Crisis fatigue - by Richard... Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Crisis fatigue - by Richard... Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Constitutional issues relating to the eurozone bailout have again been raised by the German constitutional court in Karlsruhe.

Reuters is reporting that the court has ruled that a nine-member parliamentary panel set up to approve urgent action on the European Financial Stability Facility was "in large part" unconstitutional, demanding that decisions of the type made by the panel should be referred to the 620-strong Bundestag or the 41-member budget committee.

Similar issues were raised in November last year, and while these rulings are going to hamper Merkel's ability to railroad changes through the system, and one can only speculate as to whether this will strengthen the administration's determination to curtail the powers of the constitutional court.

However, this particular event many only be of short-term relevance, as the EFSF is to be replaced by the European Stability Mechanism in July, and the game may then have to start all over again.

No sooner does one gets to grips with one issue, though, another and then yet another crops up, in a never-ending kaleidoscope of activity which defied understanding. Here, the crise du jour seemed earlier to be the downgrading of Greece's credit rating to "selective default", but even that has had less impact than might at first have been expected.

Averting catastrophe is the ECB, which is leaning on the national central banks to provide "emergency liquidity assistance" (ELA), until the €35 billion-worth of support from the EFSF can be mobilised.

Meanwhile, a eurogroup summit scheduled for Friday has been cancelled, apparently at the behest of Germany, which is unwilling to discuss the single agenda item – increasing the funding for the so-called "firewall" of the ESM.

The European Council, set for Thursday and Friday, is nevertheless going to go ahead, and there will doubtless be discussions in les couloirs, triggering much media speculation.

However, it seems to me, with even ZeroHedge somewhat at sea, we are back in a trench warfare situation, where nothing much is expected to happen in the foreseeable future. The time is not yet right for another major crisis – we are suffering from crisis fatigue and need a break.

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Unsustainable combustion - by Richard...

Although the Daily Mail does the Tibury power plant fire big, the one thing it does not mention is spontaneous combustion.

Opened in 1969, Tilbury previously operated as a coal-fired power station but has been converted to generate power from 100 percent sustainable biomass until its scheduled closure at the end of 2015. Now on fire, the seat was reported to be 4-6,000 tons of biomass in a wood pellet hopper high up in the power station building.

It is left to Bloomberg to raise the prospect of spontaneous combustion, as this is the most likely cause of the fire. The agency cites Claire Curry, a bioenergy analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. She says: "If biomass is stored in large volumes, with little aeration, it is very likely to catch fire as it can get very hot. Normally biomass plants will pass streams of cool air through the biomass to avoid fires happening".

So hazardous are large quantities of stored biomass that it is a reasonable proposition to argue that no large plant is likely to run through to its end of expected life without a serious fire.

Yet the UK is seeking to get 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, of which DECC estimates as much as half of that may be generated from biomass. And so popular is the option that burning of wood and wood waste for energy in the UK rose eight percent to 648,000 tons of oil equivalent in 2010 from 598,000 tons in 2009.

The trouble is though that, as the Tilbury fire has demonstrated, the process is anything but sustainable. It seems we have a case here of unsustainable combustion, and yet another black mark for the greenies.

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No surprise then - by Richard... Monday, February 27, 2012

The Bundestag has overwhelmingly endorsed the second Greek bailout, 496 to 90, despite growing pressure from voters and the media, while Merkel admits there is no guarantee that it will work. "Europe will fail if the euro fails. Europe wins if it wins the euro", she warns.

This comes as absolutely no surprise. Despite some predictions to the contrary, it is too early yet to cut Greece adrift. Wait for the fall.

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Reynolds News - by Richard...

I spent some time at Bradford University this afternoon, reading copies of Reynolds News from 1940. This important newspaper was, at the time, owned by the Co-operative Society, and reflected a strand of left-wing thought which is rarely given much of an airing today.

One of the reasons it has been airbrushed out of history is that there are only two complete collections in the country (and, therefore, the world). One is in Hendon, and the other in Bradford, on my doorstep. Neither collection has been indexed or microfilmed, and the papers can only be viewed by appointment, under supervision.

Typically, historians rely on the newspaper of record, The Times, and then tend only to look at the headlines on the main news page. Although that newspaper didn't then have a front page as such (it was used for adverts), I call this "front-page-itis", a disease that gives a very limited, establishment view of the world. Those who then also rely on official records thus tend to write establishment histories, which present an extremely distorted account of the battle.

By contrast, Reynolds News, with the slogan, "Government of the People, by the People, for the People" is a treasure house, a superb representation of left-wing views. As such, it conveys its own distortions but is probably more representative of what the bulk of people were thinking - and hugely influential as well. Time and time again, the paper has set the agenda, invoking responses in the War Cabinet and other newspapers.

Especially for Witterings from Witney, we have an extract from a delightful opinion piece by professor A Berriedale Keith (a well-known constitutional lawyer of his time), written on 21 July 1940. This column was on the theme, "Battle for Ideas", headlined, "Let Public Opinion Have its Say".

The Prof was writing about the utility of opinion polls (then very novel), telling us that, of MPs: "... we have long outlived the idea that at an electoral contest we confer unlimited authority on the member we elect", then going on to say that: "It is the business of an MP to keep in touch with public opinion, and not humbly to obey the bidding of the whips".

This, and other such delights, I shall feed into an updated version of this blog, the detail standing to confirm and strengthen the thesis offered in the book, that the Battle of Britain was part of the People's War, and won by the fortitude of the people as a whole.

The paper defined the battle on 15 September 1940, seven days into the Blitz of London - on which anniversary we now celebrate Battle of Britain Day: "Göring's 'blitzkrieg' on London", it said, "has a dual object: first to smash communications and disorganise public services in the Capital, and second to confront the Government with the problem of a demoralised and panic-stricken population".

In this, the paper wrote, Göring failed, then declaring: "The story of the bombardment of London is the story of the people's success", adding: "What stands out is the heroism and quickness and common humanity of the ordinary people ...".

This takes nothing from the bravery of the RAF pilots, and changes nothing in history - only our perception of it. The establishment has claimed the victory for its favoured elite, but it was the people's victory as well, in a continuous battle that ended not in October 1940 but went on until the following May 1941.