby for more troops, they were slow to fill the gaps in our intelligence, or to respond to the Taleban's shift in tactics towards improvised explosive devices.

Thus, says Cavanagh, even if a window of opportunity arises at the strategic level, as it did in Iraq, the military will need to learn and adapt far faster if they are to prevail against an enemy which is adaptable, nimble and utterly unscrupulous, in an environment which is linguistically, socially and culturally alien. This, he says – with a degree of understatement that is belied by the word - "will be difficult". "Impossible" might be a better choice. 

In admiring the courage and character of our armed forces, Cavanagh concludes, it is easy to forget that the military is also a large bureaucracy. Unique in many ways, not least in putting their lives on the line, but a bureaucracy nonetheless. By their nature, bureaucracies are blind to their failings and slow to rectify them — even when staring at the possibility of defeat.

When failure becomes not just a possibility but a reality, it ought to provide the impetus for change. In war it is vital to learn from mistakes. The American military did this ruthlessly after the Kasserine Pass in the Second World War, and they did it again under Petraeus in Iraq. But it won't happen if politicians are blamed instead, as in America over Korea and in Britain over Iraq.

The media, the Conservatives and the military have already prepared the way for a similar narrative on Afghanistan: blaming the previous government, mainly for not providing enough resources. If only we'd had more troops and better equipment, the argument will run, we would have defeated the Taleban, and got out on our own terms. It suits a great many people to go along with this, but in the long run it will only prevent us from learning the real lessons of the past five years.

And in those last two paragraphs, we see the future. All three sets of "players" are locked into the mantra, (Labour) politicians bad, military good, neglecting the simple but hugely important issue in fighting insurgencies, that the politics both on the ground and back home are dominant. The military cannot win insurgencies – they can only but time for a political settlement. But when they forget this – and the politicians hide behind their own inadequacies – we have a recipe for disaster.

What Cavanagh does not say, though, is that in this campaign, Britain – unlike in 1940 – is indeed the junior partner. Resolving this problem is above the pay grade of our own politicians, as we are required to take the lead from the United States – a nation which has no understanding of, nor any feel for, the region.

On this basis, our politicians, no more than our military, can prevail. The best we can hope for is to muddle though, with as few casualties as possible, until we look to have a credible opportunity to escape, with our reputation not too badly tarnished. In the interim, the military is doing what it does best, covering up its own inadequacies. That is something in which – like any good bureaucracy – it is highly skilled.

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Crumbling - by Richard...

Perhaps I have been a little unfair to France, or had under-estimated the degree to which patience is running out over immigration.

We thus learn from Wall Street Journal that the very essence of the European Union experience – the open borders – is crumbling before our very eyes. The French police have re-opened a formerly abandoned checkpoint along the country's Mediterranean border with Italy, a a couple of miles from the beach town of Ventimiglia.

Strangely – or perhaps not – this is getting more coverage in the US press than it is over here, so we also get a report in The New York Times.

This and the WSJ tell of the nearby French town of Menton, where French police in riot gear are boarding trains crossing into France, grilling passengers. Other police forces are monitoring roads and foot trails that lead into French territory from Italy.

The WSJ says this operation is part of France's attempt to stop the wave of North African migrants who regard Italy as a "way station" as they travel by boat, train and foot toward jobs and family in French cities. More than 700 migrants who have crossed into French territory via Italy have been detained by French police and escorted back.

Needless to say, the "colleagues" are getting more than a little uptight about this. EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom is back in the hot seat, suggested that France is in breach of the "free movement" provisions. She wants it both ways does that lady, having told the Italians that giving resident permits to the immigrants did not allow them to travel. 

But, says Malmstrom, when asked about France's crackdown, "There are no borders so they can't". "You are not allowed to do checks at the border" unless "there is a serious threat to public security, and for the moment that is not the case".

However, France's foreign ministry – with an eye to the elections where a weak Sarkozy is up against Mme Le Pen and some very pissed-off Kermits - says Paris is enforcing a bilateral accord with Italy. This is the so-called Chambery agreement, where France can return any undocumented migrants to Italy for expulsion if French officials can ample evidence they came from Italy.

"Bilateral", under the circumstances, though, has become unilateral, as the Italian police, no doubt under orders from Rome, are waving the immigrants thorough, and not showing any willingness to co-operate with their Kermit counterparts.

"There's a hostile attitude coming from Paris," Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told the Italian Senate on Thursday. Kermit Interior Minister Claude Guéant "lashed back", saying France "is completely within its rights to send these people back to Italy."

With Wops and Kermits at daggers-drawn, it's just like old times, and with the Portuguese economy going belly-up – to add to the many others in the resuscitation room – they must be tearing their hair out in Brussels. 

Nevertheless, the Kermits are unrepentant. With cars piled up on the Italian side of the border, the police are doing what they enjoy doing the world over – pissing people off, this time by laboriously checking every car as it goes through. With detailed checks on the trains as well, EU rules are flying out the window.

Moreover, this seems to have been going on, under the radar, for a little time. Yassine Fatnassi, a 28-year-old "construction worker", was one, with three others, taken off a train from Italy to France and detained by the Kermits at a train station in Nice - on 31 March. 

Fatnassi said police took him to a barracks near the French-border town of Breil, telling him he would be sent back to Tunisia. Fatnassi said French police dismissed his requests for a lawyer. He said he was then placed alone in a small holding cell for 24 hours without food or a place to sleep.

On April 1, Mr. Fatnassi said, French police loaded him into a patrol car and drove him to the border and threw him out of France. And quelle horreur, the Kermits didn't seek approval from Italian authorities to dump their trash on the doorstep.

In a measure of the problem, Fatnassi, who has two brothers awaiting him in Paris, says he is "undeterred" by the experience. "It was scary, but I must go to France, because that's where my family is," he says.

Ahmed Mhimdan, a 28-year-old Moroccan and another so-called "construction worker" who says he routinely crosses the border for jobs. He was on his way by train to meet friends in Monte Carlo when two French police boarded his train coach and scrutinised his working papers, which were in order. "The French don't mess around," he said.

Predictably, migrants are now avoiding cross-border the trains. Tunisian fisherman Hassen Kaoubi, 35, has attempted four unsuccessful crossings. His last, which took him on a miles-long foot trail through craggy terrain ended with French police picking him in the countryside just outside Nice. As is now standard practice, they dumped him back in Ventimiglia.

The people of Ventimiglia, who no more want this trash than do the Kermits, are in an invidious position. But instead of focusing their wrath on Rome – which should be sending its ferries back to Tunisia instead of bringing the migrants to the Italian mainland – they are having a go at the Kermits.

Last Saturday, hundreds of protesters gathered near the train station waving signs accusing France of thumbing its nose at its former colony. "Tunisia was once French!" read one sign.

Well, Libya was once Italian, for what good that did them. And when their dross comes storming over the Mediterranean, arguing that point isn't going to do them a lot of good. And nor is Brussels going to get much traction. Open borders is very nice in theory, but the price ordinary people have to pay is proving to be far too high.

As for the British media, one wonders why they are not covering this issue. Perhaps it is just too dangerous, giving people quaint ideas, like we don't have to let the garbage in – much less give it benefits. We can turn it right round and send it back from whence it came. And there's bugger-all Brussels can do about it.

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A spectacular failure - by Richard...

The Libyan rebels may not be doing very well out of the air "support" provided by the coalition, but the "bomber barons" are delighted. The fool Cameron has been bounced into rethinking the defence cuts.

So much for the strategic defence review - which has failed at the first hurdle. This is a policy the Boy and 13th Century Fox had years to think about, years to plan. They forced the pace – they were not interested in debate or discussion. They knew exactly where they were going ... straight up a cul de sac.

There are no "ifs" or "buts" here. They got it wrong – spectacularly and completely wrong. And now, they are in the worst of all positions, having to make up policy on the hoof, as the pressure of events crowd round them. As things go, this is a spectacular failure. And it is one for the Tory Boys to make the most of. It is the only thing "spectacular" that Cameron is ever going to deliver.

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On their way - by Richard... Thursday, April 07, 2011

Exactly as we predicted, the Italians are set to export their immigrant problem - the chosen mechanism being to give the recent flood of North African of 25,000 "refugees" temporary residence permits. This, according to Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, speaking to his own parliament, means that the migrants would be allowed "free movement" between EU member states, thus enabling him to dump the problem on other EU member states.

This, it appears, has prompted an alarmed response from the EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, declaring that permit holders would not have an "automatic right" to travel within the European Union. Spokesman Marcin Grabiec told journalists in Brussels that it would depend on the type of permit issued. 

He also explained that migrants would only be allowed to travel within the Schengen area for up to three months if they had valid travel documents, sufficient money to live on, pose no threat to public security. Migrants found to have crossed over from Italy without meeting those conditions could be sent back there, Grabiec said. 

However, that is to ignore the flaccid response of our own administration, which seems to want to impose as much stress and inconvenience on the British people as possible. With our Continental "friends" turning a Nelsonian blind eye to the hordes, it can onlt be a matter of time before these "refugees" make their way to Sangatte and thence to the nearest British benefit office.

But then, since benefits seems to be there for the taking and the British establishment seems content to throw our money at all-comers - especially if they are Muslims or immigrants (or both) - Italy seems to be taking a perfectly sensible way out. It is certainly more humane than the Maltese option. Time was though, in 2003, the Italians were of a like mind, but now they just provide the ferry (pictured above) and the papers to start the migrants on the next stage of their journeys to new lives – in Britain. How times change.

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Parliamentary language? - by Richard...

In the Lords from 5 April, we see this little gem:

Lord Kinnock: My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, says that he wants to stick to his guns, I am inclined to hope that he goes very near to the muzzle of those guns-indeed, just in front-because that would be a suitable location.

If this is permissible parliamentary language, then I hope we will see an end to those who complain about my suggestions as to the fate of our ruling classes.

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Beneath contempt - by Richard...

So, the idiot Boy, after the space of only a month is relaunching his drive to cut regulation. "I want us to be the first government in modern history to leave office having reduced the overall burden of regulation, rather than increasing it", he says.

Of course, EU regulation is not touched, so just who does he think he is kidding? Just how stupid does he think we are? Does he really think that we are so gullible that we do not understand that most business regulation comes from Brussels and, therefore, anything his provincial government can do is minimal?

And haven't we been there before? This was a previous prime minister talking about deregulation:

You know the things I care about - we all care about - the things I dreamt about as a boy. The chance to get on in life. To acquire knowledge, security, the prospect of a better future - and a life fulfilled. A corner of life that you can call your own. That's what people struggle for and sacrifice for when they watch their children grow.

If we're going to meet those hopes, fulfil those dreams - then we must build a strong economy. And looking around the world, we can see even more clearly what makes an economy strong. A Government that secures two things; low inflation and the right climate for business to succeed.

It is people who create wealth. People, not Government. Business, not bureaucracy. Enterprise, not interference. But business can't succeed if Government doesn't play its part.

He goes on ...

And now is the time to mount a new offensive. We're already on the march against the Eurocrat and his sheaf of directives. But you know, it isn't just Brussels that rolls out the red tape. It's Whitehall. And town hall. Everyone likes to tie another knot. Admirable intentions - disastrous combinations. Piling costs on industry. Mr President, that must stop.

It's not just big business that suffers. Far too often, it is the small firms who really suffer. Small firms - fed up with filling in the forms - who feel that it is just not worth being in business at all. 

Of course, we want to have confidence in the safety of the food we eat, the homes we buy, the place we work in, the people who take charge of our children. But when this reaches the point where you may need 28 separate licences, certificates and registrations just to start a business, then I say again, this sort of thing must stop.

I have asked Michael Heseltine to take responsibility for cutting through this burgeoning maze of regulations. Who better for hacking back the jungle? Come on, Michael. Out with your club. On with your loin cloth. Swing into them!

You know, deregulation isn't just about making life better for business. It's about making life easier for everybody. Take the bureaucratic controls which mean Whitehall decides whether you have the chance to stop off the motorway. Every parent knows what I mean. Next services, 54 miles - when your children can't make 10!

They've got to go. And so those rules have got to go!

That, of course, was John Major – his Conservative Party conference speech on 9 October 1992, launching his great deregulation initiative. That failed then, and this one will fail now. The gilded Boy has learned nothing from this, and will learn nothing from the current experience. It is nothing more or less than cynical window-dressing.

And there is nothing I detest more in a politician than when they take us for fools. I may possibly have said this before, but the man is beneath contempt.

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A distorted picture - by Richard...

Although the newspapers are full of hyperbole about the very welcome spring warmth, the have been almost completely silent about the ice drama in the Gulf of Finland, as indeed they were about the Okhotsk Sea entertainment.

But the current weather here and the exceptional conditions in Eastern Europe and Russia are not unrelated. The very fact that it is warm here and St. Petersburg is suffering a late spring is that the same system which are bringing the mild weather to the UK is also packing the ice into the Gulf.

The situation at the end of last month had so deteriorated that fruit and vegetable shipments to Russia were hindered by dangerous ice, and cargoes of potatoes were being spoiled because it was too cold and they were freezing. 

Even now, a week later and the Princess Anastasia ferry returned to St. Petersburg more than five hours late from its first trip to Stockholm (pictured above). The ferry was delayed due to thick ice that continues to cover the Gulf of Finland. Ten icebreakers, including a nuclear vessel, are still helping to free cargo vessels and passenger ferries. 

According to data from the administration of the St. Petersburg seaport, as of Monday, 76 ships remained trapped in the ice – and it is not yet over. The ice means that the schedule of the Princess Anastasia is subject to change. According to ferry staff, the journey to Stockholm could take up to 35 hours instead of the scheduled 23 hours.

And this is not just idle interest. The parochialism of the British media is such that those who rely on it are never given the big picture. The focus on a brief period of warm spring in Britain allows the myth of global warming to be sustained, whereas as the global temperatures is creeping down, and hot spots here and there can always be matched by cold spots elsewhere (and vice versa).

This distorted picture is a real problem when it comes to public perception. Memories are short, and when the global warmists come out to play, the fine weather undoubtedly influences sentiment. Yet there is rarely any serious attempt to counter their propaganda. Ice-bound in St. Petersburg doesn't cut it - but it should.

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It is happening - by Richard...

Portuguese (caretaker?) Prime Minister José Socrates has informed EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso of the intention to ask for "the activation of financial support mechanisms".

A spokesman for the commission has said the European Financial Stability Facility, the euro-zone's bailout fund, as well as a smaller fund fed by the EU budget, would be available to Portugal if it formally requested aid. "The president of the European Commission assured that this request will be processed in the swiftest possible manner, according to the rules applicable," said an official statement.

And so another one goes down the line. How many more, and when will it all end?

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