Media: plumbing the depths
Monday 4 February 2013
 Actually, I think this is the curse of metric again. The word "metres" seems to have the effect of switching off that part of the brain that records measurement, so that numbers become totally meaningless. Or perhaps it was because the skeleton had its feet missing, so they had to replace them with metres. Interestingly, the Mail also runs a piece by the same author (Damien Gayle) about finding signs of life buried beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet. The depth is put at "HALF A MILE" (in caps), and is instantly recognisable. If the other story had had Richard III buried half a mile deep (close), Gayle would instantly have seen it to have been nonsense. And, amusingly, in the Antarctic piece, he talks about water being blasted in at "fifty gallons a minute" – equivalent to 800 glasses of water. Clearly, he needs to be sent to a re-education camp. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/02/2013 |
Huhne pleads guilty
Monday 4 February 2013
Presumably, they'll bang him up, now that he is a self-admitted liar. The maximum sentence for perverting the course of justice is life imprisonment, which is not long enough for this man. But then, this offence does not necessarily mean that the offender does time. A suspended sentence and community service is a possibility. But at least he's resigned from parliament. I wonder which euro-consultancy he'll get.
And now we have a "louse and flea" by-election.
Richard North 04/02/2013 |
EU politics: simply not true
Monday 4 February 2013
 However, this is a carry-over story from last week, when Andrew Gilligan wrongly asserted that the European Parliament agriculture committee had "passed" reform provisions for the CAP – one of which was the restoration of tobacco subsidies. This latter claim is being attributed to Owen Paterson, who is concerned that there is pressure in the Council of Ministers to reinstate production subsidies, reversing the so-called MacSharry reforms. He fears that, with the European Parliament offers amendments to like effect, a combination of Parliament and Council could overturn the Commission's proposals, and set the CAP back two decades. He thus condemns the amendments as "disappointing, retrograde, backward-looking" and in some respects "ludicrous", but it is a very far cry from there, to claim, as Malnick and Mendick have done this week, that MEPs have "voted to amend changes in the Common Agricultural Policy". To claim this is simply wrong, but that two weeks running the Sunday Telegraph has published exactly the same erroneous claim tells you a great deal about its journalists, their research capabilities and their concern for the truth. What the journalists have done is mistake the procedural role of the European Parliament agricultural committee, where on behalf of the Conference of Presidents, it has approved the tabling of amendments to be considered and voted on by the full Parliament, in plenary session – probably some time in March. There is a huge difference between this procedural function and the approval process. The committee itself has no powers to approve or reject amendments tabled. It simply acts as a processing body, to present them to the Plenary for a full vote. It is the full parliament that then approves or otherwise the amendments and, as we pointed out last week, there are still many hurdles before any amendment becomes policy. In fact, most amendments are rejected at the first reading. As here, they are usually grandstanding by MEPs for domestic purposes, to show their constituents that they have been active on their behalf. Each amendment is worth a press release, with the hope of favourable headlines back home. With these proposals, though, there is an additional hurdle, the EU budget. With agreement stillevading EU leaders, that is a considerable problem. If the funding is not there, the entire proposals will have to be withdrawn and rewritten by the European Commission. That deal has to be reached by Thursday, so we will know pretty soon whether there is another crisis in the offing. In the meantime, the Sunday Telegraph insists on parading its ignorance, adding to its errors with aneditorial telling us that it is "puzzling" that "the EU's representatives should even be considering reintroducing financial support for the growing of tobacco, which was withdrawn in 2004". Bizarrely, the editorial ventures that, "It is possible that the MEPs who voted in favour of the amendment were not fully aware of what they were doing", when in fact no MEPs have yet had an opportunity to vote on the amendment. The people who are not aware of what they are doing, it seems, are Telegraph journalists. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/02/2013 |
EU politics: power equates to size
Monday 4 February 2013
The rationale for Europe is not peace … it is about power, says Tony Blair, who equates power with size of population.
You would think, after all this time, this man would know something about the nature of power and its distribution. But, unless he is being deliberately disingenuous (which is quite possible), he clearly has learned very little from his experience as prime minister.
Richard North 04/02/2013 |
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