Sunday, 26 June 2011

The penny drops - by Richard... Sunday, June 26, 2011

Actually, it seems to be dropping, according to Booker, but at last there does seem to be some recognition that Greece's problems with the euro is by far the most serious crisis that the great European "project" has ever faced.

Unlike me, Booker watches the idiots' lantern occasionally, and observes that, as their sad, bewildered faces show whenever they appear on our screens, the EU's leaders have nowhere to turn. The "colleagues" cannot afford to allow Greece to fall out of their beloved euro, which might trigger an international currency crisis, the consequences of which no one can calculate.

On the other hand, they cannot afford to continue pouring tens of billions of euros, which will never be repaid, into a basket-case economy. They – and we – are impaled on an impossible hook.

One of the few sources of pleasure in this mess has been to witness the discomfiture of our own homegrown euro-zealots who, a decade or more ago, were obsessively urging Britain to join the lemmings as they set off for that ultimately inevitable cliff, says Booker, then offering a narrative about the BBC's Today programme.

But that is very small compensation when you see what HMG is up to, according to The Observer. Despite the Boy claiming "victory" in getting Germany to agree that the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism will not be used, thus limiting UK contributions to the bailout to its IMF contributions, it seems other dirty dealing is afoot.

The treasury, we are told, is urging British banks to take a hit, cooperating in a "soft" restructuring of Greek bond debt, rescheduling something like £2.5 billion of debt, taking below market interest rates. That may or may not work, but both Moody's and Fitch have indicated that any soft restructuring will still be regarded as a default.

Either way, therefore, the British taxpayer is going to be screwed, on top of which, as Booker reminds us in his column, we in Britain are approaching a financial abyss almost as great as that into which Greece has been falling. Last week, the deficit on our Government's annual spending widened yet again, to £143 billion, which means that we are having to borrow nearly £3 billion a week. That equates to £5,700 a year for every household.

The BBC continues to prattle on about those terrible "cuts", as various groups of public sector workers plan the widest series of strikes we have seen since the 1970s. But when did you last hear the BBC tell us that our overall public spending is rising, not falling? When did the Todayprogramme tell us that by the end of the year, our national debt will have soared to £1 trillion, having doubled in six years?

When did it mention that, despite all those closed libraries and care centres, the Government is still having to borrow the equivalent of £100 a week for every household in the land, to pay, inter alia, for the 1,600 employees of the NHS who earn more than the Prime Minister? And that's not even mentioning the 46 BBC executives who enjoy similar perks, including the £834,000 a year we pay the director-general himself.

Forget poor old bankrupt Greece, says Booker. Here in Britain, too, we ain't seen nothing yet. And I'm not entirely sure that penny has dropped.

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Nice and easy does it - by Richard... Saturday, June 25, 2011


If you want an example of cheap and easy journalism, the above is a good example - all generalities, but naming no names. If you really want to hurt them, though, and force through change, you have to name names, as we did in April 2005, going after Barroso and Spiros Latsis, and their little scam.

Booker and I did a lot of work on this and, for once, UKIP did some good work. As the story unfolded, it was very clear that the Latsis empire was involved in a massive network of bribery and corruption, including the EU commission and much, much more.

And what happened? The piece that Booker did in The Sunday Telegraph got pulled, and this was forced on us by a nervous newspaper management. The EU parliament stuff that we were able to report eventually was sunk by gutless MEPs and with the rest of the MSM also diving for cover, we got nowhere.

The Mail story is right in principle. Greece is being dragged down by a huge amount of corruption – but the problem starts with billionaire robber barons who are stealing on an industrial scale, with the help of a nexus of international partners, in which the EU and Barroso are central players.

So doing nice, soft, easy stories is going to achieve precisely nothing – but just what you expect from the entertainment industry.

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Matured stupidity - by Richard...

Very early in my career, I made an interesting discovery. Stupid old women were not stupid because they were old. They started off their lives as stupid young women, only people (especially males) tended to be more forgiving. And when she was young, this one, currently pontificating about the "Freedom Flotilla", must have been very stupid indeed, to judge by this:
Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: what else would I do? I am in my 67th year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content. It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one's understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?
The antidote is here, as banned by HuffPuff.

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The Austrian defence - by Richard...

Continuing on, to produce my third piece reviewing the great circus elephant debacle, it occurred to me that, if I was writing a sequel or an update to The Great Deception (which Booker and I are thinking about for the tenth anniversary of its publication, in 2015), Pritchard's debate would probably be marked down as a good illustration of how far parliament had declined under the baleful influence of the European Union.

But what I would need to do, and have not done yet, is show how clearly it demonstrates that decline. For that, we need to look at some of the speeches in the parliamentary debate, starting with Mark Pritchard, and including the input of the minister, Jim Paice, and some others.

Before we go there, though, one has to appreciate that there is considerable history here. In a campaign inspired by PETA, the RSPCA and other "animal rights" groups – supported by the greens and lefties - there has been pressure to bring in a ban on the use of circus animals for some years, the more recent attempts directed at the previous administration and now this one.

Faced with the pressure, the response of the Cleggerons has actually been fairly direct but inept, with Jim Paice, for DEFRA, claiming that EU law prevented an outright ban. In the first of two efforts prior to last week's debate, on 12 May 2011, he had stated:
There have been recent press reports that the Austrian Government have been taken to court for their attempt to ban wild animals in circuses, so our Government can hardly recommend something that might not be legal. I can assure him, however, that the proposals we will bring forward shortly will be tough enough to ensure that animal welfare in circuses is properly protected.
Responding to Gavin Shukerm the Labour member for Luton South, and a co-signatory of Pritchard's motion, he then declared: "Whether we like it or not, this court case is going on in Europe and therefore the British Government could not bring forward a proposal ... that might well prove shortly to be unlawful".

That had the greenies and the animal rights activists scurrying away to do their homework, whence they found that the Austrian claim was not strictly true. Thus, on 19 May 2011 Mary Creagh, Labour member for Wakefield came back to the hapless Paice, who "clarified" the issue, telling the House:
... we now understand that the initiation of court proceedings against the Austrian Government has been delayed, although a case is in preparation and proceedings are expected to commence shortly ... This does not, however, affect our policy ... The very strong legal advice that we have received, which is consistent with the case being prepared against Austria, is that a total ban on wild animals in circuses might well be seen as disproportionate action under the European Union services directive and under our own Human Rights Act 1998. We believe that to have pursued a ban in the light of that legal advice would have been irresponsible.
So was set the scene for last week's debate, and when it came to Pritchard's turn to stand up andmake his case, he thus decided to reject the argument that a ban on circus wild animals was prohibited by EU law. Referring to what was coming to be called the "Austrian defence", he went on to observe that:
It is not uncommon to hear of Governments sheltering behind courts in Brussels or Strasbourg, but to hear from Ministers in my own Front-Bench team say that this Government are now sheltering behind a domestic court in Vienna is a completely new innovation.
In full sarcasm mode, he then pursued his own arguments, claiming that the reality was that the Government's Austrian defence was a red herring, given that the European Commission had clearly stated that a ban is a matter for member states alone. It is an issue that English courts decide, Pritchard said, proclaiming:
Surely that is something to celebrate in this age of judicial creep from Europe, and also something to exercise and implement. A ban can be introduced in an English court - without waiting for other European capitals to decide and without interference from Europe, which makes a refreshing change.
Pritchard, the supposed Tory, was then strongly supported by the ghastly Green, Caroline Lucas, who picked up the point about member state involvement, and informed the House that "the European Commission here in London recently wrote a letter to the Captive Animals Protection Society stating plainly, yet again, that the EU considered that the welfare of animals … 'is a matter best left to the judgement of Member States'".

Now things are getting really interesting, because that is indeed the view of the EU commission. But the Ghastly Green does not mention the European Ombudsman. This is left, initially to Jim Fitzpatrick, Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, who completely muddies that water by claiming:
The European Circus Association challenged the Austrian ban at the European Commission in 2006, and it lost. It invoked the European ombudsman and it lost. The ombudsman asked the Commission to evaluate whether the Austrian ban on wild animals in circuses was proportionate. The Commission's final opinion of September 2009, as laid out in the documents available in the Library pack for today’s debate, set out why it did not believe there were grounds for an accusation of maladministration and also set out its view on the proportionality of the Austrian ban. It ruled that this was a matter for member states to decide.
It turns out that the Ombudsman's ruling is absolutely crucial. The Commission has bottled out of infringement proceedings against the Austrian ban, quite obviously because it does not want to confront the animal rights lobby. In the Ombudsman's view, therefore:
... the Commission's statement that "animal welfare questions are better left to Member States" seemed tantamount to an abdication by the Commission from its role as guardian of the Treaties in all matters concerning animal welfare and not merely to those pertaining to the present case. As such, it failed to provide a correct, clear and understandable reasoning for the exercise of the Commission's discretionary powers to close the case. The Ombudsman found that in so doing the Commission had committed an act of maladministration.
This is all nicely set out in a press release, where the Ombudsman concluded in a deliciously robust fashion:
As the Guardian of the Treaty, the Commission is obliged to supervise the correct application of EU law in the Member States. After his investigation, the Ombudsman concluded that the Commission had abdicated its role as Guardian of the Treaty. According to him, it should have determined whether the complete ban imposed by the Austrian law constituted a proportionate restriction of the right of free movement. If it were to conclude that this is not the case, the Commission should either continue infringement proceedings or provide the complainant with a valid reason for closing the case.
It is then left for Paice to reiterate the Government's case, and this time he refers to the Ombudsman, making "a damning criticism of maladministration against the Commission, based on the view that it had abdicated its responsibility to maintain the treaties by not interfering in the rights of member states".


Bizarrely, we now have a situation that you could not in your wildest dreams make up. Let me summarise. We have the British Parliament which wants to ban the use of wild animals in circuses, supported by the EU commission, who says this is a case for member states, then opposed by the member state in the form of HMG, which says to instigate a ban would be unlawful – under EU law – supported in part by the Ombudsman, who criticises the commission, in effect, for not interfering in the rights of member states.

All Paice can do is tell the House that it is ultimately the courts that interpret legislation. Our lawyers have to advise us, he says, not about what the commission's view is, but how they believe a court might interpret the legislation. By "a court", of course, he means the European Court of Justice.

The minister then informs the House that a case has been laid by Circus Krone against the Austrian Government in that country's constitutional court. We know not the outcome, he says, but the fact that that case has been laid supports the legal advice that a wholesale ban may well be counter to section 16 of the EU services directive, and that any subsequent legal challenge would have the same consequences that I have described – i.e., declaring it unlawful.

With that, we shall leave nearly the penultimate word to Caroline Lucas's soulmate, Zac Goldsmith, who told the House he was going to back Pritchard's motion. I hope that colleagues will do the same, he said, if not for the wild animals themselves then "simply to send a message to the public that Parliament exists, and exists for a purpose".

And indeed a message was sent – to the effect that British Parliament, in all its pomp, splendour and might, cannot even ban the use of 39 wild animals in circuses (the number in the UK at the moment), because the British government says it is against EU law, even though the EU commission says it isn't. And the British government, is right ... in law.

But all this was so unnecessary. Had Pritchard any brains at all, he would have known, without all this carry on, the bit that Ministers were struggling to avoid admitting. Animal welfare is an occupied field. As long as we are in the EU, we have no power to legislate. The power has been given to Brussels.

So, to paraphrase Goldsmith, we now know that Parliament exists. But for what purpose, we have yet to discover.

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What is and will be - by Richard...


One difference between climate realists and warmists is that the former deal with what is – as here, at the Mount Washington Alpine Resort which is still open for skiers and snowboarders this weekend. This winter, the resort received more than 60 feet of snow — the deepest in resort history — and it claimed the deepest snow pack in Canada before opening day in December.

With so much snow still on the hill, the mountain will be opening in early July, the same time as it opens for summer operations with its Mile High Chairlift rides. What is becoming Mount Washington's longest-running season was a record-breaking one.

As for what will be, locally there is the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation, which is asking, "What would it mean to Canada if we could no longer play outdoor hockey for most of the winter? Or if opportunities to ski and snowboard were to diminish across Canada?" It then declares: "And it could be the harsh reality for Canada's winter sports culture if we don't take international action to reduce global warming".

Thus, point to Mount Washington in the here and now, and the warmists such as David Suzuki will point you to some unspecified period in the future, when all their predictions will come true, if you take enormously expensive action now.

They do have a slight problem in that their recommendations to avoid their future demonstrably could not have the effect they claim, even if their predictions were sound – the warmist creed is absurd, an obviously so. But it does not make any difference. These are religious beliefs here. They have nothing to do with reality and you can't destroy them with reality.

So why is it that the creed holds sway in the highest offices of so many nations, and grips the minds of the most prestigious scientific establishments of the world? Well, the answer is in that one word, "prestigious". The warmists have cultivated "prestige ".

A picture and story by journalist Lindsay Chung of the Comox Valley Record doesn't cut it. A glossy brochure and this sort of guff from David Suzuki has "prestige" and wins the day. As Gustav le Bon noted, whatever has been a ruling power in the world, whether it be ideas or men, has in the main enforced its authority by means of that irresistible force expressed by the word "prestige".

Prestige underpins power in all walks of life, we are not going to prevail until we recognise this, accept that it is the most fundamental issue in our fight against the orthodoxy, and start learning how to deal with it.

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Softening the line? - by Richard...


Fear is turning to anger, but the EU bureaucrats will still screw us writes Charles Moore, adding that, as an outsider, Britain has little chance to alter this crisis which "now threatens political order". So, he observes, the question of what Britain should want in all of this is a difficult one.

But, are we alone in thinking that the great man's tone is softening. In this piece, the self-proclaimed eurosceptic says that the way the euro was conceived, written and performed has been dreadful, "but it does not automatically follow that we should wish for its collapse".

Then, for a man who has consistently opposed the euro, he tells us that, "There is some logic in the existence of a common currency for large parts of mostly northern Europe", adding: "There is misery if it all falls apart".

Now look was he was writing almost exactly a year ago (18 June 2010, to be precise), when Cameron was also at the European Council in Brussels. "The euro's inevitable failure will be horrendous for all of us", he told us, the single currency is a disaster, but the cost of its life support will devastate Europe's economies.

"Again and again in politics, great schemes don't work – Soviet Communism, for example, and now the euro". But bad political schemes are usually given up "only when they have been tested literally to destruction". It would be much better for Europe if the euro had never happened, and I long for it somehow to fade away, but the process of destruction will be horrendous, and it is only just beginning, he concluded.

Now wander back to 20 October 2007 and we are told: "Brussels dictatorship will face day of reckoning". The European project, he wrote, now resembles the state of the eastern European Communists after 1968, when party members gave up believing in their doctrine and just settled for comfortable jobs. They shored up their power and ignored their unpopularity.

After 20 years, it all collapsed, because people started to take down the Berlin Wall, and no one quite dared stop them, he reminded us, venturing that the EU is not such a sharp oppression as was Soviet Communism, but it is similar in this respect - it tries wherever possible to avoid the democratic judgment of the people it rules. When that judgment does come, therefore, it will be merciless.

And so to 4 June 2005 when Moore writes about the German magazine Stern advising readers to check their euro banknotes. The notes issued in Germany, it explained, begin their serial numbers with "X"; those issued in Italy begin with "S". Hold on to the former, was the suggestion, and get rid of the latter while you can.

Stern's X-factor advice was based on the idea that the euro zone might break up, wrote Moore, now adding: "I do not know whether the euro zone will break up (though I wouldn't mind taking a small bet that it has less than 18 months to go in its present form), but Stern's advice interests me for the same reason as the results of the Dutch and French referendums".

They are, he said, "all symptoms of that exciting moment in politics when reality starts to intrude upon the lives of statesmen". This is part of the fun of following politics: the relation to reality is generally delayed, but is always there in the end.

Unreal schemes often appear and even dominate for a time - fascism, Communism, the League of Nations are examples. But the truth eventually finds them out. He then concludes:
One expects most of the European political leaders to go on pretending that everything will be all right. They have lived for years on the metaphor that the EU is like a bicycle that must not stop moving, and now they may die by it, peddling ever more frantically and absurdly to avoid falling off, like a troupe of circus clowns. They may even succeed for a surprisingly long time.
In that last observation, he is absolutely right. Six years ago, we were talking about the demise of the euro, with Moore putting its end by December 2007. But here we are, still talking about the demise of the euro.

Then, as now, we willed it to happen, as one way of seeing the end of the "Brussels dictatorship". But, now the collapse is nearly upon us, Moore tells us "it does not automatically follow that we should wish for its collapse". Has he changed his stance and, if so, is this reality biting, as he confronts the enormity of the potential consequences?

Or is there something else going on here, that I have missed?

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The epitome of ignorance - by Richard... Friday, June 24, 2011


The poor little darling Cameron, in Brussels, is reported to be "appalled" on seeing a glossy 16-page brochure advertising Herman Van Rompuy's new £280 million HQ.

The Guardian steps up to the plate to tell us that the Darling Boy seized on an opportunity to voice "immense frustration" at the lavish spending of the Brussels élite after being handed a glossy brochure promoting the European council's soon to be finished €300m (£270m) headquarters.

The brochure was distributed to EU leaders as they sat down to dinner at a Brussels summit on Thursday evening, with Europe facing one of the gravest crises in memory amid predictions of the breakdown of Greece and the potential death of the euro single currency.

Well, you can imagine our "immense frustration", as we ran the story on 19 September 2009 (pictured above - with a rather appropriate headline), on the back of a story by Bruno Waterfield. If Cameron had been on top of his game, he would have known about it years ago, rather than being "appalled" now, when it is far too late to do anything.

What this does, though, is demonstrate yet again how ignorant our masters really are. I've remarked before on how we tend to think of them as "all-knowing", but the fact of the matter is that, on a whole raft of issues, they know considerably less than you could possibly imagine.

But it is only thus imbued with the most profound ignorance that anyone could possibly be in favour of Britain's continued membership of the EU ... which tells you a great deal about this ignorant boy.

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Escape from Brussels - by Richard...


The Boy may be enjoying the media spotlight in Brussels today, but behind the scenes – according to Hürriyet Daily News, all is not well with the press corps. Brussels is falling out of fashion and the number of foreign journalists in the city has declined by 25 percent in just one year, from 1,200 to about 900.

There are two reasons given for this "escape from Brussels" - the diminishing role of the EU in international politics, as reflected in the recent Arab spring, and the debt crisis that continues to ravage the eurozone, forcing many European media companies to cut costs.

"Most mainstream media organizations do not have foreign correspondents in Brussels anymore", said Marc Gruger, the director of European Federation of Journalists. Media institutions in Germany, France and the Netherlands have already cut the number of reporters in Brussels significantly, in part deterred by the costs.

Employers have to pay monthly nearly €4,000 per reporter, in addition to renting an apartment in central Brussels. The local tax system obliged companies based abroad to pay Belgium for their reporters does not help, either. This tax is around half of the €4,000 euros.

However, it is Demir Murat Seyrek, a managing partner of Brussels-based Global Communications, who put his finger on an interesting trend which has become all too evident. "Copy-paste journalism has paved the way for the press corps to leave the city, he says, adding that: "Many foreign reporters rely on press releases from EU institutions, with not much added value in terms of journalism".

So there is the guilty secret – not that it is much of a secret, but it is one that allows TM News, a major Italian news agency, to employ only one journalist instead of the previous four in Brussels.

The survivor, Lorenzo Consoli, also a former president of the International Press Association, says that many editors think there is "no use in being in Brussels anymore. The EU seems weak and slow in decision-making most of the time". Consoli cites the Libya crisis, charging that Brussels was "completely non-existent", except for humanitarian support.

"Journalists have given up [on Brussels] due to fruitless long discussions and meetings. The lack of leadership and hesitations … has resulted in a decline in interest toward the EU - not only among journalists, but for everyone", Consoli concludes.

Jean Lemaitre, director of the Brussels-based Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales, reminds us that many reporters from Eastern Europe came to Brussels to cover what was going on in the EU after enlargement in 2004.

"People in those countries were full of hope after accession. Nowadays, after the economic crisis, a kind of disenchantment has replaced euphoria. This disenchantment was clearly visible when many Brussels-based journalists went back home", he said.

That, of course, leaves them with the situation with which we are increasingly familiar, where we have long been used to a London-centric, self-obsessed media, concerned mainly with trivia, personalities and the doings of the slebs, while our supreme government continues to run our affairs unchallenged.

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Posted by Britannia Radio at 09:47