Booker: Yeo wants help to cash in on China
Sunday 2 September 2012
Last week, it was Gummer's turn for the spotlight. Today, Booker takes a similar jaundiced look at Tim Yeo and his political and business interests.
This is the man who is chairman of the Commons select committee on energy and climate change. Last Tuesday, Booker tells us, Yeo rose to the top of the news agenda by demanding to know whether David Cameron was going to be "a man or a mouse" in handling the issue of a third runway at Heathrow.Yeo cited as his main reason for supporting this cause that it would help British businesses to open up more trade links with China. But it was then pointed out that a company of which he is chairman,TMO Renewables (which last year paid him £60,000, at up to £1,000 an hour), has just signed a memorandum of understanding with the largest farming corporation in China to supply it with feedstocks for biofuels. TMO's latest annual report states that doing business with China has become a "key focus" of its activities. What everyone missed, however, was that the following day Yeo's committee published a major report, "Low carbon growth links with China", urging that "assisting China in low-carbon development should be at the heart of Government plans to tackle climate change and secure high-value business opportunities for UK firms". The report was issued in the name of the committee, but most of the long press release that accompanied it consisted of three separate statements calling on ministers to promote those business opportunities, each prominently headed with the name of Yeo. Normally when he pronounces on such matters, Yeo declares his financial interest in various firms involved in "renewables" (which last year paid him more than £200,000 on top of his parliamentary salary of £80,000). When he published this new report, however, urging ministers to assist British firms in doing "low carbon" business in China, he omitted to mention that one particular firm he had in mind was that of which he is chairman. Whether it is right for the chairman of a supposedly independent group of MPs to have such close financial ties to an industry standing to benefit from the actions of the Government they are supposedly calling to account is a matter for legitimate public concern. Perhaps even more so is the question of whether this same committee should, next Wednesday, be interviewing John Gummer to decide whether Cameron was right to ask him to become chairman of the hugely influential, and also supposedly independent, Committee on Climate Change. One of the biggest issues on which this committee will be advising the government is a proposal for a £30 billion Severn barrage (which will contribute, on average, a mere 1.43 gigawatts of electricity to our EU renewables target). As Booker reported last week, one of the directors of the tiny company behind this hugely costly scheme was, until two weeks ago, Gummer. If there is any question of a conflict of interest between Yeo's own financial and political concerns, the same applies in spades to Gummer, Booker concludes. We must wonder whether it is proper for a committee headed by one of these men to confirm the appointment of the other. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 02/09/2012 |
Eurocrash: crisis costs Germany €390 billion
Saturday 1 September 2012
 This brings Germany's current indebtedness to €2.049 trillion, growing by €1,335 a second, equating to about €25,000 for every man, woman and child in Germany. By comparison, the much-abused citizens of the UK have been lumbered with a mere €1.32 trillion debt (not counting the extras), which works out about €20,000 for every man woman and child – relative prosperity when measured against the Germans.
One can quite see why the Huns are so nervous about carrying the debt for the whole of the eurozone – they have enough of their own already.
COMMENT THREAD Richard North 01/09/2012 |
Eurocrash: another spat as crisis slides to disaster
Saturday 1 September 2012
There was a considerable volume of coverage on the Weidmann-Draghi spat yesterday, with indications that it was beginning to reflect adversely on Merkel – Handelsblatt was running a storyheadlined: "Criticism of Merkel's zigzagging".
This newspaper is also of the view that Weidmann is fighting a losing battle although, apart from the news that the Bundesbank president was thinking of resigning over ECB bond purchases, there seems very little new material to fan the flames of the controversy.Draghi himself is getting some good press and some bad, the latter from Die Welt asserting that the man is "playing with fire", and repeating the mistakes of his past, when he was head of the Banca d'Italia. But if it is spats you are after, there is a serious conflict developing between the German government and the EU commission over plans for banking supervision. The commission wants the ECB to control all the banks in the eurozone - including German savings banks – some 6,000 in all. This cropped up most recently on 18 August but has re-emerged in an interview with commissioner Michael Barnier. But, with the legislative package to be formally presented on 11 September, Schäuble is up in armsat the power grab, rejecting any idea that the ECB should supervise anything other than the largest of banks. The banks themselves oppose the proposal and they are supported by professor Christoph Kaserer, who warns that small banks will be unnecessarily overloaded with bureaucracy. To absolutely no one's surprise, however, the commission is unmoved by the opposition, grandly declaring – with unconscious irony - that unified supervision is "necessary for the credibility of the system". It argues that the current supervisory system is not working effectively, and has plans to launch an agency to handle ailing banks. This might be too late for Spain though. Spaniards are deserting their banks in their droves, with €219.8 billion having been withdrawn in the first six months of the year. For the whole of 2011, only €68.3 billion left Spain. Capital flight on this scale is unprecedented in recent times, and may yet force the hands of the politicians. They cannot allow a haemorrhage on this scale to continue, especially as Spanish bond yields a back on their way up to seven percent again. While the "colleagues" are plotting their power grab, crisis is inexorably sliding towards disaster. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 01/09/2012 |
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