Accountability
Tuesday 1 May 2012
Raedwald, quite rightly, has been getting worked up about the EU's €12 million contract for taxi flights in private jets.
The Commission, on the other hand, absolves itself by saying that the contract will run for up to four years and sets a total ceiling of €12m over the four years. "We don't pay anything when we do not use this service", says a commission spokesman. However, a mere €3 million a year, out of a budget of €129 billion (for this year) is chump change. And that is how there people justify such sums. As a proportion of the total spend, they are so infinitesimal that they are not worth bothering about. Against this insouciance, pity the plight of Dutch MEP Martin Ehrenhauser who has diligently beentrying to smoke out the details of these flights, supplied by Abelag Premiere Private Jet Services. Asking for the total cost of such flights in 2004-2010, how many flights made, passengers carried, destinations and distances travelled, the aircraft models and why private jets were taken instead of scheduled flights, he gets told this: Abelag Premiere Private Jet Services regularly performs services for the Commission, as for instance in 2009 for the Office for the administration and payment of individual entitlements under the heading of "Other management expenditure of Commission's policy coordination and legal advice" policy area (budget Item 25 01 02 11), involving the sum of EUR 249 460.30, or for the communication DG under the heading of "Other management expenditure of Communication Directorate-General: Headquarters" (budget Item 16 01 02 11), involving the sum of EUR 74 458.34.This, to put it quite bluntly, is taking the mick. Anyone who conceals luxury flights in private jets as "other management expenditure" is up to no good. And it makes a complete nonsense of any idea of accountability. With that sort of categorisation, and that degree of disclosures, any idea that the EU commission is under control is nonsense.
These people aren't even going through the motions.
Richard North 01/05/2012 |
Not wrong
Monday 30 April 2012
A Boeing 727 is deliberately crashed into the Mexican desert for a television show about air safety. Channel 4 senior commissioning editor, David Glover, says: "This is a ground-breaking project …".
Richard North 30/04/2012 |
A correspondent scorned?
Monday 30 April 2012
The incredibly warmist Mr Lean, who brings such a huge advertising dowry to the Failygraph that they dare not fire him, seems to have had something of a fall-out with his great hero, the Boy Dave.
Last May, we saw hints of this when Lean was asking whether the "eco warrior" has lost his way, noting that Westminster’s polluted air was "already thick with cries of betrayal" over the pledge to run the "greenest government ever". More or less, though, Lean then gave Green Dave the benefit of the doubt - until, that is, his blog snuck out last week, declaring that the much-heralded "green fightback" lay in tatters. Lean has always been known to be close to the Camerons, with his artful leak last July that Greenpeace might be naming one of its ships after its "former supporter" Samatha Cameron, and thus to lay into his hero is something of bombshell in media terms, albeit one with a delayed action fuze. We are being told by Lean, in a piece that has undergone at least one transformation since publication, that The Boy (or his office) has told a "porkie worthy of Tony Blair's untruthful operation", over a speech to the summit of energy ministers at Lancaster House, last week. So-called the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) – bringing together ministers from 23 of the world's leading economies – this was the one where The Boy doshed out a pitiful amount for CCS to developing countries. From a source at a "very senior level", Lean had originally understood that Cameron was going to give a major speech at the event, in an attempt to recapture lost green ground. And then the was "downgraded" to "a few introductory remarks" and questions from the assembled ministers, except that it wasn't downgraded according to the No. 10 spin machine. There was never going to be any speech. It is this that has had Lean complaining about "porkies", for the Great Environmental Correspondent claims that the speech had been planned since January, and confirmed several times, with preparations already made. Lean puts the "embarrassing cancellation" in part down to the growing turmoil since the budget, and the slide back into recession, but the more substantial problem is that the government's low-carbon energy policies are beginning to look threadbare. The great green fightback, planned so many months ago, now lies in tatters, he says. What emerges from all that is that there is a certain amount of creative tension between Osborne and Cameron over green issues - something that has been generally known - but hitherto The Boy and his coalition partner Nicky, has been able to rely on Lean's support in reining in Osborne's "brown tide". Mind you, as recently as last Saturday, in his Weekly column, Lean had been rowing back in his criticism of The Boy, accusing "disappointed greens" of overreacting. But now we have Queen Green herself, Caroline Lucas, urging The Boy to send a "clear message" to his party and to detractors in his government, by supporting the green agenda. What we now need is for Geoffrey Lean to send his own message, telling us whose side he is on. At the moment, he doesn't seem too sure. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 30/04/2012 |
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