Britannia Radio

Referendum: polemics from Garton Ash   Thursday 5 July 2012 In what amounts to a rehearsal of the campaign we might expect when a referendum gets up and running, the Guardian lets loose its columnist Timothy Garton Ash, one of the core europhiles who was so voluble when Blair was setting us up to join the euro. He joins the throng of "delayers", telling us "Britain needs a vote on Europe – but not now", offering a pitch that is not without logic. He asserts that the eurozone must first resolve what the EU is going to be, and – he adds – what Scotland what Britain will be. The man is unequivocal suggesting that all Britain's political parties should make a commitment in their general election manifestos to hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership during the lifetime of the next parliament. And that referendum, he says, should ask a plain question: do you want Britain to stay in the EU? Then, his case starts to unravel. This egregious europhile is another of those who believes that the government will be able to negotiate a "relationship" with the EU, following which an "in/out" referendum becomes a "defining moment", without which we will carry on "mugwumping" for ever more. But, says Garton Ash, it is "ridiculous to spend much time on the subject now". We still don't know if and how the eurozone will be saved, and hence what this Europe will be. If the eurozone collapses, all bets are off, he says, but if the eurozone is saved, it will only be by "moving forward" to add major elements of a banking, fiscal and therefore necessarily political union. That, he adds, will change the whole nature of the EU. In his scenario, there are then two sets of negotiations, one between the eurozone ins and outs, and then one between the UK and the EU but, to start that renegotiation now, as Liam Fox and many Conservative backbenchers are demanding, "would be the height of folly". Here, Garton Ash is on safer ground. He paints a satirical account of such negotiations: Your neighbour's house, a ramshackle Second Empire-style mansion, is in flames. The German housewife, whom we suspect wears the trousers, the voluble French husband, the resident Italian maestro, the Spanish … OK, that's enough ethnic stereotyping … are running around with buckets and hoses trying to put out the fire. At this critical moment, David Cameron strolls over from the solid stockbroker Tudor house next door and says: "I say, you chaps, could we just have a word about moving the garden fence? And cutting back that false acacia of yours? It's dropping leaves into one's swimming pool". Imagine the response. Merde would be the mildest. Especially since good neighbour Cameron has already been shouting helpful advice from his balcony: "Come on, you chaps, look sharp there and put your backs into it. What you need is a fiscal union. Angela will pay. Sorry we can't contribute a penny ourselves to your Emergency Fire Smothering Fund (EFSF), but we're British, you know." One need not trouble further with his convolutions, other than to say that he, The Great Man, concludes by complaining that the British debate about Europe goes around the same old issues, year in, year out, like one of those old 78rpm gramophone records with the needle stuck in a [eurosceptic] groove. He is right about the debate being stuck, but lacks self awareness. Both sides are locked into their respective grooves, both failing to understand the new reality. The first is that, if the EU goes ahead with a new treaty, there is no way that the UK can join the euro core. That necessarily confines us to a second tier. Then, post-Lisbon, the UK has no power to force negotiations as long as it remains within the EU. Article 48 saw to that. Garton Ash, and many more like him, need to read the treaty which they so favoured. Then, perhaps, we can forget the polemics and get down to business. There is a debate to be had, and the real one hasn't even started. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/07/2012

Water consumers: unrepresented and abused   Thursday 5 July 2012 There was a time when, in theory at least, MPs were the protectors of our liberties, and environmental campaigners were just that, campaigners. Now, it seems, the two groups have combined to promote agendas which has nothing to do with our interests. The agenda for today is water metering. Instead of questioning the motives of agencies which are seeking to impose these unnecessary and expensive apparatus on us, both groups in unison, are pushing the government to go further, faster. Up front, we are told is the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee, which is telling the government that it must set clear targets for increasing the number of homes with water meters "as part of efforts to better manage England's water supplies". It wants "clear, ambitious target to increase metering", pointing to the recommendation in "a key review" which called for 80 percent of households to have meters by 2020. Current plans, say the MPs, will not take effect swiftly enough given that rivers are already running dry. Thus, we have government policy which quite deliberately ensures that water supplies are not adequate, thus putting stress on the water infrastructure, which MPs are now using to demand that private houses are fitted with meters. Calling for conservation of "scarcer water resources in the face of climate change" the committee also cites "population growth", induced by the unrestrained immigration policy. Chairwoman Anne McIntosh then ignores the government's failure to ensure sufficient water storage, or the lamentable record of water companies in preventing leakage. Instead, she tells us "Installing a meter is the most effective way to improve water efficiency, providing a clear incentive for householders to minimise wastage". Then, in what is quite clearly a two-pronged attack, with a cuddly piece about water otters from Louise Gray in the Failygraph, in come the greenies. Responding to the report, Friends of the Earth nature campaigner Paul de Zylva says: "Our precious wildlife is being left high and dry because too much water is being sucked out of England's rivers. He is followed by WWF's freshwater expert, Rose Timlett. She is enlisted to say that the Efra committee's report was a "wake-up call" for the government with "exactly the right sort of proposals we want to see urgently put into action". Entirely by coincidence, we also see the face of greed, as represented by the water industry. Senior chiefs at publicly-owned Scottish Water have paid themselves £1.5 million last year including a £369,000 bonus, despite most state-employed staff having to endure a pay freeze. In all this, the people who don't get a look in are the consumers, the people who actually pay the bills. With the MPs having sold out to the greenies, while the media stand by and watch, we are left unrepresented and abused. But at least we can tell them where to put their water meters. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/07/2012