Sunday, 10 July 2011

On this, the seventy-first anniversary of the official (rather than actual) start of the Battle of Britain, Mrs EUReferendum and I are going to get away from it all and spend the day at a local War Weekend celebration.

To mark once again the anniversary of the events in 1940, I have posted here a facsimile of the front page of The Daily Express for 10 July 1940. This comes in full-size format, converted from the PDF into a large JPEG. If you click the pic, (and then click again when the pic comes up, if on Chrome) you'll get it full size on your screen and you can read the whole thing. The definition will stand further enlargement on your browser if you need it.

I'll take advice on this (through the forum and e-mail), but if there is enough interest (I do not want to bore readers with my own obsession), I'll post the whole newspaper edition for the day (six pages) in readable format on the Battle of Britain blog later today. Let me know what you think.

COMMENT THREAD


The chilling sight of golfing WAGs happily waving the ring of servitude introduces the Booker columnthis week (click to enlarge). He picks up on the proposal in the EU parliament that participants in major sporting events in the EU should carry on their team strip the EU "ring of stars".

Booker also notes last week's news that dozens of organisations here, including councils, museums, universities, businesses – even the Peterborough YMCA – have been fined by Brussels, to a total of nearly £500,000, for failing to display the EU flag after receiving cash from the European Regional Development Fund.

The rules impose this advertising as a condition of EU funding, even though every penny of it must be matched by funding from national taxpayers, and for every pound we get from Brussels we have paid £2 to the EU in the first place.

What the stories have in common, Booker tells us, is that they both exemplify the one agenda that underlies everything the EU does – whether it's the wonderful euro or the way we must all carry EU passports – which is to promote ever-closer integration and our "common European identity".

That "identity", of course, does not extend to getting us jobs, with the next story featuring the £1.5 billion contract for 1,200 carriages for the new Thameslink railway to a German firm, Siemens, instead of a British-based one, Bombardier of Derby.

Here, Booker notes that the EU procurement rules at the heart of this issue have caused particular grief in Britain ever since, in the early 1990s, the EU issued its three procurement directives.

When Engineering World reported that 50 percent of all the engineering contracts advertised in the Official Journal came from Britain, this became such a scandal that Gordon Brown, in 2004, commissioned Alan Wood, then the CEO of Siemens in Britain, to produce a report on the issue.

Wood endorsed many of the widespread criticisms of how one-sidedly the procurement rules were being operated. He even observed how France and Germany, unlike Britain, still managed to ensure that they built 100 percent of the rolling stock for their own railways. But the report's suggestion that Britain should learn to frame contracts to favour its own firms, as other countries do, fell on deaf ears, as the Bombardier episode shows. (And so, ironically, the prize ends up with Mr Wood's former firm.)

It is not only blind obedience to procurement rules, however, that has led successive governments to inflict immense damage on our industry. For example, Tony Blair's decision (also in 2004) to award the British Army's biggest ever truck contract, worth £1.1 billion, to MAN, a German-owned company based in Austria.

This reflected Blair's infatuation with building a "European defence identity", which took precedence over a far more suitable bid by an Anglo-US consortium, including LDV (formerly Leyland DAF Vehicles) which planned to build the 5,200 trucks in Birmingham, creating thousands of jobs.

Had the media not been so obsessed with "self" and the NOTW affair, it might have made use of the "freedom" it claims as so important to investigate these issues. But, at the time, Booker was the only national MSM journalist to cover the MAN scandal – and only a few are covering the Bombardier story.

One of the latest reports (apart from Booker) is in the Mirror. This has a comment from methods engineer Mick Smith, 49, with 33 years' service at the Bombardier plant. Smith is angry. "It's disgraceful", he exclaims. "The lads feel they have been stabbed in the back", he adds, with the immortal line: "But what do you expect from the Conservatives?"

Transport Secretary Phil Hammond blames Labour – as the Tories tend to do, matching Labour, which always blamed the Tories - claiming European rules negotiated in the Blair-Brown era require him to give the Thameslink contract to the lowest bidder. If this sounds like a cop-out for one of the Cabinet's most Eurosceptic ministers, says the Mirror, that's because it is.

And it fools no one in the plant. John Pearson of Unite, chairman of the works committee, insists: "This wouldn't have happened in any other European country. The Germans stick by their own, and the French and Spanish do the same".

This brings us to the last of Booker's pieces, chopped out of the print edition and online only. This is the irresistible story of the Phoenix dust storm and the propensity of the warmists to blame any "extreme weather event" on climate change – even though, in this case, there are records going way back of similar events.

One of the more touching features of our global warming zealots, Booker writes, is their remarkable ignorance of history. As their religion crumbles, they clutch ever more desperately at any "extreme weather event" to support their sad creed.

Hot or cold, dry or wet, droughts, heatwaves, floods or record falls of snow are all inevitably cited as evidence of mankind's "disruption of the climate" – even if cussed old Mother Nature has produced such things hundreds of times before. History, it seems, has a lot to answer for. But ignorance of history has even more.

COMMENT THREAD


The recent judgement by the ECHR in Strasbourg on the human rights of Iraq citizens has caused not a little concern about the increasing reach of human rights law into military operations. However, that concern is misplaced.

The judgement relates to a case had been brought by the Birmingham-based firm, Public Interest Lawyers, on behalf of Iraqis who claimed their relatives had been variously shot dead, raped, disappeared or tortured by British soldiers between 2003 and 2006.

In its judgment, the court said: "Following the removal from power of the Ba'ath regime and until the accession of the Iraqi interim government, the United Kingdom (together with the United States) assumed in Iraq the exercise of some of the public powers normally to be exercised by a sovereign government".

"In particular", it said, "the United Kingdom assumed authority and responsibility for the maintenance of security in south-east Iraq. In those exceptional circumstances, a jurisdictional link existed between the United Kingdom and individuals killed in the course of security operations carried out by British soldiers during the period May 2003 to June 2004".

"Since the applicants' relatives were killed in the course of United Kingdom security operations during that period, the United Kingdom was required to carry out an investigation into their deaths", the court ruled.

The court then found there had not been an effective investigation into five of the killings. It noted that, in contrast, the UK has held an inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, a hotel worker who had died while in the custody of British troops in 2003.

Now, the key issue here is that, after the fall of the Saddam regime in Iraq in 2003, the United Kingdom assumed the legal status of an occupying power. In so doing, it took on the powers and obligations set out in the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

There was no compulsion on the British government to take up that status. Others of the coalition forces took part in post-conflict operations without that status. But, having done so – freely and without coercion – the UK then failed entirely to live up to those obligations.

In specific terms, this was a failure of Blair and his leadership, but since he was the prime minister at the time, the UK bears the responsibility for his actions and failures.

And, although one is hesitant to allow for foreign courts having jurisdiction over the UK, these were – as the ECHR acknowledges - "exceptional circumstances".

If one denies Iraqi citizens access to this court, in the absence of any access to the UK courts, we are saying that they had no redress when exposed to behaviour of UK personnel, military or otherwise, whose behaviour would have been illegal on British territory.

It would have been preferable if the British government had taken note of the legal obligations it had assumed, without the issue having to be put before the ECHR. But since this has not happened, then in the interests of justice, the Iraqis concerned had no option but to go elsewhere for their hearing.

When our public authorities or their officers or servants – and that includes our military – misbehave, it cannot be right that they should escape censure, and that their victims' rights should be denied, merely on the basis that such behaviour was perpetrated overseas.

In our name, our government gave some of our own the power of life and death over others. We have a responsibility to make sure that power was used properly, and obligations to those who suffered when it was not. To our eternal shame, it seems we need foreign judges to remind us of this.

COMMENT THREAD


If we were so minded, we could take The Independent headline and its story and rewrite them, better to reflect the reality. Rather than say that a question mark now hangs over Cameron's judgement, however, we would have to resort to the use of rather more words. Thus might we say:
After years of stumbling around in the dark, ignoring the self-evident and blindingly obvious fact that Cameron's judgement is and always has been suspect over a very wide range of issues, we have at last discovered that he is a seriously flawed man and have decided to present our discovery to you in the guise of "news", thereby assuming that you are so thick that you hadn't already noticed and that you need to pay us clever people to tell you.
Now, we admit that this does not have quite the same immediacy and striking power as a Sunheadline. But then we am not clever like wot these professional journalists are, who are at the centre of things and know what's really going down.

On the other hand, we could say that the Fourth Estate, in now reporting that which most of the nation already knew, is having to deal the embarrassment of playing catch-up. And this is the best they can do.


Even when they slagged him off, the media couldn't get it right ... although the message was clear enough. Only the "top people" were deluded. The rest of us could see right through him.

What must be terrifying these little dears is that so many people had come to the right conclusion unaided, without the mighty MSM to guide them. The brighter ones may even be putting two and two together, realising that most people don't actually need their clever commentary in order to know what to think.


There is hardly a single journalist who comes well out of this. For instance. alongside theincreasingly incredible Oborne, we have "Mad Max" Hastings, who in May was also turning on thegoo factory about Cameron. And now, in defence of his own dismal lack of judgement, he writes:
The Prime Minister is badly damaged - and his demeanour yesterday showed that he knows it - because despite countless warnings he chose three years ago to appoint Andy Coulson as his director of communications, and also to establish a close relationship with Rebekah Brooks.
Even then, old habits die hard. They still do not understand that they are all tainted – not by the NOTW but by the fact that they took to their hearts a seedy, low grade individual like Cameron and lionised him.


Even the best of them, at some time or other, have fallen into the trap of adoring the posturing pretender, and they now – all of them – have egg on their faces. Even Gobshite Goodman is looking more moronic than usual as his hero crashes and burns.


And still, they chase after that single, elusive thing that they all strive after: setting the agenda, seeking to shape and control the debate. That, they think, is where their power lies – not as yet realising that the world has changed forever. They, like the Tories, have lost their authority and with it their monopoly control of information. They are just another set of squeaky voices in the growing cacophony.

COMMENT THREAD


The chief political thingie for the Failygraph seems to have had a real change of heart. But which version do we believe?


I bet Peter Oborne would love to do a silent edit and make all his crawling disappear.

COMMENT: "A WAY IN" THREAD


While the politico-media establishment in the UK continues to wallow in its own ordure, Spiegel online gives space to German political scientist Herfried Münkler to argue for greater centralisation in the European Union. Democratisation, he says, cannot save "Europe".

Compared with the shifty equivocation of Cameron and his Tory claque, who only have to open their mouths for lies to issue forth, Münkler is at least refreshingly honest. He eschews the idea of giving more power to the people. This, in his book, is not the answer to the myriad problems currently facing the European Union. Rather, the EU's elites need to improve - and power has to be taken away from the periphery.

In theory, this man is right. Empires also start decaying at the edges, but they only do so when the centre is weak. Münkler argues that it is the elites at the centre which are holding the European Union together, and for the EU to survive, the centre must be strengthened. Pushing for the democratisation of Europe can quickly lead to European disintegration, as the conditions for democracy in the EU do not exist. Not least, he says, the European population has never been and still is not a European people.

He then goes on to say that the main problem of a constituted Europe is that power triggers centrifugal forces the minute the glow of economic prosperity begins to fade. A political and economic player that requires growth and cannot handle disturbances is not fit to survive in the 21st century. Such an actor is a problem and not the solution.

Thus, he says, the current crisis must be viewed as an appeal to transform Europe in such a way that it will produce better elites and give these elites more latitude to take action. This amounts to an amendment of the Lisbon Treaty, and it encompasses the painful thought that a smaller but more effective Europe is better than a larger Europe whose citizens view it with sullen indifference at best.

His observations on the effect of "democratisation" is equally candid. The elites in Brussels and Strasbourg will still be in charge and the only option available to the European people, "to the extent that they can be referred to as such", would be to react to obvious failure by voting their leaders out of office - and to vote an opposing elite to take their place.

Reflecting exactly the dilemma that affects us here in the UK, he notes that it is open to question as to whether this would fundamentally change anything. As the example of Belgium shows, "democracy does not automatically lead to the installation of capable elites".

Since last summer's elections, Belgium's political parties have been unable to form a functioning new government. Belgium's democracy suffers from ethnic quotas and political parcelling. It has long been incapable of reaching the most basic decisions. And, now, not even compromises are feasible.

It is to be feared that a more extensive democratisation of "Europe" would lead to a very similar situation because Europe is at least as diverse as Belgium on national and economic issues.

As to how we develop the "more capable elites" that Münkler thinks are so necessary, he is remarkably opaque. What he tells us is that the general framework of elite behaviour - the European constitution, so to speak – must be "substantially restructured".

This is very much in the territory of "the solution is simple – something must be done". But if we probe deeper into the Münkler text, all we get is the stark but repeated observation that "the periphery has too much power and the centre too little". The key step, therefore, is a political reconstitution of Europe.

Somehow, despite coming from a political scientist, this does not immediately strike one as a winning hand. Coming from a German, it sounds more like he has been dusting off his copy of Mein Kampf - it is a complete non-starter. But that still doesn't make the man wrong. What it does say is that, since the very thing he says must happen cannot happen, the EU is doomed to failure. It is only a matter of time.

COMMENT THREAD


Anybody who sets his stall out to defend the freedom of the press, in the terms offered by Brendan O'Neill, now graduated to The Failygraph, has very little understanding of the concept. "The press in Britain", he writes, has been pretty much free since the 17th century".

It will, thus, "be a very sad day for open and honest and unfettered media investigation and debate if that now changes in the wake of the hacking scandal, and if politicians tiptoe into what was previously a no-go zone for them: the hearts and brains of hacks", the man adds, thus reserving his place in the land of the fairies.

The one thing we do know, though, is that the "press" – by which we mean the MSM – loves to elide the issues of its own "freedom" with that of the people's freedoms. A free and commercially viable press gives voice to voiceless readers and protects them from being exploited by the rich and powerful, says The Mail.

In fact, though, all it is interested in doing is defending own its power and privileges, and its monopoly access to the powerful, which it wrongly positions as "telling truth to power".

This day, for instance, we see British Gas hike its prices by eighteen percent, driven to a huge extent by the failure of government energy policies and the obsession with global warming. When it comes to "telling truth to power", however, the Failygraph has been leader of the pack, selling the tired, discredited concept of global warming, making itself a laughing-stock in the process.

It is this newspaper that, more than most, perpetuates the sodden, dispiriting creed of EU "reform" – helping to keep us locked into a monstrous construct that deprives us of our freedoms. Yet those who would fight it, it ignores and marginalises.

For instance, over the many years, it has made a habit of cutting references to UKIP from copy submitted by journalists, and rewriting stories to favour its Tory MEP friends. This is a newspaper that does not tell the truth to power but sucks up to its friends in power, and tells them what they want to hear.

And no single newspaper has done more to suck up to Cameron, the man whose comments on the media Brendan O'Neill now says "should freak out anyone who cares about press freedom". But it was always thus. Cameron has never been a democrat, has never been interested in any freedom but his own, and within his own circle and those he can reach, is known for ruthlessly suppressing dissent.

A newspaper at all interested in "telling truth to power", or even just to truth to its readers, would have said that. It would have exposed Cameron for the disgraceful, low-grade slime that he is. It would have exposed a lot more that is rotten in this society and the putrid ranks of the Conservative Party.

But now, having licked and slurped it way round the powerful, this paper feels insecure. Yet it only has itself to blame. Its own ineptitude and betrayals of its own principles has eroded its own power and authority, alienated its core readership and turned itself into a joke. Now it is whining that a monster it helped create is turning on it.

This is the paper that should die of shame. At least the News of the World made no pretence about where it lived – in the gutter. But the Failygraph, from being a proud, independent newspaper that was a pleasure to read, has betrayed every principle it ever had, and joined the NOTW in the gutter.

Perhaps that is why it feels so threatened. Living in the gutter and seeing one gutter-dweller wiped out, it must feel that it could so easily be next. So it whines about freedom, presumably expecting its readers to rally to the cause. But when we have newspapers – and media in general – that are actually interested in our freedom, then perhaps we might take an interest in their concerns.

In neglecting us, they have sowed the seeds of their own destruction. And all they now have to offer is humbug. They can rot – they should rot. The torch or freedom is – amid the dross – passing over to the internet and the new media. You will not find it in the self-serving pages of the MSM, which is long past its sell-by date. You need not even bother looking.

COMMENT: "BROTHEL KEEPERS" THREAD


Had Cameron any convictions or balls, writes one of our commenters, he could easily point out the monstrous leftist humbug at work here.

Not long ago the very same duo of Sad Old Trots, the Al-Beeb and the Grauniad were treating Julian Assange as if the second coming had happened, for dealing in stolen/hacked state secrets from the US whose publication put many lives in danger, from regimes that think nothing of bumping off opponents after prolonged torture first.

Yet when Murdoch's hacks are caught doing the cyber equivalent of nicking an open briefcase off the backseat of a car with all its windows left wide open in Moss side, it's as if Beelzebub was stalking the land eating our children.

Autonomous Mind had it straight away. This is all about stopping Murdoch turning Sky News into a UK Fox News and preserving the Al-Beeb/Graindiad stranglehold on political debate.

From a political perspective though, this is - or should be - mainly about the judgement of Cameron, the man masquerading as our prime minister, who chose as one of his most senior and trusted advisors a man who was arrested this morning in relation to investigations of police corruption, along with former NOTW royal editor Clive Goodman.

It should be about the judgement of a politician who is far too close to the tawdry end of the press business, and makes up his policy on a whim, without principles or intelligence, concerned more with how he looks than what he achieves.

Nevertheless, some uncomfortable questions are now being asked about the role of the media, with Nick Cohen in The Spectator accusing the managers of the British media have a pimp's morality. He has a point, although it is a bit rich coming from the Spectator which is one of the premier brothel keepers to which Cohen refers.

Andrew Gilligan also writes about the fate of the press, concerned that the effect the mob-enforced closure of the NOTW is to threaten press freedom. This man is a halfway decent journalist, but again his choice of platform weakens his case. Of those newspapers which have contributed to the loss of respect for the media – and thereby weakened it – the Failygraph must rank close to the top.

With perhaps more justice, Brendan O'Neill of Spiked-online worries that a "public institution" patronised by millions of people, has been wiped from history. This, he writes, is not as a result of some jackbooted military intrusion or intolerant executive decree or coup d’état, but under pressure from so-called liberal campaigners who ultimately felt disgust for the newspaper's "culture". History, he says, should record yesterday as a dark day for press freedom.

Actually, they all doth protest too much. I never read the NOTW and very rarely looked at its website - for very good reason. I will not miss it. It always was a crappy rag, and as the rest of the media got caught up in the race to the bottom, it simply became crap amongst crap. The media and its apologists over-rate themselves if they think that anything worthwhile has been lost - or that there is much worthwhile left to lose.

What has been gained, though, is an insight into a sleazy, low-grade nexus between politicians and the media, although it merely confirms our opinion of an industry and a calling that could hardly get lower. Long before the NOTW started on its current path to destruction, the media had become brothel-keepers and pimps, alongside their political friends whose values they share.

Standing outside the bubble, we can only wish a plague on all their houses. We could lose the whole damn lot of them and we'd be none the poorer.

COMMENT THREAD

After Huff Puff, we get Huff Poof - and not a single writer I would bother reading ... quite an achievement, considering Dale is claiming ninety of them.

And here we have a repeat of that rather interesting business model ... you work for me for nothing, and I'll get rich on the back of it. "I have signed up more than 90 people, who will help mebuild it into a major internet forum for comment and news", writes Dale. What is it about thesesuckers people that they can so easily be taken to the cleaners? And whatever happened to "... the new site is more online magazine than blog. I have no ambition for it at all"?

Perhaps they need a Yorkshireman's perspective: "If thee does owt fer nowt, do it fer thessen".

COMMENT THREAD


Of course, you say, our football teams would not tolerate the ring of stars being imposed on them, except that British Ryder club players are quite happy to be called "Europeans" and seem unfazed by the plethora of EU stars everywhere in camera-shot.

However, there is a less happy precedent when, in Berlin on 14 May 1938, England played Germany at football, winning by 6-3. Controversially, after the match, the team rendered a Nazi salute to the crowd. Given a football culture "colonized by the politics of appeasement", the British FA, acceding to wishes from the Foreign Office, had directed the players to salute the crowd. England might have won, but Germany gained a propaganda victory.

A contemporary reporter (see right – click to enlarge, and then click again) wrote of his "lasting impression" of the match, of eleven English professional footballers lined up in the centre of the field giving the Nazi salute as the band strikes up Deutschland uber Alles and theHorst Wessel. The report continued:
They were not happy about it. And they are not happy about it now. Hapgood, the captain, looks along the line. There is a shuffle, and orders being orders, hands are raised. They are lowered as one anthem finishes (I detect relief) and raised again with some diffidence.

There was a good deal of talk about It among the players before the game, and there has been a good deal since. There was no unanimity about the decision of the committee in charge that the salute should be given. Hapgood, the captain, thought standing to attention, as all British teams do on the Continent, should have been sufficient.

Another member of the team told me; "I know that when my father sees a picture of me giving the salute, he won't be too pleased."
One can record, though, that national pride was partially salvaged by the Aston Villa team, which was also playing in Germany (see report, left - click to enlarge, and click again).

The day following the England team humiliation, the Aston Villa players were booed off the field by 110,000 people at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, after they had defeated a German eleven, (ten of them were ex-Austrian internationals) by, three goals to two – and then refused to give the Nazi salute.

Jimmy Hogan, the Aston Villa manager said that the team were not anxious to give the Nazi salute but had yielded to the "suggestion" of the Football Association to do so. But the decision not to salute on the field had been spontaneous and entirely due to the bad feeling created during the game.

Needless to say, the Football Association officials who watched the game were not supportive. Their view was that all the "good work" of the previous day, when England had defeated Germany 6-3 in a friendly atmosphere, "had been completely destroyed".

Nothing changes, it seems, with the elites always just too keen to abandon national pride, all in the interests of some notional "good will", only to have the people in the front line left to pick up the pieces. Appeasement always comes from the top.

COMMENT THREAD


With a certain amount of indignant squawking, the Failygraph is reporting that "Members of the European Parliament are backing calls to fly the EU's blue flag with yellow stars at sporting events, such as Wimbledon, held in its territory and, most controversially, to have the EU emblem on national team shirts".

The proposals, to be released next week, stipulate that all national sports teams, including football, rugby, cricket and the British Olympic team, would be forced to have the EU emblem appear on their jerseys.

The idea, we have been told, has been dismissed by the Tories as "simply daft", and we are also told it is contained in a report on "The European Dimension in Sport", drafted by Spanish centre-right MEP Santiago Fisas Ayxela which will be presented to the Parliament next week.

The trigger for this is the Commission Communication on Developing the European Dimension in Sport, published in January this year, but - as always, the media forgets (or simply does not know) its history. This initiative goes back much, much further, to the European Council meeting on 25–26 June in Fontainebleau in 1984.


Then, the Heads of State or Government of the Ten (pictured) – which just happened to include Margaret Thatcher - "declared that they wanted to strengthen Europe's identity and image amongst its citizens and throughout the world", and an ad hoc working party on a People's Europe was set up.

The working party was chaired by the former Italian MEP, Pietro Adonnino, and its task was "to propose measures likely to strengthen the Community's identity and promote a Europe without internal frontiers", from which emerged the second Adonnino report, presented to the Milan Council of 29 and 30 March 1985. Embedded in that report was this section:
5.9. Sport

Since ancient times sport has been an important forum for communication among peoples. It is an important part of the lives of a large number of people within the Community. That is why it is all the more regrettable that the enjoyment of international competitive sport has been drastically marred recently by hooliganism. The Committee has therefore considered both of these important aspects below.

5.9.1. The administration of sport is predominantly the responsibility of sports associations independent of government. The Committee proposes that the sports associations be invited to encourage action where it is consistent with their responsibilities, along these lines:

(i) for certain sectors of sport, organization of European Community events such as cycle and running races through European countries;

(ii) creation of Community teams for some sports to compete against joint teams from geographical groupings with which the Community has special links;

(iii) inviting sporting teams to wear the Community emblem in addition to their national colours at major sporting events of regional or worldwide interest;

(iv) exchanges of sportsmen, athletes and trainers between the different Community countries, to be encouraged by programmes at the level of the Community and the Member States;

(v) support for sporting activities especially for particular categories of persons, such as the handicapped. Student sport activities should be organized in conjunction with the twinning of schools and towns.
From this emerged the idea of the Ryder cup, with its European team. Since then, though, the idea has stalled, but sport is now an EU competence under the Lisbon treaty. Thus, armed with new powers, the commission is now seeking to "develop" the principles set out in the 1985 Adonnino report.


This, of course is not the first organisation to use sport as a means of enhancing national identity, as we saw in 1936, when Hitler tried the same thing. Now that the "colleagues" are so keep on fostering their own version of the "European idea", it was always inevitable that they should try the same thing.

What is both salutary and fascinating, though, is to note the extended timescale. Like an elephant (in the room), the Commission never forgets, and its patience is infinite. So what was approved by Thatcher in 1985 comes back to haunt the heir to Heath in 2011, 26 years later – in a treaty he could have stopped, by chose not to.

Like as not, the EU won't get its badges this time, but the idea won't go away. It will keep pushing and probing until it gets what it wants, waiting another 26 years if need be, unless we (or events) destroy it first.

COMMENT THREAD


David Cameron has repeatedly displayed an inability to make a distinction between right and wrong, writes Peter Oborne, who continues:
The press ought to have stepped into the breach. Unfortunately, we in Fleet Street have forgotten that the ultimate vindication of journalism is not to intrude into, and destroy, private lives. Nor is it the dance around power, money and social status. It is the fight for truth and decency.
Is this the same Peter Oborne who has been so far up Cameron's fundamental (pictured, top) that all you could see was his soles? And why have they not taken Coulson apart before? He always wasa wrong 'un ... as we wrote in September 2010, when we noted of him, these are people we can do without.

COMMENT: "A WAY IN" THREAD

Before we all join the chorus of abuse against the robber agencies, says Ambrose, let us not lose sight of what is happening in the eurozone.

The EU authorities are attempting to muzzle free opinion, first by threatening Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P with vague retribution, and then by drafting restrictive laws to prevent them from publishing unwelcome messages.

It is financial repression, pure and simple. The same will be done to the press in due course. Then to you, dear reader.

COMMENT THREAD


That the News of the World is to cease publication after this Sunday is news. But in many ways, the assault on News International exemplifies everything that is wrong with the modern media and contemporary politics. For sure, the Murdoch empire is pretty loathsome, but no more or less so than the rest of the media.

To say that the media have gone outrageously OTT, and that the politicians have lost the plot, is one thing. But to make the case is another. Fortunately, Autonomous Mind has found a way in to the labyrinth, and done it.

Sadly, not only the claque but a huge tranche of the public has been caught up in the hype, misled as to its importance, while other, more important issues are drowned out.

And, for all the apparent drama of the end of the NOTW, one notes that the best-selling Sun does not produce a Sunday edition. In three to four months (or even earlier), that could change.

It is believed News International has been planning this for some time as part of a cost-cutting exercise and it has emerged that the domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago by a design company called Media Spring. The phoenix will arise, and nothing very much will have changed in the newspaper world.

However, if something as big as the NOTW title can be brought down prematurely by the hue-and-cry of the mob, one wonders if The Boy might not be similarly vulnerable. Cameron made a lot of enemies on the way up, and already some of his allies are turning on him. He could be brought down as fast as the NOTW. But, unlike the News of the World, he would not be able to reinvent himself under another name.

Should we be about to see regime change in London, though, at least someone in Tripoli might appreciate the irony.

COMMENT THREAD


In an angry piece, the colleague takes this apart. She points out, inter alia, that it is not possible to negotiate a "new relationship" between Britain and the European Union. As she rightly observes, we don't have a relationship with the EU, as such. The British government is part of the EU – the EU is part of the British government. The government would be negotiating with itself.

What is especially interesting about the Express story, though, is that it is based on an "exclusive" interview of Cameron by the Speccytwats, in which we see a man who has hitherto been keen to avoid talking about "Europe" all of a sudden doing an awful lot of talking about the subject.

Some of this may be due to the political fallout from unsavoury relationship with the so-called "Chipping Norton set", something he also needs to renegotiate, if it hasn't already gone too far.

More likely, it seems, we are seeing a continuation of a deliberate campaign to recover the eurosceptic vote. This has the hallmarks of having been planned for some time, in anticipation of the collapse of the coalition and an early general election. But, with his unhealthily close association with Murdoch and News International, Cameron may also be feeling the need to forge a new alliance with the disenfranchised rump of the Tory party.

However, no one with the slightest understanding of how the EU works could fall for the line offered by Cameron, which is so implausible as to be laughable – a direct insult to a real eurosceptic.

This begs the question – one we have addressed before, without real success. Is Cameron so stupid that he does not realise the implausibility of his own rhetoric, or does he know more than he lets on, and is deliberately setting out to pull the wool over the eyes of the electorate?

On balance, I think it is quite possible the Cameron is as stupid as he looks and behaves. I have never been impressed with his skills as a politician and the longer he stays in office, the more obvious his lack of skill becomes. And if the man thinks his honeyed words about the EU are going to cut any ice with an increasingly cynical public, then he is simply confirming his own inadequacy.

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The eurozone needs more than short-term fixes, says the great and wondrous Times. And to read the rest of this lead editorial, you either have to buy the newspaper or pay online. With that quality of writing and analysis, one is sorely tempted (not).

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They have learned nothing. They are incapable of learning.
"The existing agency for the cooperation of energy regulators, or ACER, could become the equivalent of the European Central Bank for the energy sector, said Italian Energy Regulator Commissioner Valeria Termini."
Or maybe they have learned. They can engineer a disaster, they can grab the power and they can get away with it.

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