The future of Europe's economy hangs in the balance and our MPs were debating banning circus animals yesterday afternoon. It was only a "take note" motion, fronted by Mark Pritchard, Tory MP for the Wrekin, so it had no legislative effect. But the real stupidity of the debate was that it could not have any effect. This is a matter of EU competence.
Nevertheless, MPs from all sides of the House rallied round Pritchard - who claimed that Downing Street tried to bribe him with the prospect of a government job to get him to change his position – and supported the motion without a division.
In the House, the call for a ban was opposed by Agriculture Minister Jim Paice. He said he shared the views of MPs concerned about the use of performing animals, but warned there could be "legal challenges" to a ban as proposed by Pritchard.
Opening the debate, Pritchard described the government's behaviour as "mysterious", and said he had initially been offered a "pretty trivial job" if he agreed to drop or amend the Commons motion calling for a ban. He also claimed he had received a call from the prime minister's office, telling him that David Cameron would look upon it "dimly" if he pushed for a vote on strengthening protection for animals.
This provoked an extraordinary response from Pritchard who, in rejecting the blandishments and threats, told the House:Well, I have a message for the Whips and for the Prime Minister of our country—I did not pick a fight with the Prime Minister of our country, but I have a message. I might be just a little council house lad from a very poor background, but that background gives me a backbone, it gives me a thick skin, and I am not going to kowtow to the Whips or even the Prime Minister of my country on an issue that I feel passionately about and on which I have conviction.
That may be the case, but one has to observe that his background most certainly does not confer on him any brains. Dim even by Tory standards, Pritchard should know that when the government acts in such a "mysterious" manner, there is usually one very good reason – the European Union.
There might be some people with other backbones in this place, on our side and the other side, who will speak later, but we need a generation of politicians with a bit of spine, not jelly. I will not be bullied by any of the Whips. This is an issue on which I have campaigned for many years. In the previous Parliament I had an Adjournment debate and I spoke in the passage of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. I have consistently campaigned on this issue, and I will not kowtow to unnecessary, disproportionate pressure.
The problem this idiot has is that legislation on the welfare of circus animals is an occupied fieldunder EU law, which means that while there is no specific EU legislation on the issue, the UK cannot itself pass legislation without the approval of the Commission. This, it would be most unlikely to get, as the Council is already on the case with a declaration on animal welfare, as part of its general policy review on this issue.
That it is an occupied field is demonstrated by Commission Regulation (EC) No 1739/2005 of 21 October 2005, laying down animal health requirements for the movement of circus animals between Member States.
As to an outright ban on "ethical" grounds, there are the underlying treaty principles of the free movement of services and freedom of establishment. This means that, under internal market provisions, even if the British government could ban UK registered circuses from using wild animals (which it cannot), it could not prevent enterprises from other member states from displaying performing wild animals. Hence the "legal challenges" alluded to by Paice, if a ban was imposed. They would come from circus owners as well as the Commission.
Altogether, then, Pritchard and his supporters made complete fools of themselves, but so did the minister – displaying the classic inability, common to successive governments, to admit how much power they have subcontracted to their head office in Brussels. And how desperately sad it is that not a single MP was bright enough to spot that elephant - not in the room but, rather appropriately, in the circus. The whole thing is just an idle charade.
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Thus speaks the New York Times, confirming that which we knew already ... that anyone who asserts with confidence that "contagion" is not a risk is talking out of their rear end.
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The wry smile is in action again today, at the news of the electrical retailer Dixons posting a £239 million loss after taking a major "hit" from its Kotsovolos retailing operation in Greece, and the closure of its businesses in Spain.
The Kotsovolos losses are particularly interesting and the company was only acquired in 2004 at a final price of acquisition at £61.6m. And now it is taking a £53.2 million "goodwill impairment charge" with profits hit by a market decline of around 25 percent caused by the "gloomy economy".
The Spanish experience has been just as salutary, as the group ceased trading earlier this year, pulling the plug on 34 PC City shops and the web shop PIXmania, all employing just over 1360 people. On top of the £53.2 million Greek loss, the closure of PC City cost £70.6 million and PIXmania£106.3 million.
What makes this all rather ironic – and hence the wry smile – is that back in 1998, the then chairman of Dixons, Stanley Kalms, was a leading light in Business for Sterling, fronting the campaign to keep Britain out of the euro. Perhaps also, had he spent as much energy keeping his business out of the eurozone, it might have done rather better than it is doing.
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Norwegian electric car maker Think has filed for bankruptcy again, according to the Financial Times, after failing to find long-term financial backing for its business. It is the third time the niche car maker has fallen into receivership over the past decade, having last exited court protection back in August 2009 when American lithium battery firm, Ener1, Valmet Automotive from Finland and Investinor, the Norwegian Government-backed investment fund, all backed the company.
The news is a blow to the embryonic electric car market, says this report, and will support the views of those sceptical that electric cars can achieve a viable market presence. Ain't that the truth, Boris. And how much are you going to waste on your 1,150 charging points?
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He denied that the message was offensive or menacing.
Now compare and contrast. The Boiling Frog highlights an "unintentionally hilarious" piece from the Guardiancontent partner, lauding fourteen Tory MPs for what it calls "mainstream Eurosceptisim".
This is from Tim Montgomerie, the "futile fourteen" wanting an "EU reform agenda" that includes: taking the taxpayers’ side in resisting further bail-outs; liberalisation of trade; the principle of subsidiarity; wholesale reduction of the waste for which the European Commission is responsible; and getting some value in return for the significant sums that UK taxpayers contribute to the EU's budget.
If that stupidity is what he calls "mainstream", then it is not surprising that he considers Cameron a Eurosceptic. Capture the vocabulary and you win the argument.
But this is in the same league as Mr O'Donnell. If Mongomerie is correct in his description, then declaring of him that, "He's a dirty Tory lying b*****d and should get a bullet in the head," is a message of peace and love. It is not in the least "offensive and menacing".
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Network Rail has handed former chief executive Iain Coucher a £1m payoff. This includes a year's pay in lieu of notice, after the man had been unceremoniously dumped, under a cloud larger than the Hiroshima mushroom.
The decision to dispense with his services centred on his "James Bond lifestyle" and allegations that he enjoyed extravagant pay and perks at taxpayers' expense on top of his £600,000 salary. Coucher and his business partner Victoria Pender were accused of being paid up to £180,000 every three months for "unspecified services" on top of salaries, pensions and bonuses.
Despite this, Croucher also gets a settlement related to the company's long-term incentive plan and, what is more, his fellow executives are also expected to receive sizeable payments under the plan. Transport secretary Philip Hammond has condemned the payment, warning that it will "stick in the gullet" of taxpayers and farepayers.
And well he might. But he and his ilk are going to do precisely what about it?
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In Money Talks, Michael Campbell interviews financial analyst Greg Weldon, founder of Weldon Financial, recognised as one of the top macro-research firms in the world.
For the "money quotes", Campbell notes that: "What's really bubbling below the surface is this huge need to finance more debt in western Europe and in the United States coming up in the second half of the year when the rubber's going to hit the road". Weldon comments that it's a very dangerous time for global equities:If you listen to the pop media here in the US about what's happened in Europe you hear a level of complacency and denial, that we are going to be able to bail out Greece and everything's going to be fine. While it allows me to create a business where we dig into the facts and produce research that tells it like it really is, it also makes me cringe. It does such a disservice to the public to put out stuff that is blatantly fraudulent.
In an earlier broadcast, he refers to the structural problems in the euro and in this interview Weldon repeats an oft' repeated theme that the problem goes "as far back as to when the Greek Drachma was incorporated into the euro, a time that we knew the euro was being watered down simply because of the Greek deficit dynamic". A refreshing informality in style does not conceal the level of concern. Says Weldon:It's coming to a head as they can't continue to kick the can down the road. If we go back to the fourth quarter of '09, when we first started to really focus on Greece, continually officials down there kept coming up with these "bail outs". You know it's like the movie Animal House when the guy is in the middle of the road as the crowd approaching him is about to stampede and he says "remain calm all is fine."
He continues:This has been the ECB, the EU finance ministers, even the head of the finance ministers Juncker actually admitted to lying to the public and the media recently simply because they are willing to do whatever it takes to try and maintain the single currency.
Against this quality of comment, poor Bruno Waterfield is obliged to waste his talents and skills recording the trivial mouthings of Eurofool Cameron. His input into this growing crisis is to tell EU leaders to "agree a plan and to stick to it", citing the "disunited response to the Greek debt crisis" as the significant issue.
I just don't see how that's going to be possible. I don’t see how there's any way out of this. They can't paper it over, the way out is austerity and the public's not going to stand for that. We see the unions rallying in the streets, threatening to blockade parliament and so on and so forth. The next thing is going to be the power company which is saying they are going to start selling off assets to rectify the situation. It's not nearly enough money that they are going to be able to raise.
This, of course, ignores the very real schisms in the ranks of the "colleagues", who are torn between perpetuating the fantasy that the euro is salvageable, and the reality that there are structural faults that prevent any solution. What Cameron chooses to call "dithering" is more a reflection of what happens when fantasy collides with reality.
It is a bit rich for the king of the U-turns to be telling the "colleagues" that they should be sticking to a plan, but Cameron is nothing without his hubris. What he cannot do, though, is tell us what plan the "colleagues" should stick to. This is none that will work.
We go back to Weldon on this, who says "it does such a disservice to the public to put out stuff that is blatantly fraudulent". Cameron is perpetuating the fraud. And that is one of the reasons why we are living in such a very dangerous time.
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Despite little Myrtle's dose of EVM, we now have Andrew Alexander in The Daily Mail stating unequivocally: "Greece will default on its debts, leave the euro and return to its own national currency, the drachma. This is one of the certainties in an uncertain world".
He then goes on to say, "The decision might be swift or it might be slow, but the question remains when, not whether", exactly mirroring my own position, although he is equivocal about whether Greece's departure from the euro in will lead to economic Armageddon.
Alexander is joined by Andreas Whittam-Smith in The Independent. He says the Greeks can't pay and won't pay, so let them default. It would crash out of the eurozone, re-establish its own currency and suffer a devaluation. Greece would be in a mess, but at least it would be its own mess.
Elsewhere, the Mail had earlier ramped up the crisis with a report that the Greek crisis could cost Britain as much as £336 billion, although the actual direct exposure seems to be round about €14 billion (give or take) – although you get a different set of figures from The Independent.
Meanwhile, Der Spiegel is breast-beating about the euro. It remarks that the German government also seems to care little that the European Central Bank is slipping into serious distress.
It worries about fact that "our financial system" is so tightly interwoven that if part of it fails, we could all fall and then complains that Germany is in an impossible situation. Having "ponied up" hundreds of billions of euros but is nevertheless being pilloried.
Some Greek newspapers refer to Germans as "euro Nazis," and not as a benevolent leading power. The fact that the situation has deteriorated so far does not speak well for statesmanship in Berlin - and that is putting it mildly.
But then does it lament that, if the euro-zone does break apart, it is Germany that will be blamed - because it was the country that could have saved the euro but didn't do so out of short-sighted self-interest. The damage, should it come to that, will be much more than monetary.
Hilariously – and possibly more accurately - Zerohedge takes a completely contrary line, arguing that if Germany is seen as the reason for the collapse of the Euro, it will be branded a saviour, not a villain ... at least by the non-banking population of Europe.
However, while we may enjoy the irony, there is something rather unpleasant closer to home - personal debt. We can rail about nation states, but in the UK, we are the most indebted nation on Earth, per head of population, the total level of personal debt running to a trillion and a half.
Against that, I suppose, Greece is rather small beer – especially when we see the level of default that will follow an economic crash.
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