Denis MacShane: "plainly intended to deceive"
Friday 2 November 2012
MacShane, europhile extraordinaire and Labour MP for Rotherham, is looking at the prospect of being barred from his day job as an MP, for twelve months.
This follows an investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who found that MacShane had submitted 19 false invoices for his expenses, to the tune of £12,900, in a manner that was "plainly intended to deceive". An unrepentent MacShane states that he "deeply" regrets that the way he chose to be reimbursed for costs related to his work in Europe and in combating anti-semitism, including being the Prime Minister's personal envoy, has been judged so harshly". I suppose this is exactly the sort of thing one should expect from a deeply committed europhile. After all, anyone who believes in the EU can also convince themselves that theft in the name of personal enrichment is perfectly legitimate. After all, there is little difference between the EU and expenses fraud. The only question now, is whether the Plod are going to get involved, or are they too busy smoking out Auntie BBC's nonces to have time to deal with a bent MP? COMMENT THREAD Richard North 02/11/2012 |
Energy: who dares utter the B-word?
Friday 2 November 2012
 They can go anywhere an inspector or a minister decides. Nowhere in Whitehall guidance on turbines is there any reference to natural or visual beauty. This is no surprise to a sector now drunk on public subsidy, but even its opponents feel they must avoid any reference to aesthetics. They talk of wind power's cost and intermittency, its abuse of peat and extravagance of imported minerals, its forcing poor energy users to cross-subsidise rich landowners.He is right to to make this point, as the coalition's plan for onshore turbines, increasing them from some 3,000 today to 7,000-plus by the end of the decade constitutes, he says, is "nothing less than the mass industrialisation of the landscape". However, much as I like Simon Jenkins, he really is the classic "above–the-liner", displaying the characteristic tendency to assume that a subject doesn't exist until he has thought about it, and then written his piece. Thus he frames his argument in terms of who dares to utter the B-word in the wind turbine debate, as if no-one had thought of so doing. But the answer is a lot of people for a long time. He might, for instance, find it educative to refer to the Landscape Institute Scotland, not least for its reference to the Council of Europe's European Landscape Convention (ELC), ratified by the UK government on 21 November 2006. The Convention's aims are "to promote protection, management and planning of all landscapes, including natural, managed, urban and pen-urban areas, and special, everyday and also degraded landscape". It aims, we are told, to organise European co-operation on landscape issues. Perversely, the rush to wind could be in breach of the Convention, and it precisely because of that possibility that an inquiry is being carried out by the Scottish Parliament. And, in England and Wales, a departmental inquiry within Defra has already been mooted. Furthermore, it is not only in the context of wind turbines that the B-word has been uttered. In my book, Death of British Argiculture, published in 2001, I wrote about the value of landscape beauty as a commodity. There can be no dispute, I wrote: … that a well-managed countryside is a real and tangible asset, accessible to the whole community – urban and rural. Its beauty - where this has survived – adds, to use an old-fashioned phrase, to the gaiety of life, providing a backdrop for recreation, sport and other country pursuits which are regarded as essential antidotes to the pressures of urban life. Furthermore, it sustains an important and growing recreation and tourism industry, attracting significant foreign and domestic earnings which, according to the English Tourist Council, amounts to some £12 billion a year.I thus argued that the countryside has an amenity value which delivers more income to the nation in the form of tourism than the food it produces, albeit that the amenity is a by-product of food production. What was needed, therefore, was a system which recognised the "amenity value" of farming and its contribution to rural tourism, which meant devising mechanisms for paying for this " public good". Addressing, CAP subsidies, I argued that production (and environmental) support should cease. Instead, agricultural payments should be made on the basis of the contribution of farms to the amenity value of the countryside, to compensate for the "market failure". There was no free market mechanism for paying farmers to maintain a visually attractive countryside, yet that countryside had real and measurable economic value. By 2004, such a scheme was, to my knowledge, being mooted as a UK policy option, although it fell foul of EU law and could not be progressed. Nevertheless, had it been adopted, this would have massively tilted the balance of utility against windfarming. Farmers who stood to gain from renting land to developers would lose much more from being stripped of their amenity payments. Putting a cash value on beauty would also change dramatically the argument on wind energy, as the adverse effect of turbines on the countryside could be calculated as a direct cost, and factored into any cost-benefit analysis. This may yet happen, as one or more inquiries progress, and Mr Jenkins, who is researching a book on English landscape, could undoubtedly provide some useful input. National treasure though be may be, however, one does wish he would not pretend that he is the only toiler in the vineyard. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 02/11/2012 |
EU politics: misreading the signs
Friday 2 November 2012
 This is based on the BBC's political programme, "Question Time" - which only hardened masochists now watch – having had David Miliband break off from his wealth-creation activities to answer a few questions about the Party line. "What you have got", says our David, "is a repositioning in the Labour Party - not to go from being pro-Europe to anti-Europe but to take on this idea that to be pro-European you are always for more spending". He then adds: "We are not always for more spending. We are for a more effective European Union". Thus you can see that the two sides, Tory and Labour are lining up to give voters a real choice. Mr Cameron's Party wants spending restraint in the EU, and Mr Miliband's Party wants a "more effective European Union". But there is a more subtle issue issue here – one which the BBC could hardly have picked up, as an organisation which struggles to tell the difference between "Europe" and the "European Union". In fact, what we are seeing is the classic convergence of the political classes, where there is nothing between them on the substantive issues, reinforcing my contention that we no longer have left-right politics but above the line and below. The split is no longer vertical but horizontal. This is certainly the case with Miliband, a Labour politician who "earned" £416,000 last year from his outside interests, on top of his £66,000 salary as an MP, turning in a lamentable performance in Parliament, all on top of the £170,000 expenses, the second-highest claim for MPs in the North East and Cumbria. The convergence on "Europe", however, serves a fundamental need for the Westminster parties. None of them want to fight a battle over the European Union, which might have the public better understanding the issues. Thus, as the Conservatives move very slightly on the issue, the Labour Party has to realign its own policies, to stay in step. This is exactly what is going to happen over the referendum. At some time prior to the general election, Mr Cameron is going to make a promise of sorts, and this is going to be matched shortly thereafter by Labour, as the Party keeps in step - so avoiding any possibility of debate over the issue. Thus, at a political level in Westminster, there is only one real policy – to stay in the EU. Outside Westminster and the politico-media bubble, the below-the-line policy is withdrawal. And that is why the BBC will never notice. Its people are so far out of touch with the reality that they are incapable of understanding what is going on. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 02/11/2012 |
EU politics: Europe for the Europeans
Thursday 1 November 2012
I happened on this cutting recently (above), as one does, from the Catholic Herald archives. It is dated 1 November 1940 – exactly 72 years ago to the day … but sort of relevant in the light ofyesterday's debate.
In terms of timing, the Catholic Herald article comes in the wake of the Italian invasion of Greece, whence in the name of "European Solidarity", we are told that the primary aim of the Axis Powers consists not in conquering the whole British Empire east of Suez piece by piece, "which is impossible". The real aim - understood throughout the continent - "is to win strategic victories and seize strategic points such as Egypt and Gibraltar, and possibly Iraq". This, though, is merely “the stage for setting up a grand council of European solidarity to force peace on Great Britain”. The whole tone of Axis propaganda, says the paper, is now moving along these lines of "Europe for the Europeans without British interference". Following in the footsteps of Witterings from Witney, who has already trawled Hansard, and offered his views on the debate, I must do likewise and refer to the remarks of Mark Hendrick, Labour MP for Preston. A europhile to the hind teeth, he has recently been to Berlin and, fortified with that experience, expresses his fears that Mr Cameron "will isolate himself even more" if he attempts to veto the EU budget settlement. This actually tends to confirm that which we have been saying for months, that the mood amongst the "colleagues" is of some antagonism towards the UK, brooking no interference in their move towards further integration. One might even say that the policy is now moving along these lines of "Europe for the Europeans without British interference". What comes round goes round. Last time, though, we ended up (with a little help from the United States), invading Europe and joining the Common Market (with a little help from the United States). With George Osborne saying: "We'll only do a deal if it's good for Britain", what are we going to do this time? Certainly, we are not going to take Europe by storm this time - not with Nick Clegg ridiculing David Cameron's plan for repatriating powers as a "false promise wrapped in a Union Jack", dismissing it as "nonsensical" and "wishful thinking". Perhaps when the "colleagues" start saying openly again "Europe for the Europeans", Mr Cameron will take the hint and put in his papers for an Article 50 withdrawal. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 01/11/2012 |
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