VERITAS LONDON ASSEMBLY

What would ID cards have done?

2005-08-03T19:01:00.000+01:00

It was, as we all knew, merely a matter of time before politicians, anxious to find another reason for ID cards, would start assuring us that July in London would have been very different, indeed, if we all had little plastic cards as internal passports.

In the first burst of candour, back around July 7 or 8, Charles Clarke admitted that ID cards could not have stopped the bomb attacks. When you think about it, that is a very reasonable statement. After all, it is unlikely that we can possibly have gauleiters standing at every bus stop and at every door of every tube train, checking people’s papieren.

In any case the four suicide bombers who blew themselves and numerous other people up on July 7 would have had impeccable papieren, having been born and bred in this country.

Then, presumably, ministers remembered that they have to push their insane plan for those ID cards. First we had Geoff Hoon telling the world that if there had been ID cards, Hussain Osman would not have managed to escape to Rome, where he was successfully picked up by the Italian police after a bit of spectacular collaboration between the two forces and not a eurocop in sight.

Mr Hoon used an unfortunate turn or phrase, lauding the effectiveness of ID cards, telling us all that the government needs to know who is in the UK at any time. Well, errm, no, Mr Hoon, there seems no particular reason for the government to know any such thing. In a free country we must all be able to come and go as we please.

The answer is, obviously, to keep a closer look on those organizations and, even, individuals who might disturb the Queen’s peace and, indeed, blow up many of Her Majesty’s subjects. But that would get us into the difficult terrain of dealing with Islamic terrorism, a subject this government tries to avoid.

As for whether an ID card would have prevented Hussain Osman’s departure from these shores, that does not stand up to scrutiny. After all, he presumably showed his passport as he boarded the Eurostar train and what is a passport but an ID? If that was not checked, what guarantee is there that his plastic identification tag would have been.

It is hard to blame the officials at Waterloo if all they had was the CCTV picture for reference. I looked at all those four pictures at one of the tube stations and decided that they looked like hundreds of young men one might see in London at any time.

The police, one assumes, had other information and may well have circulated all border control officers with it. If so, clearly not much attention was paid to it. ID cards is hardly the answer in the circumstances.

Now we have Hazel Blears, who has been left in charge of the Home Office, in Charles Clarke’s unavoidable absence on an urgent matter of a family holiday and who refuses to accept that Muslim young men are more likely to be transport bombers than Home Counties ladies who are shopping at Peter Jones, telling us that ID cards would have prevented the bomb attacks.

Fortunately for her reputation as somebody who has a modicum of intelligence, she did not explain how that could have happened. We would all, however, like to know what Ms Blears thinks ID cards could have done to stop four young men from strapping backpacks full of explosives to themselves and then activating these at a certain moment.

Grumbling in the ranks

2005-07-31T12:36:00.000+01:00

The European journalists are not happy. This has little to do with their colleagues being persecuted in various countries, though there is a little stirring about Romania going on.

The European Federation of Journalists is protesting at the closure of a couple of Portuguese newspapers owned by a Spanish syndicate, apparently for purely commercial reasons.

Aidan White, General Secretary of the EFJ opined that

“It is vitally important to convince the management that these journals have a future and that they should invest in them. What is at stake is not just a matter of profit and loss; there are questions of culture, democracy and pluralism that must also be addressed.”

Well, I don’t know. Profit and loss do come into the newspaper business somewhere and, short of government subsidies there seems no solution to that. Government subsidy, on the other hand, as even the European Federation of Journalists must know, involves government control. Do they really want that?

But they do have a gripe against the British presidency as well. Apparently, each presidency sets its own rules for accreditation to various events, even though, as Mr White points out:

“Journalists already have accreditation at national and European level and this should be respected throughout the European Union.”

The British rules seem particularly bizarre. In order to have accreditation to the meeting of foreign ministers in Newport in early September, journalists, who have and are covering other events, have to fill in a completely separate form, which asks, among other essential pieces of information, the names of their parents. Understandably, the journalists are balking at this.

Whether they will balk far enough not to go to Newport (after all, they are not likely, on past record to find out what is really agreed), remains to be seen. They should count themselves lucky they do not have to answer questions in English and in Welsh.

Aidan White also said:

“If the European Union wants to connect properly with citizens it must at the very least get its approach to working journalists right and not oblige them to follow rules that are bizarre and inexplicable.”

Well yes, one of the aims the Commission keeps setting in its never ending battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Europe is to work closely with journalists. On the other hand, finding out what it is like to have to follow rules that are bizarre and inexplicable is surely good for the hacks. This will give them a much better understanding of the European project.

Berlusconi hits out at "Prodi's euro"

2005-07-28T16:21:00.000+01:00

Things are hotting up in the Italian electoral campaign. Nothing is sacred any more, not even the euro.

Prime Minister Berlusconi announced to all and sundry that the euro, in his opinion, “screwed everybody”. By everybody he meant Italy, as his main complaint is that his chief rival, Romano Prodi, leader of the soft-left coalition, had negotiated bad terms for the country.

“There are categories of Italians which face difficulties because of the incursion of Prodi's euro,” – Berlusconi explained helpfully.

This is not the first serious criticism of the euro and its effects on the Italian and European economy. Back in June the Northern League demanded that Italy start looking at ways of leaving the currency but Berlusconi responded by stating firmly that it was not in Italy’s interest to do so.

The Northern League wants a referendum on the subject conjointly with next year’s elections but it seems unlikely that the Prime Minister will agree to anything like that.

Berlusconi has, in the past, blamed the euro for Italy’s economic problems and this particular statement seems more of a blast at Prodi than at the single currency. Still, it is another straw in the wind.

The comment did drive the euro down a bit but the biggest effect at the moment is the relative strength of the dollar.

Asked about Berlusconi’s statement, Commission spokesman, Michael Mann said at the daily press conference.

“We think the euro has not caused those problems and is an extremely good thing for Europe.”

While we could not possibly agree with the last part of that statement, we have to reiterate our previous comments on the subject. The euro has not, in itself, caused the problems, which lie deep in the structure of most European economies. On the other hand, having interest rates set for all the eurozone members does not help matters.

The biggest issue is psychological. The euro was going to solve the problems not exacerbate them. Even if it simply left things as they are, it would be perceived as a very bad thing as it did not produce the effect it was supposed to.

Of course, given that it was always a political project, another step on the path to European integration, its economic benefits could not be but minimal at best (and the best has not happened).

The problem for the euro-elite that drives the project is the time gap. Having promised economic benefits they have to point to them and there are none to point to. But the political integration that would have made the destruction of the single currency an impossibility is not happening nearly fast enough. Somewhere in that gap, the project might disintegrate and the people escape.

Those British values in full - 2

2005-07-27T21:46:00.000+01:00

Britain, and England in particular, have been in the fortunate position throughout large swathes of history of not having to define her identity. You simply knew what it was to be British (or English, often interchangeable to the great fury of the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish).

When there were definitions, they tended to be contradictory, as Orwell noted so perceptibly in The Lion and the Unicorn”. The British are peace loving and domesticated, yet adventurous, warlike and conquerors of the greatest empire in the world.

They are practical and indifferent to abstract ideas yet almost all modern political philosophy was produced in England and Scotland. (In fact, one could argue that the tragedy of the twentieth century was that German political ideas overtook British ones, but that is for another time.)

The British are tolerant of other people but have historically disdained all habits but their own and have cheerfully spread their own ideas to far corners of the world. (Now, of course, they complain that Americans do the same in a far less intrusive fashion.)

The English invented the idea of common law, the sense of property and a civilian police force, yet for centuries England was acknowledged to be effectively ungovernable outside certain areas.

The British are individualistic and eccentric yet love the idea of order and similarity.

One can go on for ever and, indeed, on could argue that most nations hold in themselves very similar contradictions.

The definition of Britishness or Englishness has always been difficult. Shakespeare did a good job at a time when the country was going through various severe crises. Kipling, especially in his Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies stories and poems, created a certain image of Englishness, one that he struggled to define in other works as well.

Kipling was, in many ways, an outsider in England and it is often outsiders who pay more attention to the definitions of the society that has adopted them. I recall having an extremely interesting conversation at the IEA with Lawrence Hayek and a Dutch gentleman. The three of us had been born in other countries and come to Britain at various times of our lives and various periods of its history.

The two things we agreed on were that England was the most wonderful country in the world and that the English did not appreciate it. Buchan, too, would have supported that conclusion.

Consider that most English of all English characters, Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel. He was created by a Hungarian writer, Emmuska Orczy. The film of the book was scripted Lajos Biró, a Hungarian, produced and directed by Alexander Korda (need I say what nationality he was) and acted by Leslie Howard, who had been born in England to Hungarian parents.

The film came out in 1934 and was seen as a jolly adventure story. During the war (when Howard worked hard for the British cause and was killed when a plane he was travelling in was shot down by the Luftwaffe) there was something of an attempt to define Englishness.

It was easy to say what Britain was fighting against but what was it fighting for? The two directors who worked hardest to answer that question were Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger, the latter being, yes, you’ve guessed it, a Hungarian who, according to one website

“In 1938, [he] joined the Hungarian coterie of Alexander Korda, and like his compatriots he had much to invest in the dream of England as an outpost against tyranny and beacon of decency in a Europe turning to fascism.”

What he invested was his imprint on films like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (though, as a matter of fact, I understand why Churchill wanted to ban it), Canterbury Tale, I know where I’m going (this one about Scotland) and various others.

The attempt to define Britishness was not always successful but the films are consistently interesting.

It seems we have no useful Hungarians around at the moment. So, it is left to the Daily Telegraph to produce a list of ten (why not twelve?) elements of what the core British values are.

One cannot help admiring the attempt (even if The Scarlet Pimpernel is probably more fun) especially as it is wonderfully free of the sort of mawkishness that seemed to overwhelm the British media in the wake of the London bombs.

“Many countries try to codify their values in law. Some oblige their citizens to speak the national language; others make it a criminal offence to show disrespect to the flag. But statutory patriotism is an intrinsically un-British notion. We prefer simply to set out, in general terms, the non-negotiable components of our identity - the qualities of the citizenship that Muktar Said
Ibrahim [one of the bombers of July 21] applied for.”

The ten components are :

The Rule of Law
The Sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament
The pluralist state
Personal freedom
Private property
Institutions (non-statutory)
The family
History
The English-speaking world
The British character

Very nice, too, and about as hard to assess as they were in Orwell’s day. The British character is impossible to define as everyone will do so differently. I have been told by eurosceptics that unlike those nasty Europeans, all the British ever wanted to do was to be left alone.

No doubt, the greatest empire in history was created by people wanting to be left alone. And what of the fact, as the old song had it, “every war we fought we won”? None of those wars were on British soil.

Furthermore, time was the British character was defined as a “can-do” one. Would that sill be true now, I wonder.

The English-speaking world has, of course, grown out of England and her ideas. What people talk of as the Anglosphere is that: freedom, justice, rule of law and other issues: small government, enterprise, individualism. How much of that has survived successive twentieth century governments, not to mention the great European project?

As one gets to the more specific values, one sees a wish-list. I wish this were still true (if it ever was, of course).

No one is above the law? Well, I am not sure that is true about this government in itself and in the ideology of group politics. As I said in my previous posting, Cherie Blair QC would have been horrified if the sort of “rights” she thinks are essential to Muslim girls were applied to Anglican ones.

That applies to the third item as well.

But, of course, the one that is particularly ridiculous is item number 2. Really the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph should know better. “The Lords, the Commons and the monarch” have not constituted “the supreme authority in the land” for decades. There is the small matter of the European Communities Act 1972 and ECJ judgements.

Personal freedom? Private property? Tell that to the people who can no longer own or sell handguns or run well regulated clubs; or to the foxhunters; or to the businessmen whose scales were confiscated because they disobeyed the diktats of the metric regulators; or to the farmers whose animals were slaughtered even though there was no sigh of foot and mouth disease anywhere near them.

It is not that I object to any of those core values. Far from it, though I would like to see some of them a little better defined. And, naturally, I agree wholeheartedly with number 8, history. The teaching of history is absolutely essential. The advantage of British history is that through its imperial aspect (warts and all but good things and all, too) they can incorporate and provide a “story” for all those who come to live here.

It is just that until we deal with our problems they will remain a wish-list. England is, of course, in many ways an idea and it is the idea that those who come here often subscribe to. But the idea has been tarnished and there is no point in providing definitions until it is bright and shining again.

And, one has to sympathize with the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph. How many of them are Hungarians? In the circumstances their effort is very creditable.

Those British values in full - 1

2005-07-27T20:44:00.000+01:00

It is always a joy to have Cherie Booth QC a.k.a. Mrs Blair, the Prime Minister’s wife, in the news. Normally, they keep her locked up to prevent her from spreading her own particular brand of foot and mouth disease. (Every time she opens her mouth she puts her foot in it.)

She has been holding forth about civil liberties and warning the government not to undermine our civil liberties in its pursuit of the terrorists. Let us get away from the inevitable MSM story – PM’s wife opposes government – and the immediate reaction to her statement – does she not want to fight terrorism, then – and look at why exactly the government has seen no choice but to pass endless legislation that constrains all our liberties.

One reason is that Mr Blair, Ms Booth’s husband, is something of a control freak and does not like the idea of liberties at all.

His party, in either its old or its new version has never been much of a friend to liberty, either. In its new version it has no knowledge of British history and, therefore, cannot understand how the concept of liberty, civil or otherwise, can be part of it.

But in practical terms, the most immediate reason is the fact that since the introduction of the Human Rights Act, a contentious piece of legislation and one that has given Ms Booth QC a good deal of highly paid work, it has been impossible to do what needs to be done: target, isolate and, if needs be imprison or deport specific individuals who are a danger to our country, our people and our society.

Furthermore, we cannot deport certain citizens of other countries who preach death and destruction here and who are badly wanted in their own homes. Well, we could, of course, but we have signed up to endless international humanitarian agreements that forbid us to do so, if those countries do not promise to treat people well. (Yes, I know, France has signed up to those agreements, too, but Nicolas Sarkozy sees that between international humanitarian agreement and the protection of one’s own country there can be no contest.)

As a consequence, the government needs to crack down on all of us, to make sure that there is no discrimination between the guilty and the innocent. That is, indeed, undermining our few remaining civil liberties.

The answer is clear. Repeal the Human Rights Act and pass a piece of legislation that allows a country defend itself against those who wish to destroy it, if needs be, despite certain previous agreements that were never meant to apply to people who preach mass murder, anyhow.

The virtue of the western legal system as it was developed in the twelfth century or thereabouts is that it is individuals who are accused, tried and punished, not whole communities. It is the likes of Cherie Booth QC who make it impossible to maintain the legal system, civil liberties and defend the country simultaneously.

But then, Ms Booth QC seems to have a short memory, in any case. Not so long ago, I seem to recall, she appeared on some platform or another rejoicing in the fact that the women of Afghanistan were no longer forced to wear a burqua in the post-Taliban era.
Indeed, she showed with her hands how small the gap was through a which a woman in a burqua could see and invited us to be horrified about it.

Let us move two years forward. Cherie Booth QC is now the lawyer who defends Shabina Begum’s “right”, strongly advocated by her brother and another bullying male member of her family, to wear a full jilbab at school, once again using the Human Rights Act as her base.

Not a burqua, perhaps, but hardly an outfit for a modern girl in a British school that had managed to work out a uniform that was sensible and did not offend anyone’s religions feelings.

It seems that when it comes to Britain and British Muslim women, then what their menfolk happen to say is the right thing for them to do, according to Ms Booth QC. She would be horrified if similar ideas were announced for English girls. But the notion that the law is the law and rules defined by certain institutions for themselves apply to all, regardless of creed do not seem to appeal to this particular “leading” barrister.

Incidentally, whatever happened to Shabina Begum? She was, as I recall, 16 and, therefore, this was her last compulsory year at school. Is she going to go back to do A levels or will she be forced into a marriage with someone chosen by her brother? What of her human rights then?

Which brings me to this morning’s Daily Telegraph and its entirely laudable attempt to define the core values of British identity, which I shall discuss in the next posting.

Mandy on the job

2005-07-22T19:18:00.000+01:00

Peter Mandelson has delivered a stirring speech to the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (a.k.a. the academic propaganda machine) in Brussels, beginning with the following stirring statement:

“Leadership is what Europe urgently needs. The "carry on as before" reaction to the French and Dutch no votes among a minority was a bad sign. These politicians in Europe looked as though they wanted to cling on to the constitutional treaty because they had nothing else to cling to. It was as though, by means of an ever tighter personal embrace, they could defy the reality of what was happening around them.”

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Oh no, sorry, that’s something else.

Anyway, what is this leadership and vision thing going to consist of? Well, we shall still have the Franco-German core to the EU but Britain must work towards a Franco-German partnership with which it is “at ease and can work”.

“The problem with the Franco-German position in Europe has been their difficulty in coming to terms with the depth of the economic problems that "core" Europe faces. "Core Europe", particularly the larger countries, still has an emotional block about facing up to the depth of the hole that the eurozone is in - and it is getting deeper.”

The trouble is surely that the economic problems have been created by the mentality of the self-same core Europe and its addiction to centralized over-regulation and control of the economy. Of course, these people cannot face up to the problem. How would Mandy like to be told that everything he believes in and has worked for has been completely cock-eyed and has produced an economic disaster? Luckily, this is not likely to happen as nobody has yet discovered what he believes in.

Anyway, Trade Commissar Mandelson knows what is needed and what is the answer to Europe’s crisis of identity:

“This autumn, the European Commission has got to be bold. It has got to go out on the front foot, not simply with a vision but with a clear programme of action to make Europe relevant to the citizens. It has to step into the vacuum that the suspension of the constitutional treaty has created. My political judgement may be wrong. But I sense that the Commission today has a golden opportunity to assert this fresh political leadership.”

So far the Commission is pootling about setting up a Communication Action Plan. It has no time for any kind of a political action to “make Europe relevant to the citizens”, whatever that might mean.

Besides, has Trade Commissioner Mandelson not noticed that as soon as citizens realize just how relevant Europe is to them, they start voting against it?

Prodi's logic

2005-07-22T01:13:00.000+01:00

It is never going to come into force and that is why it should be put into force. That is, more or less, what fomer Commission President Romano Prodi told journalists on Wednesday.

“It is difficult to think that it will be approved, but it is important to go ahead with the ratification process to show that the position expressed by the majority of the French and Dutch is not prevalent.”

Well, of course, the position expressed by the majority of the French and the Dutch is of little importance compared to the position voted through by various parliaments, but let us suppose the ratification process throws up a few more positions, say, in Denmark and the United Kingdom, that are quite similar? Then what? Presumably, push ahead with the ratification process, regardless.

And what, according to this attitude, is to be done about the French and the Dutch? Make them vote again? Ignore them? Pretend that they actually voted yes? Fraught with difficulties, whichever course you choose.

Signor Prodi, who now heads a centre-left coalition in Italy and is preparing for the next presidential elections, dismissed the somewhat eurosceptical views expressed by the government, particularly by members of the Northern League.

“The government and parts of the coalition are displaying a self-satisfied anti-Europeanism. Lacking any deep convictions, they are going along with whatever suits them at the time, most recently making a pathetic and sly move to the British position as if that would put a respectable face on their lack of ideas.”

Well, obviously, nobody could display a convinced and principled anti-Europeanism or believe that coming out of the euro might be good for the Italian economy. In fact, nobody principled could even contemplate that something is to be approved of because it is good for one’s country’s economy. Principled positions are reserved for the integrationists.

Still, at least Signor Prodi acknowledged that there is some amount of disenchantment. And he had the remedy:

“I remain convinced that the response to the disenchantment and to the challenges Europe faces in the globalised world is more Europe, not less Europe.”

Presumably, this is what his former colleague, the fragrant Margot calls investing in listening. Signor Prodi listens and decides that what he is told is completely wrong and should be disregarded for the people’s own good, naturally.

Finally, that old mantra:

“Integration remains the only strategy for growth in Europe. Europe can only participate effectively in the global system when it speaks with one voice -- in other words when there is a political Europe.”

How wonderful. And what is Europe going to say with that one voice? Could it be something along the lines that Signor Prodi and his various colleagues think? After all, the European peoples’ opinion, separately or together is of little consequence.

What does London need more?

2005-07-19T23:37:00.000+01:00

Let me think, does it need Crossrail that would run from railway station to railway station, taking a good deal of the strain off the existing transport system or does it need the razzmatazz of Olympic Games, the debt and bad feeling, the two weeks’ of hamburger flipping jobs, the empty buildings afterwards, not to mention the extra strain on the city’s resources?

No, I think you will be wrong. Apparently, it is the Olympics, that will raise our taxes and bring in lots of sportsmen and their various entourages for a couple of weeks that the capital needs.

Crossrail has been discussed for decades and got nowhere. The necessary parliamentary bill is painfully making its way through Westminster and no significant funding has been mentioned.

And now, we are told that the funding that might conceivably have come its way will be given to another, more deserving or, at least, more favoured cause. (Favoured by Hizonner and the Prime Minister, that is.)

According to a short piece published in the Daily Telegraph on July 14:

“Crossrail could be delayed by the 2012 Olympics, according to the outgoing Chief Executive of Cross London Rail Links.

Norman Haste told New Civil Engineer magazine that the Games would be first in the queue for investment.”

Good to know that London’s needs are high on the list of priorities, as opposed to expensive grandiosity.

Can somebody explain this?

2005-07-18T21:07:00.000+01:00

Hizonner, who has been loudly condemning the “pure criminals” who had bombed London transport on July 7, has been seen galloping off madly in all directions.

First of all, what is a pure criminal? Or, to put it another way, what is an impure criminal? Is there some sort of mongrel criminality around that is intrinsically different from the pure bred one?

What Hizonner is ever more desperately trying to avoid is stating the bleeding obvious, if our readers will forgive the language, that being the fact that the terrorists were inspired by a form of extremist Islamic teaching.

No, not all Islamic teaching is terrorist and very few Muslims are terrorists. In fact, when we add up the numbers of victims for the last fifteen years, we find that the number of Muslim victims of terrorism, state or non-governmental, if one may put it that way, has been far, far higher than the number of non-Muslim ones. And the number is many times higher than the that of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, but let that pass, as well.

However, as an ever-growing number of desperate Muslim commentators have observed, almost all terrorists at the moment, are Muslim and are using Islam as an excuse for their criminality. So, perhaps, Hizonner is simply wrong: these are not “pure” criminals, they are “hybrid” criminals, who believe in something apart from crime, however perverted.

Armed with his invincible assumption that he can never be wrong, Hizonner has affirmed that Sheik Yussuf Al-Qaradawi, the man who is described as the theologian of terror will be visiting London and, specifically, the Great Glass Egg, next month again.

Hizonner maintains that Al-Qaradawi is a moderate. No Arab commentator agrees with that, but anyone who doubts Hizonner’s word is probably an agent of an enemy power, as likely as not, the Labour Party.

Talking of suicide/homicide bombing, Al-Qaradawi said:

“I consider this type of martyrdom operation is evidence of God’s justice.”

Ah but that was about Israel. Those were clearly not pure criminals and did not need to be condemned. For, according to Hizonner, Al-Qaradawi has condemned the 7/7 bombings. It was done very quietly, mind you, but Hizonner heard it and he wants everyone to hear it. That is why the man is coming to London at the London taxpayers’ expense.

Last time he came there was a demonstration mounted by a coalition of Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and gay people. But what do they know?

Meanwhile, Hizonner has personally, though together with the British Red Cross, launched a London Bombings Relief Fund, into which money has been pouring in from corporate and personal donors.

The Government has given £1 million of the taxpayers’ money and the fund has topped £4.5 million. Well, how nice. But what is it for?

The people who have lost relatives and friends are hardly likely to find that a few thousand pounds will make up for that.

Those who have been wounded are being treated in hospitals and, one hopes, are provided with the best care available. Certainly, that is a reasonable way of spending tax money but it need not come from some charity fund.

Nobody has lost their livelihoods or their possessions. Nobody needs help in rebuilding houses or water pumps.

What is the money going on? Hizonner is statesmanlike but vague on his intentions. The money will be held in trust to give all the help to the victims of the outrage that they might need. Good-oh. Did Hizonner start a fund for the victims of the IRA bombs back when he was Leader of GLC? Errm, no, he was too busy welcoming the murderers into City Hall.

But suppose, the victims will not need any help, though if the money is available, I expect people will think of something they absolutely desperately need to survive the trauma.

Well, then the huge sums will go on projects that will … do what, precisely? Well, … umm … deal with the situation that has caused this “pure crime”.

Oh dear, I see more conferences, projects, huge posters and exhibitions, all explaining the necessity to extirpate war, racism and Islamophobia and all financed by money collected by Hizonner and that ever more ridiculous NGO, the British Red Cross.

Can London take it?

2005-07-17T11:30:00.000+01:00

How often have we been told in the last week or so that “London can take it”. At least, nobody seems to have got round to singing “London Pride” but it is, I feel, merely a matter of time.

Last Friday Mark Steyn asked in an article in the Daily Telegraph whether London can dish it out as well as take it. I don’t know the answer to that but I am beginning to wonder rather whether London can even take it.

Setting aside the emerging SNAFUs that, inevitably, took place on that Thursday morning (Why on earth did London Underground risk everybody’s lives for twenty minutes or more by not admitting that this was a terrorist attack?) one must admit that, by and large, everything was sorted out as well as possible. The emergency services when finally summoned, seem to have got everything under control speedily.

There was a rather astonishing problem with setting up a helpline, which did not appear till late in the afternoon, when the number given was an 0845 prime rate one, which apparently put people through to a call centre that promised distraught relatives that the police will call them back. One would like to think that they did not use their chirpy “Hello, I am Cheryl, how may I help you” tone but nothing is impossible.

And most people in London have got on with their lives. But then, as all of us have now asked, what were we supposed to do. In this week’s Spectator Rod Liddle writes with justifiable anger:

“… the precise nature of this popularly perceived mass defiance is never properly explained. It seems to boil down to the simple act of going to work as normal, having maybe taken Friday off. If that’s the case, then what exactly did people expect Londoners to do? What was our alternative? Never to go to work again? Take an immediate three-week holiday in the Med? Dissolve?”

Not so the politicians, the journalists, the professional sensibility-mongers. We were fed a steady diet of tearful and mock heroic articles, programmes, statements, analyses about the dignity and silence with which London was “taking” what was, thankfully, a relatively minor attack. If this is silence, I’d hate to think what a noisy response would be.

We had a two-minute silence. Why? Did we ever have silences for the victims of the IRA? Did people drop everything for a two-minute silence after every doodle-bug hit a street in 1944-5? I think not.

Time was the idea of a national silence was quite special. It happened once a year in November and was the time to think of all those who have been killed in various wars, including the war against terror.

All that has gone. We have a three-minute silence for the victims of the tsunami and a two-minute silence for the victims of the London bombs. What will happen if there are more suicide/homicide bombers or if the IRA resumes its murderous campaign? And why the tsunami? Are we going to have a silence for victims of other natural disasters? (Well, not the American ones, natch, but what about Cubans or Haitians?)

What about the train crash in Pakistan, reported on the day of the two-minute silence? That had 130-odd victims. We should have four minutes for them, surely. But then, we had only three for the tsunami victims. This is all very confusing.

The obvious answer is to go on to an Orwellian situation when instead of daily Hate Sessions, we have daily Grief Sessions and stop at midday for a two-minute silence for whoever happens to be the politically correct victim.

Not satisfied with this mockery, Hizonner organized a “vigil” in Trafalgar Square. Fortunately it did not last very long, just a few afternoon hours, giving the tourists something to gawp at.

Hizonner has, in fact, surpassed himself. His extraordinary hypocrisy has been noted in numerous publications and websites all over the world. Normally he is not given the time of day by Fox News but they did point out the oddness of the crocodile tears [my expression but they came close] shed by a man whose best buddy was Sheikh Yussuf Al-Qaraddawi.

Having already informed us that the bombs were aimed at “ordinary working class Londoners”, as if some sort of a completely new filter had been inserted into the explosives, Hizonner the Mayor of LondON, made a heartfelt speech during the “vigil”.

In it he informed the world that London knew about bombing because of the Blitz. The technical term for this is “a load of rubbish”.

There are enough people around who can remember the Blitz and the terrifying V-bomb attacks at the end of the war. And though some of their memories have been rosily coloured (few people remember the large-scale stealing from bombed out properties that went on, the demands for a peace agreement or the anti-semitism), the truth remains that the experience was considerably more terrifying and spiritually as well as physically destructive.

If Hizonner was pursuing his “working class Londoners” theme then he is plain wrong. It was not only working class Londoners who were hit. The City was bombed, the West End was bombed, even various suburbs were bombed. And that’s only London.

What this attack does resemble is the IRA campaign that went on relentlessly for decades (though never as badly as it did in Belfast).

Curiously enough Hizonner did not mention it. Could this have anything to do with the fact that as the then Leader of the GLC he used taxpayers’ money to welcome the murderous thugs into City Hall? Surely not. Hizonner is, as Mark Antony said “an honourable man”.

Then there is the small matter of Al-Qaraddawi. Hizonner made chums with this man and invited him to the Great Glass Egg (at the taxpayers’ expense, naturally enough), despite numerous protests from the powerless members of the Assembly.

The man was a moderate, proclaimed Hizonner, despite the fact that he shrilly praises suicide bombers and calls for the destruction of Jews. Some working class Londoners are Jewish, incidentally, but they presumably also get filtered out by the new-fangled bombs.

Hizonner assured us that all those who doubted the moderate nature of Al-Qaraddawi were simply following unreliable Zionist information.

Alas no. One of the people who called the man an extremist is the former editor of London's Asharq al Awsat Arabic-language newspaper.

"When it comes to political matters, Sheik Qaradawi represents the utmost degree of extremism."

That is also true when it comes to various social matters, given the great moderate’s pronouncements on the position of women and what he would like to do to all homosexuals.

Which brings me back to the excessive and rather phony grieving that has been the official line in London and across the media. While Londoners and those who work in London have got on with their lives, a noisy Dianafication of the London bombs has taken place in the public eye. And that is not a sign that London can take it.

Facing up to the 21st century

2005-07-15T15:37:00.000+01:00

Responding to the news that Craig Mackinlay, one of the founding members of UKIP (and originally an Anti-Federalist League parliamentary candidate in 1992), has decided to join the Conservative Party, Francis Maude, the Party Chairman said that this move underlined the

“… growing conviction that the Conservatives are the only party properly equipped to tackle the challenges of the 21st century”.

Well, if so, it is not showing its equipment to its best advantage. They have just lost at Cheadle, a by-election they were reasonably confident about and they have not won a single by-election seat for twenty-one years.

While they were in power there was some excuse as people routinely vote against the government in by-elections. But, in case Mr Maude has not noticed this, the Conservatives have not been in power since 1997.

They have lost catastrophically three elections, getting about 1 million votes fewer in the third one of these than in the first, at a time when the government remains highly unpopular.

What has Mr Maude said that would make one believe him that under his chairmanship the party is “properly equipped to tackle the challenges of the 21st century”?

Have we heard anything sensible on the question of the London bombs and the identity of the bombers? I think not.

Do they know how to deal with the ever more insistent issue of Britain and the European Union?

Have the Conservatives uttered a single word (apart from Ann Winterton’s questions) on the subject of defence procurement, which is spinning out of control?

Come to think of it, have they said anything as to the role of Britain in the twenty-first century and its complex conflicts? Not that I recall.

All we get is endless speeches and presentations about how the Conservative Party must be facing/is facing/will be facing the twenty-first century. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the century is with us and its problems are already multiplying. How about actually facing up to them instead of talking about it?

Well, is anybody going to say it?

2005-07-14T11:11:00.000+01:00

We have a Prime Minister who sees himself as a colossus bestriding the world, solving everyone’s problems. It fools some people, particularly some journalists.

We have a Home Secretary, whose immediate instinct after the terrorist attacks last week is to chair an EU Council of Ministers of Justice, to discuss legislation that would impose the duty on all internet providers and servers, all businesses and organizations to retain e-mail and telephone data for months. This would cost billions of pounds, seriously hamper work and would not help the police at all, as there would be too much information.

Plans are being made and demanded by the Foreign Secretary and, for some reason, the Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce EU-wide optometric documents that are far beyond anything in use anywhere in the world.

Tough legislation is promised and more powers to the police but, above all, EU-wide anti-terrorist laws are going to be enacted.

And somewhere amidst it all, there is Her Majesty’s Opposition that appears to have no opinions on the subject at all.

Of course, given that the simplest government IT system breaks down constantly, none of this is likely to work but all of it will make ordinary people’s lives difficult.

Yet, what precisely is the reason for all this EU-wide activity, apart from the desire to integrate as much as possible?

There is the probability that the explosives were brought into the country through European countries. If this is so, the matter is for the police forces of the various countries to sort out by official and unofficial co-operation.

It is entirely possible that the recruiter and organizer(s) of the attack came in from another counry and has (have) fled. Again, this is a matter for police co-operation, perhaps beyond the boundaries of the European Union.

At the heart of the horror is the fact that the first apparent suicide bombers on European soil are British born, British reared, reasonably privileged young men, who got up one day, said good-bye to their families, strapped on rucksacks full of explosive, travelled down to London and separated in order to blow up themselves and four different vehicles full of people.

This is a serious domestic crisis. There are people in this country, who, having lived all their lives here, feel that they want to do this to other people in the same country.

How can further European integration solve the problem?

And should not our ministers be concerned with the domestic crisis instead of rushing round the world or negotiating with their colleagues in Brussels?

The BBC again

2005-07-13T18:44:00.000+01:00

There will come a time when I shall be able to write something positive about the BBC but that time is not yet.

I understand that Radio 4 (something I have not listened to for some time) has decided not to broadcast part 2 of Greenmantle, as it would be “insensitive” after Thursday’s bombings (oh what the heck, let the PC brigade arrest me: terrorist bombings).

Insensitive to whom, precisely? As I recall the novel, it is all about a dastardly German plot to use Islamic fundamentalism in a fight against the allies in the First World War. The plot is masterminded by Hilda von Einem and is eventually foiled by Richard Hannay and his various colleagues, including and especially Sandy Arbuthnot.

Interestingly enough, our heroes express great admiration for most of their enemy, including the Arab fighters who swarm in battles, dressed in green, and for Hilda von Einem. There is one German officer Hannay tangles with, whom he finds repulsive. He is a brutal thug with a rather effeminate aspect to his personality.

How is this venerable but excellent thriller insensitive? Who is about to get upset by it? Is the BBC not going to dramatize or broadcast any work of literature in which there is any kind of a conflict between members of different nationalities, religions, races or ethnic groups?

Are they going to eschew any novel in which there is a villain of some particular national, religious, ethnic or racial group? If so, their choice of books will be limited.

Several of Buchan’s books have villains who are not British (though most of the heroes are not precisely British either and certainly not English). What are we to do about “Oliver Twist”? Or “The Way We Live Now”?

There are Arab slave traders in various adventure stories by Jules Verne and G. A. Henty. There are baddies of different description in novels by Alistair McLean, Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie (though her murderers are usually of impeccable English middle class background).

Clearly, anything by Dostoyevsky and quite a lot by Joseph Conrad will have to be banned.

I could go on but I shall not. The point I am trying to make here may not be entirely relevant to the general theme of the blog but there is a connection. A knowledge and understanding of the past is necessary to appreciate the present and the future. It is also essential to prevent a wallowing in some sort of utopian vision of the past. And we are sadly apt to fall into one difficulty or another.

Let me quote one of the greatest of the twentieth century poets, an American immigrant who settled in Britain and made his home, T. S. Eliot:

Time present and time past
And both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

They all want to tax financial transactions

2005-07-11T00:18:00.000+01:00

You’d think with the EU and the eurozone in particular in economic doldrums, they would start thinking of ways that would encourage the financial sector among others.

Not a bit of it. All we hear is about wonderful projects that could be funded by taxing international financial transactions. First we had President Chirac telling us that such a tax should be levied to fight against AIDS. A worthy cause, naturally, but how would slowing down economic growth in the west help it remains a mystery.

Would money raised from a tax on financial transactions overcome Thabo Mbeki’s inexplicable attitude to the whole subject, he announcing periodically that the various diseases were simply a western plot against Africans, as were the treatments that must not be used?

Would such a tax prevent numerous African governments from taxing drugs, supplied for free or at cost price, at the retail level?

Austrian President Schüssel, who is already looking to taking over the Presidency from Blair in January, has found an even better cause: the EU.

It is intolerable, he explained to the German Bild am Sonntag that the EU should rely on member states for its budget. It should have its own source of cash and what better source than a tax on international financial transactions.

Of course, it is unlikely that financial markets or the United States, or, for that matter, Britain or, presumably, Switzerland, would agree to such a tax.

Naturally, Veritas at the London Assembly is against this. Not only would this give greater power to the EU, as it would not need to negotiate its budget at all, but it would seriously hurt the City of London, the biggest and most important financial centre in Europe.

Still, it is an interesting foretaste of what we can expect from the Austrian Presidency – a fight with France, perchance, about what to do with a non-existent and completely unacceptable tax.

Pass the sickbag

2005-07-09T16:37:00.000+01:00

Naturally enough, the fragrant Commissar has had to get in on the act. Her latest posting has astonished even me, used as I am to the shamelessness of the Commissariat.

After some incredibly trite comment about the way an ordinary morning in London was transformed by horror, she tells us what she and her colleagues did in response. Yes, indeed, they

“… met at the Schuman roundabout for a few minutes together in silence to show our solidarity with people in the UK and to demonstrate against violence and terrorism.”

And there is a picture to prove it.

I am glad I know that. It makes me feel a whole lot better. I am also glad that the people who are watching by their relatives’ bedside, mourning the dead or still frantically searching for people, do not know about this utterly nauseating self-promotion.

It is quite difficult to work out what upsets her most. It seems that the terrorists chose to attack London, “a city full of innocent people from all over the world” on the day the G8 was meeting “to talk about Africa and climate change”.

I don’t know about the fragrant Commissar’s experience but I have always assumed that most cities were full of innocent people and where they are from is irrelevant. This comment ranks on a par with Hizonner’s about the attack being on ordinary working class Londoners.

As for the nonsense about the G8 meeting, we have already heard Prime Minister Blair on the subject. It seems a terrorist attack is that much worse if it takes away attention from politicians' blathering.

Are these people incapable of talking in a straightforward manner? Do they have to waffle inanities?

Then comes dear Margot’s pièce de résistance. Before telling us with almost audible Peksniffian sniffs (I seem to refer to that worthy gentleman rather a lot) that this is not a day for politics, she finds it necessary to … well, talk about politics, I suppose.

“Some of you have asked me what issues require cross-border and inter-institutional cooperation. Fighting terrorism is at least one. Next week the Commission will discuss concrete measures like trans-border police cooperation, improved rapid crisis reaction and also how to prevent recruitment of terrorists.”

Apart from the total shamelessness of using a terrible tragedy in this way for her own political agenda, this shows remarkable ignorance.

Does the fragrant one really think that there is not trans-border co-operation without the say-so of the Commission? Does she not know that Spanish police officers who had worked on the Madrid bombing are in London to help their British colleagues?

Has she not noticed that police officers from all over the world, not just the blessed European Union, fly to each others’ assistance as and when their specialist knowledge is required?

Does she think that the London emergency services would have reacted better and faster, had they been reporting to an EU committee, headed by the Justice and Security Commissar or the Anti-Terrorist “czar”?

But that is not what she means. It is not trans-border co-operation she wants but an integrated police and legal system, run by her and her colleagues with her ghastly little minions doing the work.

As I put on my comment, I can’t wait to hear the bleating her minions and stageurs, including the Moderator, who does not moderate but responds to the comments, will emit on this subject.

The rest of us will have to go on experiencing serious nausea.

We've been here before

2005-07-07T16:11:00.000+01:00

I have spent much of the morning answering worried phone calls and e-mails as well as phoning people myself. We Londoners are grateful for people’s interest and support. Forgive us for being a little blasé. We have been here before and we like to think that we can cope with bombs and emergencies. And no, I am not talking about the Blitz but the IRA bombing campaign that went on for many years.

Still, this one is horrible in its co-ordination. These bombs were not randomly planted. If you look at the map you will see that there was a carefully worked out plan to cause as much mayhem as possible though, luckily, it seems not as many casualties as was feared at first. We are still holding our breath on that, but it would appear that the early panicky rumours flying around the internet were wrong. (Of course, this may be wrong as well.)

The bombs went off in a line around the City and the West End as people were coming in to work. (In a rather bitter fashion I have to ask myself how the terrorists knew that the trains and lines they selected would actually be working, as several were not this morning as any other morning.)

Apart from the updates on casualties and suchlike, I have been following the statements made by various worthies. The biscuit must go to the Lib-Dim spokesman on London, Simon Hughes, who said that it was particularly unacceptable to have these bombs the day after we celebrated getting the Olympic Games. Would they have been acceptable otherwise?

Quite priceless comments have come from Singapore. Ken Mills, chief executive of the London bid team has said that he is totally distraught. Well, what a shame. What a good thing people in London, including the emergency services, who deserve nothing but praise, are not distraught.

As for Hizonner, he has surpassed himself. Unable to do his Giuliani act because he is still in Singapore, possibly worried that people might remind him of his friendship with, and taxpayer-funded hospitality to Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, who shamelessly praises terrorism and suicide/homicide bombing, Our Ken has come out with a corker of a statement:

“I want to say one thing: This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners.”

Right. So, if we find out that most of those killed and injured were middle class or non-Londoners then it will not matter.

Besides, as I have just been reminded, the mighty and the powerful, including Hizonner, were all out of London.

Hizonner then went on:

“That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith, it's mass murder. We know what the objective is. They seek to divide London.”

Well, no. I don’t pretend to know precisely what goes on in these people’s minds, not having been all that chummy with terrorists, unlike Hizonner, but I would guess that dividing London is not the primary objective. Killing people, spreading mayhem, trying to frighten Londoners and others in this country, undermining the economy – I can imagine all these thoughts flitting through their diseased brains. But dividing London? Hizonner must get a better scriptwriter.

Tony Blair, having first said he was staying in Edinburgh, has clearly been told that it might be a good idea to put in an appearance. Not that it matters, but proprieties must be observed and, at least, he has said that we are all united in our determination to defeat terror. One hopes that means we shall not see a Spanish-style caving in, but one can never tell.

Statements condemning the attacks have come from all sources. The G8 leaders have called it barbaric and have vowed to carry on with their meeting. Much as I think it is a waste of time, it is important to carry on with life as far as possible. The alternative is handing the victory over to the terrorists.

I have no doubt tomorrow London Transport will carry on as before with stoppages, faulty trains, non-working points and signals.

Charles Clarke has been his usual unimpressive self. How soon will he say that this proves the need for ID cards? Will the Conservatives attack him over that? Let us hope so.

Menawhile, Sir Ian Blair, speaking the first sensible words of his recent career, has asked the media to be careful with their reports and on the whole they have obliged. Only hard facts and reasonable stories are being reported.

Sky News, according to Deutsche Welle, did say that the army was moving in to restore order in London but if they did, they speedily left because there was nothing to do. There is no disorder in London at the moment. The anarchist battles are in Scotland and even there the police seem to be coping.

I have no doubt the army has moved into a position of readiness, just in case, but that is not the same as restoring order in a city where people are too busy calling each other to find out that they are all right and, if they are at work, wondering how they will get home, to riot.

An anonymous US law enforcement official seems to have stated that there were 40 dead. He wanted to stay anonymous because he had heard this from his British counterparts and no official statement has been made. If this US official does exist and has not been invented by a journalist, he presumably was also told by the British counterparts that they would rather not have news filtering out until there is an official announcement. So what was he thinking of, blabbing to the media like that? If, as I say, he exists.

The Metropolitan Police has now confirmed 33 deaths. You might say that the anonymous US official was not far wrong, but I still maintain he should have kept quiet.

And so to the rumour mill. Looking at some of the websites and e-mail lists, one would think the place has disappeared into a giant cater. Number of casualties are being estimated in their thousands and a complete shut-down of London is described.

I understand from others, who have read more of this rubbish than I have, that conspiracy theories are flying round. Of course, it could not have been Al-Qaeda according to these people, even if some unknown branch of it has claimed responsibility and it bears all the hallmarks of that nasty organization.

It had to be the British/American/Israeli security services for incomprehensible reasons of their own. Well, whatever keeps people happy.

Whoever is responsible (and, I think, we shall find out reasonably soon), London will survive. And all of us will hope that some effort will be made to deal with the actual perpetrators.

Well, we are saddled with the Olympics

2005-07-06T18:56:00.000+01:00

Hizonner, the Mayor of LondON, has got his wish and has been grandly thanking everyone for supporting him in his efforts to bring this unwieldy, expensive and corrupt event to London.

We, who will have to suffer from the ensuing chaos, started but unfinished constructions, endless shut-downs on the tube, not to mention rocketing council tax, hope that Hizonner will now, in a spirit of solidarity, move back to London to share the joys and pains and, above all, the expenses. Who wants to be in Brighton when the excitement of the Olympic Games overwhelms the capital? The Mayor of LondON, that’s who.

The same applies to all those other endearing personalities: Mr & Mrs Blair, who will, no doubt escape to their well-deserved freebie holidays in the next few years, Mr & Mrs Beckham, the male of whom looked more fatuous than usual grinning in his white track suit. (Where was she? No idea. Who cares?)

And dear old Lord Coe? Will he live through the next six-seven years with us in London? Will he pay the higher taxes for decades afterwards? (Note please that Montreal is still paying for those Games of 1976.) Unlikely. He will appear from time to time to cheer the people on and retreat to wherever he spends his time.

Now look at it from the Olympic organizers’ point of view. Some of the teams must be wondering what on earth got into the IOC. London has no stadium. Where, oh where is Wembley Stadium?

Nowhere really, unlike the Dome, which is there, costing money, doing nothing. That, too, was once upon a time a great opportunity for somebody or other, mostly Our Tone, to parade his credentials as a forward-looking statesman.

London has an appalling transport system. Hizonner knows little about that. He uses taxis unless a camera crew happens to be around when he hops into the nearest tube train, regardless of where it might take him.

Mr Blair knows even less about the London transport system or about the traffic in London (at least that taxi must sometimes get into a traffic jam) as the roads are cleared when his limousine sweeps from Downing Street to Parliament or wherever he happens to be going.

Frankly, I cannot even begin to imagine how Lord Coe and Lord-Beckham-to-be travel.

The fact remains that the rest of us have to use what must be the least efficient and most expensive underground system in the world or hope that a bus or two turns up at the stop they are meant to come to.

London, of course, does not need any more tourists. We are overrun with them, anyway, for, contrary to the many idiotic statements about the Olympic Games putting it on the map, London has been on the map for some centuries. (When our history corner is started on the website, I shall write to Lord Coe and suggest that he reads it.)

On the other hand, experience in Australia and Greece shows that the arrival of the Olympic razzmatazz drives away the other tourists (as well as many of the local inhabitants). That is something in its favour, though whether the various hotel keepers and restaurant managers will think that is doubtful.

London’s record on building new things and staying within something vaguely resembling the original budget is not good. Think Crossrail, Wembley Stadium, the Dome.

So what is it that made the IOC decide in London’s favour? Of course, we do not know precisely what all that feverish last-minute lobbying involved but shall, no doubt, find out eventually, when the country’s debt skyrockets.

Let us not forget the African vote. The Chancellor has been playing fairy godmother with our money or, at least, promising to do so, just as soon as he can count the pumpkins in his home.

As things stand, we are about to hand over yet more whopping great dollops of our money to kleptocratic and bloodthirsty African dictators and, in return, we must assume they voted for London as opposed to Paris. After all, what did Chirac promise them? Well, now you mention it, the same thing as Brown promised: our money.

And finally, the most unexpected blow of all: Chirac’s supposed gaffe. We all wondered about the reason for that torrent of abuse of British food, compared to which even les hamburgers are haute cuisine.

I, too, went along with the notion that the old man has lost it. But I also thought that Paris lost it, too. Chirac’s attack ensured London’s victory.

Now I am not so sure. Whatever those pictures of sad Parisians might suggest, a goodly proportion of them must be breathing a sigh of relief for many of the same reasons that we are grinding our teeth. (Except that they already have a stadium and a functioning transport system.)

Could it be that far from blowing it, Chirac has won this round by making sure that the poisoned chalice of the Olympic Games passes Paris by and lands squarely in London? Zut alors, you can’t rely on anyone these days.

The EU's efforts are acknowledged

2005-07-04T18:54:00.000+01:00

Well, somebody likes Commission President Barroso. He was greeted warmly at the fifth ordinary summit of the African Union. The AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare pronounced some very fine words:

“In the name of the African Union I pay tribute to the presence of the EU Commission President Jose Manuel Baroso and EU Commissioner Louis Michel (that)proves the EU's constant commitment alongside us.”

As ever, it is hard to work out who the “us” are, but one must assume that it is the leaders of the various African states, functional or otherwise, that Mr Konare was referring to.

He cannot possibly mean the people of Zimbabwe, whose plight under the murderous Mugabe has been dismissed by the AU as being internal matter, of no significance to other Africans.

Nor can he possibly mean the people in various civil-war ridden and massacre-filled parts of Sudan, which was supposed to have been sorted out by the AU some time ago. It did not happen.

Presumably, he does not mean the people in the other African countries, who have been steadily getting poorer under the benign gaze of the AU and its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

So what is it that the EU has helped the AU or, indeed, Africa achieve? What can the “strong partnership”, “built on equal footing” “in the mutual interest of the two neighbours” boast of?

That last phrase should give a clue. For no African state is actually the neighbour of any European state. What the AU wants to do is integrate in imitation of the European Union and with the help of EU money, which, before you ask, will not go to build hospitals or educate children but to create political structures of integration.

As AFP reported:

“Since it took over from the Organization of African Unity (OUA), created in 1963 just after African nations gained independence, the AU has drawn on the experience of the European Union in its ongoing attempt to foster African union.

Konare also emphasized that Africa requires more financial resources and needs to find the means to finance its large-scale infrastructure projects.”

One of the constant themes commentators have mentioned about the problems African countries face is the proliferation of large-scale infrastructure projects that are not maintained: roads and railways that do not carry enough load, buildings and bridges that collapse.

One of the accusations levelled at the African political elite by Moeletsi Mbeki was that they

“undertake loss-making industrialisation projects that were not supported by the necessary technical, managerial, and educational development”

while

“36 per cent of the region’s population lives in economies that in 1995 had not regained the per capita income levels first achieved before 1960”.

Good to know that the EU is helping the AU in its successful efforts to help impoverish the continent.

Oh yes, there is one more thing that Barroso is getting involved in.

“Baroso [sic] will also address the several dozen African heads of state who have converged on the Libyan town of Sirte for this meeting focused on African representation within a revamped UN Security Council and on the demands of the continent formulated ahead of the July 6-7 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.”

Of course, the revamping of the UN Security Council is of vital importance to most Africans. And was there not something about changing the Human Rights Commission, the primary complaint being that its members included Sudan and Libya? How are the EU and AU going to solve all this? More to the point how much of that money Chancellor Brown keeps talking about will go on these projects?

When did they think the first amount of rubbish?

2005-07-04T17:42:00.000+01:00

Hizonner the Mayor of LondON is very keen on centralizing, well, everything really, especially if it means putting more of London’s affairs into his hands. Since the London Assembly, which shares the Great Glass Egg with Hizonner can do nothing, not even control his budget, and spends its time squabbling about allocations of money between the various political groups, he is a little tin god in his world.

What he would like to do is centralize the disposal of waste and general waste management. Will he go out personally to shovel whatever needs to be shovelled on an unpaid basis?

Well, errm, no. When Hizonner says he wants to do something, what he means is that he produces a position paper.

As part of his second electoral manifesto (the election the Conservatives could have won if they had not insisted on putting up the worst possible candidate) he produced a Mayor’s Waste Management Strategy. And what did he or his minions who actually do the writing call it? You’d never guess: Rethinking Rubbish in London.

When did Hizonner think Rubbish in London first? I think we should be told.

Most of the strategy paper is what one might call hot air. But he has proposed a Single Waste Authority (not to be confused with the Single Market or the Single Currency) for the whole of London, to replace all the previous ones.

This proposal is now being seriously discussed by numerous quangoes (as soon as they hear about it) such as the Association of London Government ALG. No doubt many proposals and counterproposals get put on the agenda, discussed and voted on.

There is only one problem. Waste disposal and waste management come under EU competence. It will have to be put into effect as our masters in Brussels tell us. Rethinking Rubbish in Brussels might be a more sonorous title.

Here we go again (and again)

2005-07-01T18:20:00.000+01:00

Britain, we are told by all and sundry, including journalists on the Continent, in this country and in the United States, is interested in reforming the EU’s economic model and making it more free-market.

As Press Association sums it up:

“Britain has frequently been accused of trying to ditch the "social model" of Europe favoured by nations such as France which gives workers generous working conditions and benefits.
The UK has been accused of favouring a so-called "Anglo-Saxon model" which gives workers fewer rights.”

The last comment would be news to most small and medium sized businesses, as well as to the CBI, the Forum of Private Businesses and the various Chambers of Commerce. (Why do journalists keep repeating this rubbish, without checking their facts first? Why do I even ask?)
Still, free market is as free market does, as we have noted about Señhor Barroso’s supposedly outward looking, reforming Commission that has turned out to be not that different from any other old-fashioned, common or garden Commission.

Mr Blair is calling what he describes as a “mini summit” in the autumn. It will be informal but it is only a matter of time before the informal mini summit becomes a very formal another European Council. We have been there before.

Anyway, this one will concentrate on the EU’s future development. Are we going down the route of the “French” social model or are accepting the “British” free-market one?

A bit of both, really, according to that famous fence-sitter, Prime Minister Blair. Before the meeting the Commission will prepare a paper on

“… the sustainability of the social model in Europe in the light of the changes that are happening all around us today”.

An elevated discussion will follow.

Maybe they should all arrange their own kidnapping

2005-06-30T19:12:00.000+01:00

A delightful, if trivial, story has emerged from the Colombian newspaper Cambio and the Spanish ABC [links are for our Hispanophone readers] via the EUObserver.

In April Carlos Ayala-Saavedra, a Bolivian turned Spanish national, who is the EU’s official in charge of development projects in Colombia, disappeared together with his girlfriend, Vergara Monsalve, in Cicuta, on the Venezuelan border. (Some reports described him as having a wife and four children in Spain, but that has never stopped anyone.)

With Colombia’s second largest rebel-group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), active in the area, kidnapping was suspected and there was an apparent demand for a ransom of €10 million from the EU.

EU officials negotiated with rebel FARC soldiers but refused to pay the ransom.

Things, however, were not quite what they seemed. On April 29, Ms Monsalve was found on April 29, unharmed and taken to Red Cross official. She was questioned by Colombian security officials.

Then, on May 22 in Los Tres Pajaros, in the state of Apure, Venezuela, Mr Ayala-Saavedra was found by the Venezuelan army. He claimed to have escaped from his kidnappers and walked to freedom through the jungle, though the soldiers and the Colombian security officers who flew in to talk to him, found it rather odd that he had not a scratch on him. It is rare for people to be able to struggle through the jungle, with no protective clothing and emerge completely unscathed.

It did not stop there. The Colombian authorities found numerous discrepancies between his story and that of Ms Monsalve.

Further investigation uncovered the fact that

“… Mr Ayala-Saavedra was being subject to an internal investigation over alleged misappropriation of funds from the Bogota office, and found documents proving that he had sold a Toyota Lexus with diplomatic plates, and pocketed the money.”

With what might be described as a very dry humour, a “source close to the Colombian investigators” told Cambio magazine:

“We got the feeling that his days as a European Commission official were counted.”

[Presumably, the EUObserver translator meant numbered.]

The couple’s joint account has been frozen, Mr Ayala-Saavedra has gone on “sick leave” and there is an internal investigation going on into what appears to be a common or garden scam. We shall see what it uncovers.

Set a tranzi to catch a tranzi

2005-06-30T17:52:00.000+01:00

Vice-President Siim Kallas, the Commissar of Anti-Fraud matters, no stranger to fraud investigations in his own country, has been very busy.

He was the fifth Commissar to travel to Ukraine since the setting up of the EU-Ukraine Action Plan in February.

According to the Commission’s press release:

“He met President Yushchenko, Deputy Prime Minister Bezsmertnyi in charge of administrative reform, Interior Minister Lutsenko, Justice Minister Zvarych, the Head of the National Security and Defence Council Poroshenko, the Head of the Parliament’s Committee on Organised Crime Stretovych as well as representatives of civil society.

A key topic of the discussions was the state of play in the implementation of the Action Plan adopted jointly by the EU and Ukraine on 21st of February in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy, in particular the reforms of the administration and the judiciary, and the fight against corruption.”

Well, quite. Who better to preach the need to fight corruption than a Commissioner of the European Union?

Still the man means business. He has announced that there will be an investigation of charities and NGOs in the EU as well.

“Citizens have the right to know how their own money is being spent, including that given to NGOs. Because an awful lot of money is being channelled through organisations that we hardly know in the name of ‘noble causes’.”

One of those organisations, if the fragrant Margot is to be listened to, is the Commission itself and we don’t always know how the money is being spent in the name of all sorts of causes, noble or otherwise.

The actual investigation into the 32 charities, NGOs and aid organizations, who are accused of “double dipping” is being carried out by OLAF, the anti-fraud office of the Commission.

It seems that these promoters of “noble causes” may well have asked for funds from the EU, the UN, the US government and the World Bank for the same project, submitting separate proposals and invoices.

The whole subject of aid giving by the EU is fraught with problems quite apart from the general difficulties to do with the subject of aid.

The Court of Auditors has lambasted ECHO the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office on numerous occasions, generally and on the subject of specific projects.

As Ambrose Evans Pritchard’s article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph said:

“European auditors still have no idea what happened to payments of almost €1billion in Russia over a seven-year period for cleaning up unsafe nuclear power plants.”

Or, for that matter, the money that was sent to deal with a non-existent food-shortage after the collapse of the rouble in 1998.

Other problems have arisen.

“Much of the EU's humanitarian aid programme to Zimbabwe has fallen into the hands of the Mugabe regime, since funds had to be exchanged at the vastly over-valued official exchange rate - going straight into the coffers of the central bank.”

The same pattern has been seen with numerous other aid programmes in Africa, but, one might argue, that is true with aid given by all governments and international organizations.

The ongoing problem of aid to the Palestinian Authority has been discussed on numerous occasions. In 1997 the Court of Auditors found that none of the projects that were supposed to have been built were anywhere near completion, some not having been started and the money had vanished either into the hands of the PA or those of EU officials. No proper accounts had ever been presented.

There have also been accusations that EU money has been used to finance terrorist activity and open anti-Semitic propaganda in schools in the Palestinian territory and various Arab states.
After due investigation that they were forced to carry out, OLAF solemnly reported:

“The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has closed its investigation into the European Commission’s Direct Assistance to the Palestinian Authority’s budget. On the basis of the information currently available to OLAF, the investigation has found no conclusive evidence of support of armed attacks or unlawful activities financed by the European Commission’s contributions to the budget. However, the possibility of misuse of the Palestinian Authority’s budget and other resources, cannot be excluded, due to the fact that the internal and external audit capacity in the Palestinian Authority is still underdeveloped.”

Nice way of putting that, “underdeveloped”. One assumes it means, nothing was noted or could be proved anywhere.

But then OLAF itself has not been free of taint. In fact, the dishonesty and lack of accountability within its own office have been commented on adversely by the self-same Court of Auditors.
And it is OLAF, whose doings were recorded by Hans-Martin Tillack, the German journalist, which set into motion the various arrests, confiscations of material and persecutions by the Belgian police, at the instigation of the anti-fraud office.

So far Mr Tillack’s attempts to get back his documents, to prevent OLAF and the Commission from finding out the names of his sources and to stop various past and present OLAF officials from slandering him have been unsuccessful.

One can’t help looking forward with some anticipation to the final report produced from bunch of … ahem … not entirely accountable officials on another similar bunch.

Yippee, another anti-dumping duty

2005-06-27T17:34:00.000+01:00

The Commission is proposing a new Council Regulation, suggesting that it should be adopted by July 12 at the latest. The likelihood is it will be.

Its purpose is to extend the anti-dumping regulations that are imposed on bicycles imported from China to those imported from Vietnam. What a good idea. Just what the world needs as we are trying to help countries that are poor (and Vietnam is certainly poor). Let us not buy things that they manufacture.

But, of course, there is another part to this story. The UK has, until now, been the largest importer of bikes from Vietnam. Raleigh and others have relied heavily on them but are now looking round for other suppliers.

The extension of anti-dumping duties was discussed in response to complaints. Can anyone guess where those complaints came from? The European Bicycle Manufacturers’ Association, which just happens to be based in Paris. A coincidence, surely.

Of the Commission’s anti-dumping committee, 19 members voted for the extension of anti-dumping duties, four voted against and two abstained. Maybe the British member did vote against but what use is that to anybody?

The chances of the Regulation not being adopted by the Council of Ministers is slim to the point of invisibility.

How not to run an economy

2005-06-27T11:12:00.000+01:00

The Italian Riviera as all tourist places has a plethora of “illegal” tradesmen. Mostly they are Africans, who go around with very large bags from which they produce endless goods at very reasonable prices that strolling customers might want.

Since they are part of the attraction of the place and the tourists who patronize them also leave large sums of money in other, better regulated, one might say over regulated establishments, the problems is unlikely to be very big.

Every now and then they are chased away by the police but they always come back.

Among other things they sell fake fashion goodies: Dior sunglasses, Vuitton luggage, Dior t-shirts and so on at, presumably, considerably lower prices than the real stuff.

The Italian authorities have decided to do something about this and issued a new decree abusivismo. Under this, the buyer is as guilty as the seller.

In Ventimiglia the police swooped. Of course, they did not get the traders, who have a reasonably sophisticated system of warning (often called bribery), but they fined a number of tourists for buying fake goods.

The fines are quite steep: €10,000 or £6,624. The tourists in question can pay the fine but if they don’t and leave the country, the fine goes on as a debt with interest added. This will ensure that they will probably never come back to Italy and certainly not to the Italian Riviera. Though the chances of those records being kept to be produced at the right moment are slim. Still, you can never tell.

Furthermore, they will tell their friends. And others will read about it in the newspaper and tell their friends. Soon, Ventimiglia will find that the number of tourists starts diminishing and the blight will spread to the rest of the area, which has no other economy to speak of.

Then what? The “illegal” traders will go on to somewhere else. But what will the legitimate hoteliers, restaurateurs, café owners, shopkeepers, and other paraphernalia of the tourist industry do?

And what do I do when I have put a cross on the postal ballot?

2005-06-23T21:39:00.000+01:00

The London Assembly, which inhabits the Great Glass Egg (together with Hizonner the Mayor), has a number of committees. They cannot actually do anything, you understand but they have lots of meetings, submissions, reports, what have you. Just like the grown-ups.

In fact, we in Veritas at the London Assembly are thinking of patenting a new toy: the London Assembly. Hours of fun, while you pretend to scrutinize the Mayor and his budget, pretend to make speeches, pretend to bring up points of order, pretend to discuss reports, pretend to publish reports. In fact, this afternoon, as the London Assembly’s Election Review Committee sat, there was another jolly pretend activity: you pretend to have a security evacuation. It only took half an hour and then nobody was sure that everyone had left the Egg. Still, let’s face it, who is going to attack an Egg?

The Election Review Committee is looking at the whole question of postal voting, much extended and multiplied in the last couple of years and much derided as a method of electoral fraud. The postal voting in certain parts of Birmingham has been described by reputable lawyers as being appropriate to a banana republic. (The Returning Officer has been promoted to a wonderful new job within the Home Office, heading the Immigration Section. Good to know that no deed goes unpunished.)

Today’s session, before and after the rather flat security alert test was there to examine the submission by the Association of Electoral Administrators, entitled “Postal Voting Review”.

The gist of the submission was that the new system whereby anyone can apply for a postal vote for whatever reason and no reason at all, at any time, up to polling day, was a security and administrative nightmare.

However, it is clear that nothing much will be done about it because the government, for poorly articulated reasons of its own, is committed to the idea of as much postal ballot as possible. I suspect that by now they simply will not draw back because that would look like losing face.

The argument was, as I recall, that making voting easier by postal ballot would mean a greater turn-out in elections, local, national and European. The subsidiary and unspoken argument was that the people who are likely to use the system would vote Labour.

Neither of this has worked. The turn-out in local and European elections has gone down; and the change between 2001 and 2005 was 2 per cent. If, as it is maintained, postal voting brought about 10 per cent of extra votes in, then there were even fewer people voting on the day in the booths. Then again, what is maintained may not be all that accurate.

Most of the postal votes did not go to Labour but to Lib-Dem with some diversion to the egregious Respect Party.

The point that escapes all those who solemnly discuss these matters is that people do not vote for a good reason, and that is not apathy but disgust. They do not vote because they do not see any point in doing so. Decisions are not taken by our elected representatives at any level but by various quangoes, led by the biggest of them all, the European Commission.

More than ever are politicians perceived to be incompetent, devious and opportunistic. That is what keeps people at home, not some newly acquired notion of not caring. They care a lot. That is why they do not vote for this shower.

Furthermore, why make voting simpler? Why must it be convenient? Democracy is not a right but a hard-won privilege. It is not much to expect its participants to walk down to the nearest polling booth and put a cross on a bit of paper, then posting said bit of paper into a locked box.

Of course, the denizens of the Great Glass Egg cannot reform the political system. They cannot really do anything. But they could, if they were honest, recommend that the postal ballot system be reformed drastically.

In the new reformed system people will be expected to turn up and vote in their polling stations on the day of election. If they happen to be abroad at the time, especially for good reasons like work or serving in Her Majesty’s forces then they will be able to have a postal vote, duly filled in and certified well ahead of the event. Or they might be able to nominate a proxy. That way there will be no problems with multiple postal voting; no administrative nightmare, no security problems and the electorate will start believing again that their votes count for something.

In fact, it all sounds a great deal like the system we used to have. Well, what do you know?

Our masters must not be disturbed

2005-06-15T17:00:00.000+01:00

Well, well, so the politicians must not be disturbed by protests. After all, what have they to do with disgruntled people of any kind? Or with people in general?

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has used the powers granted him by the Serious and Organized Crime and Police Act and has created a half-mile exclusion zone around Parliament for all unauthorized protests. And what are the chances of an authorized protest being permitted?

This is supposed to ensure that MPs are not held up by noisy (or quiet) people , who are demonstrating for or against something they feel strongly about, and prevented from getting into the Chamber to do their duty, that is passing on the nod the legislation that is sent over from Brussels.

There are just one or two problems with it all. For example, how can one person prevent hundreds of MPs from getting in? The Order on the exclusion zone makes it clear that even one person is a demonstration and if it is not authorized, it is not allowed.

Given that the exclusion zone is wide enough to include St James’s Park and the London Eye on the other side of the Thames, the possibilities for police intervention to protect our masters are barely limited.

Of course, we know what is at the bottom of all this. No, gentle and perspicacious reader, it is not fear of terrorism. The abject terror of our elected politicians has already caused Westminster and, more specifically, the House of Commons to be turned into a miniature police state. The House of Lords remains the only part that does not boast squads of armed police officers.

While the rest of London might go for weeks without sighting a friendly bobby (or even an unfriendly one), the area around the Houses of Parliament is so crowded with uniformed and heavily armed guardians of the law that it is sometimes rather hard to get from A to B on perfectly legitimate business.

The two crucial reasons for this pathetic exclusion zone are that famous incursion by a bunch of teenagers in t-shirts during the protests against the authoritarian and oppressive ban on hunting, since imposed by a completely unconstitutional method; and the continuing presence of Brian Haw with his large selection of increasingly weather-beaten protests against the Iraqi war.

Mr Haw is something of a nuisance and he has managed to turn Parliament Square into a rather squalid squat. However, it is not true to say that he has been all the time for the last nineteen months. He vacates his spot every Monday to collect his social security.

Rather than imposing draconian measures on the entire population, would it not have been simpler to suggest to Mr Haw somewhat forcefully that it was about time he did a bit of job searching or his social security might come to an end? Other people are told that all the time.

If they cannot do that, then let them leave Mr Haw alone.

But, of course, it is not even the appearance of Parliament Square that is bothering our political masters. It is the thought that they might be accosted by the sans-culottes, a group that includes all of us.

It might not hurt Charles Clarke and his quaking, terrified colleagues to read a little French history. The sans-culottes do not stay silent for ever.

Or they could read some English history. They could, for instance, read about the House of Commons that stood up to the King and led the fight for parliamentary liberties.

Or they could contemplate what happened after the assassination of Spencer Perceval in 1812. Certain lily-livered predecessors of our own elected members called for protection after the dastardly assassination in Central Lobby, only to be told that such behaviour was “unmanly” and those who enter into public life must bear the consequences.

Hot air emissions

2005-06-15T15:04:00.000+01:00

Recently, there was a ruction in the Great Glass Egg, a place not written about recently in this blog. It seems that Hizonner must not be asked any questions during the once-a-month Mayor’s Question Time that is not directly related to the Greater London Authority and its powers, interpreted in the narrowest sense.

So much for the Assembly and its members being able to hold the Mayor to account and question his behaviour and decisions.

However, most members have been able to get round that one by putting in the sacred words “community relations”, which is part of Hizonner’s remit. For example, if a member wants to know about Hizonner’s political musings on the future of the world and the chances of Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister, he or she has to ask: “What effect will the Mayor’s support for Gordon Brown as possible Prime Minister would have on community relations in London?”

That being so, some surprise was shown when the list of priority questions for the next MQT was published. The first of these, put by Labour member Murad Qureshi, seemed completely irrelevant to anything Hizonner or the Greater London Authority can do.

"Despite the reluctance of the US Government to sign up to the Kyoto protocol,as many US cities are choosing to sign themselves up to Kyoto, is this an indication that many Americans acknowledge the importance of environmental issues & are there any lessons we can learn from this for the UK?"

The Mayor of LondON may be a powerful person (well, he thinks he is) but can he really make any difference to American politics? The Unites States, after all, has an elected President, Vice-President and Congress, not to mention other elected positions at federal, state, county, district and city levels. (More than we do in this country, where we hand powers over to all sorts of unelected quangoes, starting with the European Commission.)

It is also something of a misstatement to say that American cities have signed up to the Kyoto Agreement. Cities do not sign up to anything of the kind. Countries do and the US Congress voted not to do so. Even if President Bush wanted to wreck the American economy in the name of the magical and meaningless word “Kyoto”, he could not do so. Not even if Hizonner, the Mayor of LondON, told him to.

Kyoto has become one of those symbolic words, whose meaning is lost in the mists of time. Precisely what does it achieve and what is its purpose? It was useful to have an article by Björn Lomborg in Monday’s DailyTelegraph that asked those very questions.

Unlike the rest of us, Mr Lomborg has the answers at his fingertips. 11 of the leading world scientific academies have informed us all pompously that global warming is to be taken seriously. (They seem to be out of date. The words used mostly are “climate change”. Can’t argue with that – climate change happens.

“Their argument is that global warming is due to mankind's use of fossil fuels,that the consequences 100 years from now will be serious, and that we therefore should do something dramatic. We should make substantial and long-term reductions of greenhouse gases along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol.”

Well, maybe, says Mr Lomborg, though bearing in mind that scientists who disagree with the current orthodoxy have been complaining about not getting published and remembering Mr Lomborg’s own difficulties when he first emerged as a climatological heretic, perhaps we should retain a certain amount of scepticism.

In any case, as Mr Lomborg adds,

“…. as scientists, they should point out that fossil fuels will warm the world.This is indeed the majority opinion and likely to be true. Moreover, they should also tell us the likely impact of global warming over the coming century, which is likely to have fairly serious consequences, mainly for developing nations.

But to inform us accurately they have to go further than that. They should tell us what will happen even if we implement the fairly draconian measures of Kyoto - which they curiously do not.

They do not tell us that even if all the industrial nations agreed to the cuts (about 30pc from what would otherwise have been by 2010), and stuck to them all through the century,the impact would simply be to postpone warming by about six years beyond 2100.The unfortunate peasant in Bangladesh will find that his house floods in 2106 instead.

Moreover, they should also tell what they expect the cost of the Kyoto Protocol to be. That may not come easy to natural scientists, but there is plenty of literature on the subject, and the best guess is that the cost of doing a very little good for the third world 100 years from now would be $150billion per year for the rest of this century.”

The national scientific academies are playing politics (and, possibly, though Mr Lomborg does not say so, angling for some money to research into that famous climate change). But that is not what the developing needs desperately, not in a hundred years but much sooner than that.

“The urgent problem of the poor majority of this world is not climate change.Their problems are truly very basic: not dying from easily preventable diseases;not being malnourished from lack of simple nutrients; not being prevented from exploiting opportunities in the global economy by lack of free trade.”

And, of course, free trade between the countries themselves, no matter what insane rubbish the Geldofs of this world utter. But, above all, and very soon: genuine good governance and political accountability.

Good start Dominique

2005-06-10T18:14:00.000+01:00

According to this morning’s International Herald Tribune, Dominique de Villepin, the beautifully coiffed, poetic new French Prime Minister has begun his administration by annoying his own party, the opposition and the trade unions. That covers most of them, I guess.

In his maiden speech Prime Minister de Villepin announced a €4.5 billion (c £3 billion) job creation plan. In response the Communist controlled CGT (talk about being stuck in the by-ways of history) has called for a mass demonstration on June 21.

In fact, there was a large demonstration in Paris yesterday, to protect manufacturing jobs. (What manufacturing jobs? Unemployment is running at over 10 per cent in that country and yet more factories are planning to relocate.)

In particular, the unions do not like a measure that would give small companies the right to hire people for a two-year probationary period with no guarantee of a permanent job afterwards. In many ways, one must agree, that is a silly measure, as anything that tries to lay down different rules for small and large companies is.

Still, the Solidaires union went a little too far, when it announced that

“M Villepin has just invented fast firing.”

Surely not. It has been with us for some time. In any case, two years is hardly fast.

Villepin’s own party and the opposition criticized his remarkably democratic plan to pass various job-creating legislation by diktat, by-passing the Assembly. Then again, if the EU can pass regulations that by-pass all elected parliaments and assemblies, why can’t the French Prime Minister? Is that not what is meant by souverainité?

The Socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn has dismissed the entire proposal:

“Nothing, but nothing, in what was presented yesterday will stimulate growth and demand. What we urgently need is not a succession of mini-measures but an analysis of the economic situation. And what we need is to relaunch growth.”

Will it work in theory? M Strauss-Kahn, noticeably, has not proposed anything specific either.

In fact, all these debates and discussions have been very short on specifics. Exactly, what can be done to stimulate the French economy? Does anyone have the answer?

What a wag!

2005-06-10T17:37:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, I shall miss Jean-Claude Juncker. Yes, I know he is not going anywhere but as of July 1, Luxembourg will not hold the rotating presidency and we shall have to make do with Tony Blair for entertainment. I bet those spoilsports will not even let Cherie out of wherever they keep her locked up most of the time for fear of her own particular brand of foot-and-mouth disease.

In response to Italian and German murmurings about the euro and assurances from finance ministers that the euro was alive, well and immortal, Mr Juncker has come up with his own brand of reassurance:

“It is just inconceivable that a country could envisage dropping out of the euro. The euro belongs to us all.”

What a curiously socialist idea. Still, other ministers have been just as troublingly reassuring. Hans Eichel, the German Finance Minister, informed the world that it was “nonsense” even to suggest that any country could withdraw from the euro.

Pedro Solbes, the Spanish Finance Minister, called the euro “irreversible”. (Reminds one of the time Mrs Thatcher told us that he Chancellor’s position was “unassailable”. We knew Lawson was for the chop.)

The new French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, assured all and sundry that the euro was a huge plus to the European economies, reminding the world of the problems they encountered in those far-off EMU days. (Personally, I do not think it is a wise policy to remind the Netherlands, for instance, of their pre-euro days, but then I am not the French Foreign Minister.)

“Do not call into question monetary Europe,” – he added, distinguishing it from any other kind of Europe that, presumably, can be called into question.

And, of course, we could not get by without a fatuous comment from Josep Borrell, the rather dubious President of the European Parliament.

“We must ask everyone to avoid frivolity and such brilliant ideas. Imagine the monetary turmoil that would be shaking the European Union today if it weren't for the euro.”

Imagine it, indeed. Then try to imagine a Europe that is economically successful and forward looking. The mind definitely boggles.

Beware of so many politicians denying something. It will surely come to pass.

Of course, it is fair to say that monetary union is not the only thing that is causing problems in European countries, though the “one interest rate for all” policy cannot be helpful when the economies are further apart than ever.

But is that not precisely what the derided euroceptics said back in the days the euro was being discussed and promoted as the answer to all our problems? As I recall, Bill Jamieson, then Economic Editor of the Sunday Telegraph compared the suggestion of the euro solving all those problems to the idea that you can remodel a car by smashing it into the wall first.

The European economies suffer from a great many ills that need root and branch reforms. The euro is not the greatest of these but neither is it negligible. However, as the euro was promised to be the panacea, so it is now blamed for all the problems that not only have not been solved but have actually deepened.

Like the euro, they belong to us all.

Plan D, sub-plan F (for fluffy)

2005-06-08T19:20:00.000+01:00

The great thing about the fragrant Commissar is that she never gives up. When the going gets tough she gets fluffy.

Her latest blog is all about her travelling to Boston to get an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachussetts (for what precisely?), taking a couple of hours out of every working day to brush up her French (how nice – who is paying for that?), complete with cute little comments about the difficulties of French grammar, and even a comment about Jean-Claude Juncker being unable to give up smoking because of his worries about the ungrateful people …. oops, sorry … the Constitution.

And what of her job, that of being Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation? What of her failure to promote the Constitution to the people of Europe? Do we hear anything about that?

Oh a certain amount. She seems unable to accept that people said no for a certain reason: they did not like what was being rammed down their throats. Dear me, no. They were misguided.

“One re-occurring argument in the debate on the Constitution has been the dramatic changes that the EU has undergone lately: the Euro, enlargement… and so many people feeling left behind.

Democracy takes time. And it takes leaders who are willing to actively advocate and defend the decisions taken – also when they have had to make compromises – as well as listen more attentively to citizens concerns.”

I am beginning to feel slightly dizzy here. It was my distinct impression that a number of European countries, if not most of them, have actually achieved democracy, which includes elected leaders who are accountable to the people.

Why exactly is the unelected fragrant Commissar shaking her pretty blonde head sorrowfully about the lack of leaders “who are willing to actively advocate and defend the decisions taken”.

Exactly, what is this democracy that she in her wisdom is going to impose on us? And is she not the one who should have been advocating and defending instead of charging round the world, weeping over rainforests, taking coffee with President Mubarak, accepting degrees in Massachussetts?

Something stirring in the European Parliament

2005-06-08T18:46:00.000+01:00

Veritas-UKIP welcomes an outbreak of honourable behaviour in the European Parliament. Well, one example of it, anyway, and that is Roger Helmer’s firm refusal to be dragooned into a federalist behaviour by the EPP-ED group.

Last seen, our intrepid hero was being publicly dressed down by EPP Group Leader, Hans-Gert Pöttering for daring to sign up to Nigel Farage’s Motion of Censure of the free-loader (surely free-marketeer) Commission President Barroso and compounding his errors by revealing that pressure had been put on the Conservative MEPs to withdraw their signatures. Up with this the EPP will not put.

“You can’t just get up in the European Parliament and attack your own leadership,” – said one outraged spokesperson.

Why not, precisely? People in real parliaments do that all the time. Well, apparently it was a whip, just like it is in the British Parliament, to make people vote the right way and Mr Helmer did not do so.

Actually, people often do not in the British Parliament either. Apart from the odd occasion when a prime minister (such as John Major) throws his toys out of the pram, they do not get suspended. Or not often, anyway.

This was not an important enough issue. Or, rather, the ostensible issue of the vote of confidence was not, but the real one of group discipline (such as the Conservative Party was not going to have imposed on it when it joined the EPP-ED group) is immensely important. How dare Mr Helmer suggest that British MEPs should not be ordered about by German politicians?

Well, our hero was expelled from the EPP-ED group. Mr Helmer, with great flourish, voted for his own expulsion from the group.

In his press release he points out that he

“… remains a member of the Conservative party, and of the European Parliament,and insists that his new status as an unattached MEP will not prejudice his ability to represent his East Midlands constituents, nor to fight for Conservative principles”.

Rather the opposite, one would say, if being attached to a group means total obedience to the leaders of that group.

In his speech to the group before the vote for the expulsion he explained that he objected to the left-wing tendency of many of the group’s policies and, especially, to the assumption that all members must fight for further integration.

When the Conservative Party rejoined the group, it was promised, or so they told us, and Mr Helmer has just reminded them, that their different outlook would be respected. (Of course, even at the time there was the option of not joining but setting up their own right-wing more eurosceptic group with the new East European intake, but let us not remind them of such matters.)

We now await the decision on the other four Conservative MEPs who had signed the motion: Chris Heaton-Harris, Dan Hannan, Martin Callanan, David Sumberg. Perhaps, they, too, will vote for their own expulsion. They can start setting up a salon des refusés.

Trouble in the Low Countries

2005-06-06T21:10:00.000+01:00

Those of our readers who remember their history books will recall that Belgium was created as a country by Lord Palmerston for what seemed like adequate reasons at the time (annoying the French, mainly).

Before that Flanders and Wallonia (plus a little bit more) belonged to the Netherlands and, it seems, a certain amount of resentment has remained between the two countries.

I suppose, there is also the point that the Netherlands managed to win their independence from the Spanish king and establish a large maritime empire. Belgium managed to have the Congo and even that was the Belgian king’s personal fiefdom. (And a right mess he made of it.)

Karel de Gucht, the Belgian Foreign Minister, raised hackles last week by describing the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, as

“…a mixture of Harry Potter and inoffensive small-mindedness, a man in whom I detect no trace of harisma”.

He also spoke of him as being a “brave rigid bourgeois”. Given Mr Balkenende’s well-known conservative attitude to life and social mores, he probably did not find that too bad, though “small-mindedness” may have hurt.

Balkenende has been compared to Harry Potter before and, indeed, he does bear an uncanny resemblance to the boy wizard and, even more so, the lad who plays him in the films. One wonders why Mr de Gucht should see that as an insult.

Harry Potter is an immensely popular character all over the world (a trait not shared by Mr Balkenende or, for that matter, Mr de Gucht); he and his friends win out after many arduous trials and adventures at the end of each book; and clearly the culmination of the series will be Harry taking his rightful hereditary and fully merited place as the chief wizard.

I suppose the funniest part of that attack was the phrase about Balkenende having no charisma. Pictures of Mr de Gucht reveal a man who, far from resembling a wizard of any age, looks like a middle ranking party official in Communist Eastern Europe of the eighties.

Not content with sneering at the Prime Minister, Mr de Gucht, (the Foreign Minister, let us recall) also managed to insult the Dutch people, whom he described as being “superficial and unreliable”. Well, I suppose, the people everywhere tend to be unreliable. They just will not do as they are told. Time to sack the people, as Bertolt Brecht said only half in jest after the 1953 uprising in East Berlin.

It seems that the Dutch people are ridiculously volatile, according to Mr de Gucht and one can’t help wondering about his home life. First they give their support to

“…an extravagant, militant homosexual with a deviating opinion and chauffeur-driven Bentley”,

then they elect Balkenende who is none of those things. Setting aside the fact that there was an extremely good reason why Pim Fortuyn (for it is he being so described) could not be elected, one wonders whether it is not Mr de Gucht who suffers from strait-laced small-mindedness.

Anyway, the upshot of all this mudslinging was the Belgian ambassador being summoned to the Dutch Foreign Minister and being told in no uncertain terms that these remarks were inappropriate.

Mr de Gucht then compounded the problem by saying rather huffily

“If Mr Balkenende has a problem with my statement, then I have no problem in apologising.”

As a devotee of the Marx Brothers I do rather hope that the apology will not be accepted in the way President Rufus T. Firefly of Freedonia refused to accept the apology of Sylvania’s devious ambassador in Duck Soup and led his troops (Chico, Harpo, Zeppo and Margaret Dumont) to war.

During the final battle scene they throw oranges, as I recall, which would be an entirely fitting weapon for the Netherlands.

The Swiss agreement is full of holes

2005-06-06T14:06:00.000+01:00

The Swiss have voted in a referendum, not overwhelmingly but decisively, to sign up to both the Schengen and Dublin Agreements.

After the two no votes to the European Constitution, this is a clear indication that the European Union continues in its process of endless growth, no matter what. As we have argued before that is the only way it can survive.

The Swiss have in the past voted not to belong either to the European Union or to the European Economic Area. But that kind of thing has never stopped the political elite that is still clinging to the wreck of its ideas about European integration one day creating a European people.

The Schengen Treaty will make the Swiss dismantle their own extremely efficient border controls and submit to the less than efficient Schengen ones. (Unless, of course, they do what other member states do, which is drop in and out of the arrangement.)

As the BBC puts it somewhat fatuously:

“Schengen will allow Swiss police to share information with their EU colleagues about all sorts of crimes, from money-laundering to suspected terrorist organisations.

The Dublin accord, which has also been backed in the referendum, will give Switzerland access to Eurodac, the database which is supposed to prevent asylum-seekers making applications to more than one European country.”

Eurodac has had no effect whatsoever on the number of asylum seekers applying to as many countries as they would like and, presumably, the Swiss police has always been in the position to share information, should they wish to do so.

We are hoping to publish an article on the blog later on that will examine the whole development in detail. In the meantime, two points need to be noted.

The way is now open for the EU to try to impose some of the nannyish state control it so loves on the holding of guns in Switzerland.

And, of course, let’s face it, this referendum is not the end of the process. Very soon the Swiss government and political elite will start pointing out that having made the first step that wonderfully stubborn and independent country might as well go the whole hog and apply to join the European Union, no doubt, paying heavily for that privilege, economically as well as politically.

One can but hope that the Borg will deconstruct itself before that happens.

Thirty years, eh?

2005-06-06T13:27:00.000+01:00

Well, well, how time flies. It seems but yesterday. Well, actually, it does not, since the years 1975 to 1989 were taken up largely with all attention on the fight with Communism (and a few other matters that are too personal to discuss in this blog).

Still, I have to admit, I, too, voted no in that famous referendum. My reasons were, I think, prescient and, even though I say so myself, quite intelligent for someone who was still wet behind the ears.

To me it seemed absolutely clear that the Common Market was going to result in another layer of government and there was no need for that so far as I could see.

I did have an enormous advantage over many other people who voted in the referendum (and many more who did not bother). Politics was and is in my blood. My family is intensely political and all my parents’ friends were, too. All political issues were discussed heatedly and at great length and Britain’s possible membership of the Common Market was no exception.

I have written elsewhere about my upbringing and the intense Anglophilia instilled into me from an early childhood.

In the same piece I mention an interesting category, the “cold-war intelligentsia” that my parents were part of for the few years they lived in Britain.

The “cold war intelligentsia” that, despite the untrendiness of its ideas, consisted of the brightest and the best in academia, journalism, literature and politics, may have been united on its attitude to Communism and the need to fight it but was split on other issues. The idea that they all saw the Common Market as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and a necessary weapon in that fight is completely wrong – a theory propounded by people who have not bothered to find out what really went on.

They were split along several lines. Some, like my own parents and many of their immediate circle, were uncompromisingly against it. There was no need for it. It would link Britain into a unit that would be uncongenial to her own constitutional and legal structure and to her trade patterns; it would weaken links with the Commonwealth and the United States (this, despite the avowed American support for the EEC); it would strengthen the movement to greater and greater bureaucracy.

There were others who thought differently. Many, in those circles and outside them, looked at the power of the unions and their political agenda and posed the question acutely but despairingly: “What choice do we have? Rule by Brussels or rule by Moscow?” In the circumstances, rule by Brussels seemed preferable.

There were those, largely the economists around the IEA, who saw membership of the Common Market as the only possible way of opening up the British economy to free market reforms and destroying the socialism in all but name that had engrossed the country in the post-War years.

Their equivalent are the few French free-marketeers who are despairingly battling for the opening up of the single market and see the no vote as a set back to all their hopes.

And there were many who have come to Britain as a refuge from the totalitarian states of the Continent and were horrified by the growing tendency to look inward, to ignore the world, to feel scared. They thought of the EEC as a way of opening the country up again.

I do not recall a great deal of the actual campaign, beyond a sense of unfairness at the famous three documents that were sent to every household: in favour, against and the supposedly neutral government one, that was, actually in favour.

I do, however, recall one particular radio discussion, which took place some time in 1971 or 1972, that is, before Parliament passed the European Communities Act. Usually, as we know, the BBC picked individuals from the no side who put people’s backs up with their various arguments that were easily demolished.

This time, they made a mistake. I think it was Angus Maude MP, but I may be wrong. He was arguing extremely ably and cogently that we should not go into this organization because it was not democratic.

Hmmm, I thought. That is interesting. I wonder what the opposing argument will be. It came fast and was unsatisfactory by any standards: of course, it is democratic, said whoever was arguing in favour, all its members are democracies.

This seemed to me so absurd, that I never took another argument in favour of membership seriously again. I remained convinced of the absurdity of it all during the referendum campaign (those cosmetic changes did not amount to much, after all) and am still convinced.

I do not think we shall have to mark another thirtieth anniversary. Against all odds, we have seen the collapse of the Soviet system, though not of socialist ideology. There is no question in my mind: very soon we shall see the collapse of this statist, corporatist political system as well. This time we must make sure that we scotch the ideology, too.

Alas, Jack Straw does not call the shots

2005-06-03T16:16:00.000+01:00

You wonder whether our politicians and journalists have any idea about what is going on around them. For instance, has Jack Straw or, for that matter, Tony Blair realized that they no longer call the shots?

Clearly not. According to all the newspaper reports, all supposedly based on inside information, Mr Straw and Mr Blair disagreed on the question of what to do next.

Mr Straw, who wants to back away from the European Constitution and its ratification, seems to have prevailed. He will make a statement to Parliament on Monday in which he will tell all those who will listen that the European Union Bill, which would introduce British ratification and also put the referendum in place, is to be postponed sine die.

It could be brought back, chirrup the Whitehall sources, but is unlikely to be. Well, that’s as may be.

The sad truth is that neither Mr Blair, nor Mr Straw, nor even those self-important Whitehall spokespersons decide what happens next. The only body that can decide to postpone, abandon or otherwise deal with the ratification of the treaty that is to bring in the Constitution is the European Council. And that does not meet till June 16 – 17.

At present there is a great deal of toing and froing between all the various European leaders – running around like headless chickens is another way of putting it.

Prime Ministers, Presidents and Chancellors are crossing and re-crossing the Continent, hoping that by lots of jaw-jaw they will achieve some kind of an agreement as to how to proceed, bearing in mind that their aim is not to fulfil the democratic will of the people or even “to listen” to the people, as the egregious Margot keeps saying but to push through further European integration.

To which end various ideas have been advanced: give France and the Netherlands the chance to vote again (actually, they do not want to vote again, having told the political elites quite clearly what their opinion is); carry on with the ratification; kick it into the long grass and see what other methods can be used to bring in the various parts of the document.

Toby Helm, of the Daily Telegraph, along with all British journalists, sees it all as a fight between gallant little Blair and the rest of them. One can’t help thinking that he has been reading a different set of news from the rest of us:

“His eight years as Prime Minister have seen him fight the French and Germans over the British rebate, the Common Agricultural Policy, tax harmonisation,European defence, who should be commission president and president of the European Central Bank, and much more.”

Well, I guess he has not lost the rebate yet, but only because that particular argument has not yet come to a head. The other great fights either did not really happen (Commission President – Barroso was quite a popular candidate with many who did not want Verhofstadt; tax harmonisation is being pushed forward by the ECJ) or Blair lost or gave away.

Who remembers what the CAP fight was about? Who cares? Nothing much changed in any significant way.

European defence was Mr Blair’s idea, or so he kept telling us after the St Malo meeting (actually he was tricked by the French but who’s counting?); the president of the ECB is Trichet, in defiance of the Maastricht Treaty but in accordance with French ideas on how things should run.

One wonders what the much more is.

In the meantime, Tony Blair is telling his “rivals” (shurely he meansh colleagues and partners) that they must go back to basics, whatever they might be.

It seems to us in Veritas at London Assembly that it is Mr Blair and Mr Straw who must go back to basics – the basics of the way the EU works. They have no power to call off the ratification. It is, as so many other things, an EU competence.

You cannot be serious

2005-06-02T18:30:00.000+01:00

Not content with writing self-pitying, self-justifying nonsense on her blog, the fragrant Commissar has also spoken to EUObserver.

She has welcomed a plan from some NGOs that a European Round Table of Democracy should be established. Who are these NGOs, those self-selecting, unaccountable organizations that present themselves as arbiters of how democracy should be run?

And what did the fragrant but extremely foolish Commissar say?

“I'm prepared for immediate support of such initiatives to develop more participatory democracy in Europe.”

Well, how nice and how generous. The only thing is we already have participatory democracy in Europe and it has developed over many centuries in some countries and slightly less time in others. It is called parliamentary democracy and consists of elected legislatures and executives that are responsible and accountable to the people who elect them and understand the principles whereby legislation is carried out.

Which part of "no" don't they understand?

2005-06-02T18:25:00.000+01:00

Margot Wallström, let me remind our readers, gets a salary most of us cannot even begin to dream about as a Commissioner and Vice-President of the Commission. She also gets enormous expenses and a chance to travel round the planet: morning meetings with President Hosni Mubarak, crocodile tears shed over the Amazon rainforest; you name it, she’s been there and we paid for it.

Then there is the staff. The fragrant Commissar seems to have an endless supply of spokespersons, minions, speech-writers (another one by the name of David Monkcom has just made his appearance), blog moderators and other odds and sods. To be fair, none of them seem to be able to prevent her from making a fool of herself but there is a limit to all human endeavour.

What is she supposed to do in return for all these goodies? Communicate. She is the Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation … woops … I mean Communication.

Her main job at the moment is to sell the European Constitution to the people of Europe. In this she has failed.

Despite endless wittering on the part of the politicians and the media, one cannot quite ignore the fact that all but one of the ratifications were carried out in countries where the governments refused to ask their people whether they liked the idea of a 400 page constitution.

Far from representing 50 per cent of the population of the EU, these ratifications represent nobody but the local political elites, who dream dreams of Margot-size troughs.

That left Spain, where under 40 per cent of the electorate bothered to turn out, so enthusiastic were they about the whole project.

So we come to the first hurdles: France and Netherlands. The European collective, led by President Barroso and Vice-President Wallström received a collective bloody nose.

Most of us would say that the propaganda chief … woops … Communications Commissioner (a.k.a. the fragrant Commissar) can be said to have failed.

Will she resign? In the words of SecGen Kofi Annan, father of Kojo of food-for-oil scandal, “Hell, no.”

Nobody resigns these days. Annan would not dream of it, having presided over some of the most disastrous events in the disaster-prone history of the UN.

President Chirac might find himself in a criminal court if he resigns and retires into private life, so he resigned his Prime Minister instead.

Prime Minister Balkenende holds his head and wails but will manfully carry on with a project most of his countrymen dislike.

And the fragrant Margot? Well, according to her blog,

“I cannot hide that I‘m disappointed with the result of the French Referendum. So are many of us who have been active on the ‘Yes‘ side and who have believed that the Constitution would give us better opportunities to work together in the European project. At the same time the result is clear and has to be respected.”

Ummm. And how does she intend to respect this very clear result? Well, first of all by analyzing what kind of no it was. Was it a positive no or a negative one? Was it people saying go away, we do not want this constitution or was it people really saying, please, please, can we have more of this terrible farrago?

Guess which kind of no the fragrant Commissar thinks it is?

“I have met a number of those who participated and said ‘No‘ in this referendum but who believe in European integration. They say that they don‘t think that this Constitution is the solution but they want European integration to continue and they believe in the European project. It is clear that people voted ‘No‘ for many reasons.”

One would quite like to know whom the fragrant Commissar met and who actually came up with that arrant nonsense? You never hear of people meeting her. Has anyone even admitted to seeing her anywhere? Come to think of it, has anyone admitted to hearing her infamous speech in Terezin?

So, they are going to listen more. “We” have not been listening. Why not, for goodness’ sake? People have been speaking up loud and clear for some time. But, of course, if listening means hearing comments like we voted no because we want more integration, then one rather wonders what the point of the exercise would be.

“On the ‘Yes‘ side, this is not a time for blame games. We have been playing that game for too long, Institutions blaming each other, Member States blaming ‘Brussels‘ and so on. Instead we all have to take responsibility and see how we can mend this as best as we can and look to the future. Europe has changed. European citizens are better educated, they are more demanding, including what they ask from their politicians and their elected leaders, and this requires great leadership for the future.”

I suppose it would be too much to ask them to reconsider the whole project as being rather noxious, economically unsound, politically authoritarian and deeply unstable? No, I thought not.

Some of us can still remember elderly judges, like Sir Quentin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham and Lord Chancellor) pronouncing in fruity tones during rape trials that in certain circumstances a woman who says no really means yes. Strangely enough, no woman every agreed with that statement.

It seems that the fragrant Margot, a self-proclaimed feminist, who rejoices over Kuwaiti women getting the vote (though not managing to find out why more Egyptian women wear the veil) belongs to the same “no means yes” brigade.

One more river to cross

2005-06-02T00:49:00.000+01:00

Well, the Dutch have done it. As one of their organizers put it to me:

"Prime Minister Balkenende asked us to do better than France. We sure did. 63% NO 27 % YES (now where are all those blanco votes...)"

What can one say? They are worthy descendants of those Hollanders who fought for liberty against Spanish oppression back in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

Tax Freedom Day

2005-05-31T16:49:00.000+01:00

It gets to be later and later every year. Today, May 31 is Tax Freedom Day. Every penny you earn from now on, as the Adam Smith Institute, who calculate such matters (don’t ask the Chancellor to do it, his offspring is probably better at sums), says will be yours.

Unfortunately, that means that every penny you earned from January 1 until today went to the government. Jolly, huh?

Next year, I expect, tax freedom day will be even later. And what is Her Majesty’s Opposition doing about it? Bleating, that’s what, and putting up little Georgie Porgie Osborne to be chewed up and spat out by the Chancellor.

Well, Veritas has the answer and, mark our words, people will start listening soon, faced as they are with the let’s tax them to death Labour Party and the let’s tax them to death but not immediately, only after we have elected another leader Conservative Party.

Veritas believes in a big overarching reform: a flat tax. It will make life simpler for people because tax forms will be simpler; it will save trees and the environment because tax forms will be shorter; it will leave people with more of their earned money to decide what they want to spend it on; and it will give a kick start to the economy, which it badly needs.

And it will give the power mad, we-know-what’s-best-for-you politicians a good kick in a certain part of the anatomy. You know it makes sense.

Vive la France!

2005-05-31T09:34:00.000+01:00

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to read of our joy at the result of the French referendum. Being simple souls and seeing the European project as one that does nothing but harm to the whole of Europe, we do not hold with the complicated thinking that says it would have been better for the French to vote yes, though narrowly and for the constitution to be defeated by Britain.

It must be defeated. End of story. Whatever it takes and wherever it takes us. Because, it is only then that we can focus on the real referendum: on Britain’s relationship with Europe.

So a shock to the whole European project is extremely salutary. It looks that there will be a second one on Wednesday as the Dutch are also set to vote no.

It is no longer that “peripheral” countries like Britain, Denmark, the other Scandinavians, Ireland or the unpredictable East Europeans who are causing difficulties. There is trouble at the very core of the whole project: France and the Netherlands.

Who knows what would have happened if Germany or Italy had been allowed to vote?

In the meantime, there is pressure on the other countries to carry on with the ratification, which could provide several other member states with the opportunity of voting no.

Tony Blair would like to abandon this particular process but it is not for him to say. The decision will have to be taken by the entire European Council that meets on June 16 – 17.

Our best guess is that they will try to ratify the Constitution in as many countries as possible and hope for something to turn up before November of next year, the final date. In the meantime, they will try to smuggle as much as possible in through various back door agreements.

In the meantime, Veritas-UKIP at the London Assembly, wishes the French well and offer a special prize for their amazing achievement: the 2012 Olympic Games. We are sure they will be very successful with them and if the money is overspent, well, the French Government has always been good at raising extra funds somewhere or other.

Mr Blair goes travelling again

2005-05-24T16:52:00.000+01:00

This time the Prime Minister will be leaving his happily squabbling Labour Party (the only party in British history that wants to get rid of a victorious leader) in order to talk to his colleagues in the G-8 countries, prior to a meeting at Gleneagles.

As ever, the preliminary negotiations are everything as the meeting must come up with some kind of a consensus. The trouble is that what is bothering Mr Blair, as Prime Minister of the country that holds the presidency of the G-8, is not what is at the forefront of other politicians’ minds (or the electorate’s).

Mr Blair, for instance, does not seem to have noticed that there is the odd economic problem or two in most western countries and, certainly, in almost all European countries. Even in Britain, our boasts ring hollow when we survey the shrinking private sector and the bloated public one, not to mention problems such as pensions, health, education, etc etc.

At least, unemployment is not as high as on the Continent, however the various figures are arrived at.

But this is not what bothers Mr Blair. Nor is it the war against terrorism or the need to form strong alliances across the world not just in the fusty and musty world of EU politics.

His two top items are climate change and aid to Africa. And, sad to say, he is getting no help on either of those from anybody, possibly because just about everybody sees the complete lunacy and stupidity of those two ideas.

It seems that certain Labour MPs feel that the problem lies in the European countries not being able to decide on a united front in order to put pressure on America, as ever the villain of the piece. (What of Russia or Japan, one asks oneself.)

The Guardian is sympathetic to that point of view, of course, but finds it diffiult to avoid the natural conclusion: nobody wants to support Our Tone.

The first item is climate change. This is the new buzz expression that has supplanted global warming. The trouble with global warming was the lack of proof, the lack of understanding as to how it might manifest itself and what it might lead to and the lack of evidence that it was human behaviour that caused it.

With “climate change” some of the problems disappear. You do not have to prove it because it is inevitable and unstoppable. The only constant thing about climate has been that it has changed, at least in the northern hemisphere.

Accounts of life in England and Europe show that a mini-ice age struck round about the fourteenth century and did not let up till the early nineteenth. Before that there was wine produced in this country and Greenland was a populated land.

During it the winters were so cold that there were fairs with ox-roasting on the frozen Thames. Then it changed again. It is possible the change is faster now, though no evidence has been produced and it is equally possible that the Gulf Stream is changing directions which will have climatic implications.

While this needs to be studied and ways of dealing with the possible problems worked out, it cannot be stopped or in any way affected. (Though one could argue that a little less hot air from all these dire meetings would reduce the greenhouse emissions.)

Still, Mr Blair is running around, demanding that America fall into line over emissions, that other countries, notably, China, India and Brazil do the same or something similar, disregarding the clear evidence that what is needed for a better and cleaner environment is economic development not the unsupported and largely discredited assertions of the Kyoto-freaks.

The Guardian gets huffy, too:

“Britain had expected a deal would already be assured by now to write off the debts owed by poor nations to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

The government had also hoped that the US would be offering more on climate change than lifting trade barriers to allow US enterprise to help developing countries with clean fuel technologies.”

Surely, what the Americans are offering is the best possible idea. There is nothing you can do about climate change, so we shall help developing countries to work out clean fuel technologies? Alas, no, since it is the fixed certainty of the climate change conspiracy theorists that the most important thing in the world is to shackle the American economy. Whether that would be of any use, they care not.

As for the whole Millennium Plan for helping Africa, that has steadily become nothing but a gleam in Mr Blair’s frantic eyes and a self-publicity tool for film stars, models, rock singers and huffing-puffing politicians like Hizonner the Mayor of LondON.

He is very keen on climate change and aid to Africa being on top of the list to be discussed by anybody. Unfortunately, he seems to have got some of the organizations wrong, proudly telling the world in one of his many glossy propaganda sheets that he has persuaded the government that the main themes of the EU presidency should be, our old friends climate change and increase in aid to kleptocratic bloodthirsty oppressors of African people.

That is his European policy and the justification for money spent on London House in Brussels, the glossy LondonLine Europe and some other nebulous organization, London’s European Forum.

So far, it is the G-8 that may tackle those two, while the EU presidency will stick to the budget and what to do with countries that vote no to the Constitution.

Unfortunately, even the Guardian has had to admit that it is not just the United States that is telling Mr Blair and his minions to go away and leave them alone.

“In addition to the resistance from the US, fiscal constraints in several EU countries will also make a deal difficult to secure. In a sign of the hurdles ahead, fellow EU states yesterday spurned an attempt by the international development secretary, Hilary Benn, to win support for a commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid.
Germany and Italy have proved difficult to budge on the 0.7% timetable discussed by Mr Benn yesterday, and Mr Blair's meeting with Mr Schröder is seen as crucial in providing a united European position that would put pressure on the US to follow suit.”

Some of the Labour politicians who think that all this can and should be overcome would do well to read Stephen Pollard, former Fabian policy wonk in the Times Online yesterday.

Mr Pollard repeats all the arguments about the idiocy of “trade justice” that prevents developing countries from trading and developing; of abolishing debts and increasing aid that would reward governments for their disastrous policy and give them more money to siphon off.

“Much Third World poverty is the result of governments taking the decision,in effect, to remain poor. The conditions under which they can prosper are known, and available, if those in power choose to avail themselves of them.

As Hernando de Soto (who has done much to alleviate poverty, not least through his seminal book, The Mystery of Capital) points out, it is easy to make a country prosperous. It needs only security of life and property, and markets in which property rights can be valued and traded. The West’s prosperity is built on property rights and the rule of law; it is the denial of those rights which causes poverty and prevents growth.”

He then adds:

“If those behind Make Poverty History were serious about ending poverty they would be campaigning for property rights and the rule of law — for better governance, in other words. And they would campaign not to abolish free trade but to extend it — attacking, for instance, the EU Common Agricultural Policy and its immoral tariff barriers against the developing world.

The EU spends €2.7 billion a year subsidising farmers to grow sugar beet; at the same time it imposes high tariff barriers against sugar imports from the developing world. And the EU’s agricultural tariffs average 20 per cent, rising to a peak of 250 per cent on certain products. The European market remains barely open to the majority of low-cost textiles from the developing world.”

It seems unlikely that any of that will be raised at the G-8 meeting or the subsequent EU Presidency. Instead, there will be more hot air and the sight of Prime Minister Blair running up air miles in his attempts to reverse climate change, whatever that might mean.

Great historic quotes # 2

2005-05-23T18:49:00.000+01:00

With thanks to our colleague in Ireland, Anthony Coughlan, who reminds us of something Otto von Bismarck wrote in 1880:

“I have always found the word 'Europe' on the lips of people who wantedsomething from others which they dared not demand under their own names.”

Nothing much has changed then.

They use fruitier language in Eastern Europe

2005-05-23T18:38:00.000+01:00

In an online interview Mirek Topolánek, the leader of the opposition ODS in the Czech Republic described the European Commission as “shit”, using for some reason the English word.

He also added that no sober person could vote for it. Will they roll out barrels of Czech beer for the referendum?

One must not misoverestimate one's enemies

2005-05-23T15:14:00.000+01:00

That particular neologism was suggested to me by a Swedish doctor, who, being foreign, understand English jokes far too well. His point was that President Bush’s “misunderestimate” should be used and developed into “misoverestimate”.

I have finally managed to look at the infamous advertisements run by some of the Dutch MEPs, that have caused an outcry in that country.

It is difficult to tell what is fuelling the growing Dutch opposition to the Constitution: it could be a general discontent with the way Dutch and European politics are going; it could be the now officially acknowledged miscalculation over the euro; it could be the shambles of the Eurovision song contest (is that not a perennial problem?).

It would be very good to think that it is, in fact, the outrageous pro-Constitution video, fronted by four MEPs that convinced a number of those who had not intended to vote, to go out on June 1 and say no to the whole caboodle.

The pictures and words are clearly comprehensible even if one’s knowledge of Dutch is limited. In effect, they are saying that without the Constitution there will be more Holocausts, more Srebrenices, more Madrid bombs.

The Dutch are very sensitive on the first two issues, having been accused of collaborating under the Nazi occupation (though their record is no worse and often better than many others’) and being the ones who supplied the particular battalion that first disarmed the men and boys of Srebrenice, then effectively handed them over to the Serb militia. They were never seen again alive.

To be fair, again, the Srebrenice debacle happened under UN auspices and, while the Dutch government conducted and exhaustive enquiry, produced a report and resigned, the UN and its leadership merely shrugged its collective shoulders.

It is, nevertheless, an odd one to bring up, not least because the Yugoslav war was the largest in post-1945 Europe and coincided with the creation of the European Union.

The EU was around during all the years that the Al-Qaeda cells grew and multiplied in Spain and it is not quite clear how it could prevent another possible bomb attack similar to the one in Madrid last year.

One can go on arguing the historical imbecility of all this propaganda and, indeed, we all have, not least the people who responded to Margot Wallström’s stupidity over Theresienstadt.

The question does remain as to why the yes campaign considers it a good idea to keep coming up with these arguments. Do they really believe what they say: that only further integration and the creation of a European state will stand between us and another Franco-German war, another Holocaust, another massacre, another terrorist attack?

If they do believe it, how do their minds work? Have they looked at the history of the specific events? It looks like the answer to that might be no, as there is a marked tendency to refer to such events as the Holocaust as something that just happened as a result of bad karma, presumably, not as something that was brought about by real people, influenced by real ideologies.

The yes campaigners or, at least, some of them, presumably, do genuinely believe that without the EU Germany will invade France (or, alternatively, the French will invade Germany, specifically the Ruhr); that without the constitution gas chambers will become functional again across Europe; that a yes vote in France or the Netherlands will guarantee that terrorists will never strike again.

And yet, they are allowed to run around unsupervised and even to make public pronouncements. It is a rum world.

Business opinion begs to differ

2005-05-22T13:35:00.000+01:00

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph came up with a little piece that ought to put a dent into the unfounded arguments produced by Hizonner the Mayor and Lord Coe about the benefits the blessed Olympics will bring to London. But, clearly, nothing pierces their carapace of self-delusion and self-satisfaction.

Briefly mentioning the "100" businesses (actually 173) that are part of the Marshgate Lane Business Group and their complaints about the inadequacy of the offered compensation (but not the lunacy of destroying successful businesses and extensive local employment in the name of some nebulous future “benefits”) the article quotes a report produced by Capital Economics, an independent consulting firm.

“Capital Economics, a consulting firm, estimated that the extra Olympics construction spending would be equal to just 0.2pc of Britain's annual economic output. The 300,000 jobs created would mostly be temporary, or replace other jobs, and boost the economy by just 0.1pc. The total benefit would be 0.34pc of GDP over seven years - or just 0.05pc per annum.”

And that is not counting the huge outlay that will have to be paid for in the years and decades to come. See Sydney, Montreal, Athens, passim.

Meanwhile, some robotic spokesman for London 2012 repeated in a Dalek-like fashion:

“It will be a massive boost to London and the UK's international profile if we do win the Games.”

Excuse me? Are you listening? Is there intelligent life there? It will not be a massive boost to London, as all rational business reports say; it will destroy local businesses and local employment; it will destroy an irreplaceable area of wildlife diversity and all for what?

A massive boost to “London and the UK’s international profile”? Does this Dalek Jnr know how many people flood into London from all over the world every year? And can he/she speculate on how many of them will stay away in 2012 because of the Olympics? It’s what happened in Greece.

Bring on the comic duo

2005-05-22T13:23:00.000+01:00

Scotland on Sunday reports that, according to a Downing Street spokesman, the great comic double act, Blair and Brown, will move into action after the results from France and the Netherlands come in, to sell the Constitution to the people of Britain.

Remembering the effect Chirac’s involvement in France and certain Dutch politicians’ in Holland has had on the campaign, we on the no side should be greeting this news with joy.

This is especially true as either the spokesman or the Westminster correspondent of the newspaper has seriously misread the election results:

“TONY Blair and Gordon Brown will reprise the 'double act' that helped steer Labour to a third election victory in a desperate attempt to turn public opinion around and win support for the much-derided European constitution.”

Helped to steer? Given the size of the majority in the last parliament and the imbalance in the make-up of the constitutencies, there could have been no other result but a Labour victory. In fact, let us recall, the media was uniformly predicting a much larger one than the electorate delivered.

As it has been noted already, had the Conservative Party been a little more forthcoming on some issues, particularly Europe, the majority would have even been smaller.

The great comic duo has steered Labour to a point where it lost many thousands of votes and has come back into power on 26 per cent of it. Hardly something to be proud of but, not content with “dying” once on a Saturday night in the provinces, the comic duo wants to repeat its performance.

A strange sequence of questions

2005-05-19T20:55:00.000+01:00

We were alerted in the Great Glass Egg of an apparently growing support among Londoners for the 2012 Olympic Bid. According to Hizonner’s propaganda sheet, The Londoner, 79 per cent now support the bid, 12 per cent more than last October.

The piece had a picture of Nelson Mandela next to it, because, although that greatly admired statesman does not live in London, will not have to pay for the Olympics (not being a taxpayer in this city) and will not be in any way inconvenienced by it, he has come out in support.

What he actually said was:

“There is no city like London. It is a wonderfully diverse and open city providing a home to hundreds of different nationalities from all over the world. I can’t think of a better place than London to hold an event that unites the world.”

Setting aside the unwarranted assumption at the end of it (mostly the Olympics consist of endless rows, accusations of cheating, drug busts, political one-upmanship, when they do not collapse into an outright massacre as they did in Münich in 1972), the comment is carefully crafted to start with what is acknowledged to be a “good thing” – diversity and openness – then links it with an event that will unite the world, that is the Olympic Games.

Interestingly, the London Olympics Poll (alas, it is the only one of the ICM polls, whose link does not work) follows the same questionable path.

The first question is completely irrelevant but serves to establish the positive framework:

“Some people say that London is the most diverse city in the world, with its mix of cultures, languages and ethnicities. Do you think that such a mix of people and cultures is a good thing, quite a good thing, quite a bad thing or a very bad thing?”

The surprising thing is that 9 per cent dared to say that it was quite a bad thing or a very bad thing. And, of course, there was the inevitable 4 per cent of don’t knows, who, presumably, tried to argue that on the one hand it was quite good, on the other, perhaps not so good.

Having established that 87 percent of those asked are on the side of the angels on matters of cultural diversity, the poll moved on to another irrelevant question:

“Are you aware that Nelson Mandela recently came out in support of London hosting the 2012 Olympic ames?”

And what has that to do with anything? Nothing, of course, but the name Nelson Mandela gives a frisson of righteousness to any cause he chooses to support (and there seems to be a great many of them with no particular rationale behind them).

60 per cent were aware, 39 per cent were not and 1 per cent clearly couldn’t care less.

So, are we actually, now going to get to the crux of the questionnaire? Well, yes and no. The next question was a seriously weaselly one. Instead of presenting various arguments for and against staging the Olympic Games in London, those polled were asked:

“To what extent do you agree or disagree with Nelson Mandela’s view that because London is a diverse city, providing a home to hundreds of different nationalities, it would be the best place to hold the Olympic Games?”

In effect you are asked to dare to disagree with Mr Mandela and with the wonderful aspect of London’s diversity. Who could possibly do that?

And, indeed, 72 per cent agreed that they wanted to support Nelson Mandela’s anodyne comments about London being a diverse city, not asking themselves why this should be his concern and how much he is going to pay.

Having paved the way with three questions that established the Olympic Games in London as a GOOD THING, ICM finally got to the nub of the matter, asking:

“Would you support or oppose London being chosen as the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games? Is that strongly or tend to support/oppose?”

No information, no arguments, just a great deal of positive gush as preliminary, with the respondent gradually led to the important question, slipped in almost unawares.

Only after this were those supportive asked for their various reasons (with no counter-arguments presented at all). Then those who were opposed were asked why. They were not presented with any positive arguments.

All in all, this poll may be quoted as a textbook case of how not to conduct one but it has provided Hizonner and his propaganda rag, The Londoner with a useful headline and some spurious “popular” arguments in favour of a basically unpopular project.

How they change

2005-05-18T19:20:00.000+01:00

The Sunday Telegraph three days ago came out with an interesting story. Apparently, for those who did not bother to read it, the newly appointed Minister for Tourism (a wonderfully Ruritanian title) used to oppose the British bid for the 2012 Olympic Games.

It is, of course, the only issue that will occupy the unfortunate James Purnell in the next few weeks, tourism to Britain otherwise being something that just happens whether the government likes it or not.

It seems that back in the dark ages of the pre-Olympic bid Mr Purnell wrote an article in which he described the bid as a waste of £5 billion and the “wrong priority” for Britain.

Mind you his right priorities are nothing to be overjoyed about. He suggested that the money could be used to build another 2,000 primary schools. Well, it is an improvement on the “more hospitals” argument but not much. Do we need another 2,000 primary schools? And if their standard will be as lamentable as that of the existing ones, is there any point in building them?

But some of Mr Purnell’s arguments were perfectly sound and, indeed, Veritas at the London Assembly has made them as well.

“The last thing we should be doing is using billions to exacerbate that imbalance. Why spend billions making London's overcrowding worse, for one summer in 10 years' time, and on infrastructure that will only be used for 17 days of competition? If the goal is to regenerate east London, the money would be better spent on just that - regeneration.”

It is particularly silly, as Mr Purnell did not mention either because he did not know or did not care, to talk about “regeneration” if the process involves relocating and harming existing successful businesses that, presumably, employ local people on a more permanent basis than 17 days.

Still, all that is immaterial, as Mr Purnell has had a Damascene conversion, not entirely unconnected with the fact that he is now the Minister for Tourism. He is now a full-hearted supporter of the bid, all reservations having been shed on the way in to his office.

“This was an article written just over two years ago, before the decision to bid was taken and when there was a genuine debate. As I said in the article, I always thought Britain could mount a fantastic bid and I will fully support it. I have also been convinced by the experiences of the North-West in hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and the great long-term benefits to Manchester and the area.”

The “long-term benefits to Manchester and the area” are never quite spelled out and, in any case, are a little premature, the Commonwealth Games taking place less than three years ago. But even two years is an eternity in politics, as Mr Purnell can testify.

A terrible thought strikes me: would the Dear Leader of Veritas at the London Assembly become a supporter of the Bid if he were offered the Ministry of Tourism?

Post-script on the tranzis

2005-05-13T20:19:00.000+01:00

Supachai Panitchpakdi, the outgoing chief of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will not starve. He has been appointed as secretary general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Wednesday, as only the Chinese News Agency saw fit to report.

He thanked SecGen Kofi Annan (father of Kojo of food-for-oil notoriety):

“I am profoundly honoured that Secretary General Annan has shown such confidence in me and I can assure him and all UN member governments that I will do everything in my power to ensure that trade becomes an ever more vital tool for development.”

Of course, he will. Just as the UN has done so far. Anyway, that’s a load off my mind.

News from the tranzis

2005-05-13T19:58:00.000+01:00

There are times when I wonder whether those organizations that are taking it upon themselves to run the world have not become so “drunk with sight of power” that they actually have started to bring about their own destruction.

Take the question of John Bolton’s nomination to be United States ambassador to the UN. You’d think all the tranzi-lovers would jump at the chance. Here is someone who will take the decrepit, corrupt, unaccountable, unreformable organization by the scruff of its neck and give it a good shake with the blessing of the largest donor.

At best, this will reform the UN. At worst, a little more time will be gained to root away in the trough.

After all, what was our greatest fear when the Santer Commission resigned, came back and finally went away (mostly)? That in their wisdom the member states will choose some upright Scandinavian (not the fragrant Margot, of course) who will try to put the whole mess into order, fail naturally, but, in the meantime lose us some time.

Instead, bless their little cotton socks, they chose Romano Prodi, who proceeded to make a laughing stock of the whole enterprise. This does not mean that the Commission or the EU will disappear tomorrow but a good deal of the growing disillusionment can be traced back to that fateful decision.

The row about Bolton, when all is said and done, boils down to the fact that he does not think very highly of the UN or other transnational organization, believes in democracy and thinks international politics should be conducted by individual states, preferably liberal and constitutional democracies.

Up with this the tranzis and their supporters will not put.

Well, they are playing into our hands. If the idea of a forcible reform of that bloated organization is not to be countenanced, then clearly, the best thing to do is to let it stew in its own unsavoury juice until it disintegrates through the disgust of all sane and sensible people.

Many of us think that the UN is unreformable because of its basic structure and assumptions. It is completely unaccountable and its pretensions to some form of world government are laughable. Most of its members do not subscribe to the humanitarian, freedom-loving principles that are supposed to be at the heart of the organization.

Bolton seems to believe that it could, conceivably, be changed back to a peace-keeping organization (though not, perhaps, after its troops’ behaviour in Africa and the Balkans). It is entirely possible that he will not be given the chance even to try.

Well, so be it. The UN is clearly doomed though its putrifying corpse will be with us for some time to come. And its death rattle is being brought about by its supporters in the US and the NGOs. A delightful irony.

Meanwhile, the one potentially useful organization, the WTO also seems to have taken leave of its senses. It selected Pascal Lamy, the former Commissar for International Trade, as the next Director-General.

This may have been part of an agreement between the US and Europe, i.e. France, to get Wolfowitz into the World Bank. Europe spoke with one voice and that voice turned out to be French.

At any rate, the former US Trade Representative, Henry Zoellick, is on record as saying that he thought Lamy would be very good at the WTO. But then Zoellick, now Condoleezza Rice’s Deputy is known as a man who is “sensitive” to the concerns of Europeans and NGOs. The United State government remained very publicly neutral on the contest between Lamy and the Uruguayan Carlos Pérez del Castillo. Perhaps, they have written the WTO off.

The Economist Global Agenda in a tellingly titled piece “Lamy to the slaughter?” commiserates with the incoming Director-General on the difficulties he will be facing in trying to revive the Doha Round and generally enthuse the world with the idea of free trade, when enthusiasm for it “seems to be on the wane”.

Well, now, how interesting. The Doha Round was killed off largely because of the intransigence of the EU. And who was the negotiator? Pascal Lamy, the man who gives protectionism a bad name.

What about this waning of free trade enthusiasm? There are certainly fearsome discussions going on in most developed countries but there are also serious negotiations to create a free trade area across the two Americas.

Developing countries are beginning to understand that it is not aid but free trade that will help them to develop (NGOs permitting).

Yes, there are problems and worries but if there is one segment of the world that is leading the rearguard action against free trade, it is the European Union, with France in the lead. Pascal Lamy is a worthy representative of that school of thought.

Ah well, good-bye WTO. It’s been nice knowing you.

“For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!”

Dear Diary

2005-05-13T18:35:00.000+01:00

The fluffy bunny Margot is back. Gone is the termagant that screamed at the DUP MEP, James Allister who had the temerity to question her on her unfortunate speech in Terezin. She is back in fluffy mode, chattering away about Swedish people wearing warm clothes, visiting her mother, sharing a joke with her brother – all to prove how wonderfully human the not-so-fragrant Commissar really is.

Why did she not blog for over a fortnight? Well, heck, she was travelling and, honey, you know what that’s like: not a moment to oneself, no way of communicating, just one dam’ thing after another. Clearly, the lady has not heard of laptops, blackberries or mobile telephones, all of which she can have at the taxpayers’ expense.

Her gifted and multi-talented staff can, presumably, teach her to use some or all of these electronic devices, though they seem to have failed in ensuring that she does not put her foot in every time she opens her mouth.

So where did the dear thing travel? Well, she went to Paris where she made her first ever speech in French and looked scared. With a rather poor attempt at humour she adds:

“(Yes, you can make a good joke about that, my UK-anti-EU-friends!)”

Aaaah! Bless!! Isn’t she cute? As if we needed to make jokes about her French when we have her to laugh at.

With great pleasure she tells us that

“The kind of exaggerations and misrepresentations of the Constitution presented by for example Jean-Marie le Pen has moved people to the Yes-side and they feel much more confident now.”

Well, maybe, though the proof of the pudding remains in the eating. Will the Swedish electorate be able to vote on the basis of certain exaggerations and misrepresentations the fragrant one “presented” in the Czech Republic? Not if she and her colleagues have anything to do with it.

Then she went to Budapest, where she jogged by the Danube. From personal knowledge I can confirm that it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world but you do not see anything if you jog. Try walking, Margot, looking and listening. Then you might work out that the Hungarian joke about the breakfast being “half a pig and some vodka” could not have been entirely accurate. It is pálinka they drink in Hungary but, hey, they are only East Europeans. How could she tell the difference?

Then on to the Czech Republic. And we come to her self-pitying account of what happened:

“I gave a short speech outside the social centre in Terezin. Some newspapers totally misrepresented what I said. There was not one word about the Constitution in the speech! I spoke about the meaning of Terezin for Europeans, how it can influence our thinking about Europe. And certainly such a link Constitution – Holocaust, deviously constructed by one newspaper, I find totally disrespectful to those survivors who were present to attempt to make this connection.

I think it is incredible that a mark of respect for the past and the suffering of the 35, 000 people who died in Terezin should be used in this way. My message was to outline the reality of the history of the European Union and the importance to ensure this never happens again. I stand by every one of my comments in Terezin. I felt also touched by the support I received from members of the Swedish Jewish community.”

Well, dear Commissar, I do think that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging. The link she gives after those paragraphs is, naturally, to the second version of the speech, which she delivered because time was short. The difference between the two is one sentence.

Her knowledge of the “reality and history” of the European Union and, indeed, of Europe, as many have noted, is lacking in essential facts and information and the “support” from members of the Swedish Jewish community, as we know from Dr Gennsler, has not been unqualified.

The most appalling sentence of that whinge is undoubtedly

“I think it is incredible that a mark of respect for the past and the suffering of the 35, 000 people who died in Terezin should be used in this way.”

Yes, indeed, we think it incredible, too. So why did the fragrant Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation do it? Whatever was in her tiny fluffy mind originally, I expect she is regretting she ever set foot in that place, let alone opened her mouth.

Memo to Margot - 2

2005-05-10T17:01:00.000+01:00

My apologies to our readers for returning to this subject but reading some of the later comments on Margot’s blog of over two weeks ago and the actual speeches the silly woman made in Teresin and Prague, I could not help thinking that the lady might benefit from a little good advice.

Setting aside the huffing and puffing on the part of the moderator and various other of the fragrant Commissar’s spokespersons that proved nothing except that the Daily Telegraph article flicked them all on the raw and that they know nothing about British politics (one silly little twit thought it was very funny to chortle about UKIP not getting any seats –ho-ho-ho) there are extremely useful links to the two speeches and the text of the remarkably silly statement by the Commissioners.

I am afraid Margot does make all the comments I refer to (wandering Jewish teacher and all) and shows only the most cursory knowledge of European history and of the Second World War, which appears to have been everybody’s fault without exception (all that greed and nationalism with no mention of Nazi ideology).

Her reference of what could bring about a new Holocaust is even stupider than the Daily Telegraph made out.

“We also came to this terrible point in our history through nationalistic pride and greed, and through international rivalry for wealth and power. It was precisely to put an end to such rivalry that the European Union was born – the first ever supranational organisation in which sovereign nations voluntarily share their sovereignty.

European nations may well disagree over all kinds of issues – but instead of fighting we now sit round a table and discuss them until we reach an agreement. It means a lot of compromises, but it works!

Yet there are those today who want to scrap the supranational idea. They want the European Union to go back to the old purely inter-governmental way of doing things.
I say those people should come to Terezin and see where that old road leads.”

Let me get this quite straight: if we do not have a supranational organization but inter-governmental negotiations, we necessarily have a Holocaust? Or is it the fragrant Commissar’s contention that there have never been negotiations in the past (or even in the present) without a supranational organization, run by unelected and unaccountable elites, which impose their ideas on all and sundry?

She also has a strange idea that if she keeps repeating that something is happening that it actually is happening.

“The founding fathers of the European Union set out to bind nations together, through shared sovereignty and joint decisonmaking.

I believe we now need a Europe that binds people together, through shared goals and dreams, shared friendship and respect.

Not just a Union of economics and politics but a union of hearts and minds. A new demos for a new democracy.

The transformation from a technocratic Europe to a truly democratic one, a real Union of people, is potentially as dramatic as the metamorphosis of a chrysalis into a butterfly. Terezin is, to me, an ideal place in which to begin that metamorphosis.”

Whether Terezin is the right place or not is irrelevant. But where has the silly woman managed to find a European demos? No-one else has noticed anything remotely resembling it.

And a union of hearts and minds? What a convenient substitute for actually asking people what they really think about integration. While some Swedish politicians are fighting for a referendum, that is for the people to have the right to express their opinion whether the political structure actually does reflect their dreams and shared goals, our Margot is not one of them.

In fact, the fragrant Commissar expressed certain reservations about having a referendum, on the grounds that it might encourage people to disagree and in her world, peace and harmony are achieved by a unanimous point of view.

So we come to the fragrant Commissar’s speech in Prague, where she once again forgot to mention Communism as being quite a nasty sort of regime. She sort of mentions that things were not all rosy in Eastern Europe but does not give a reason. In fact, let’s face it, our Margot is incapable of concise, straight thinking. Her image of fluffy bunniness has clearly affected her brain.

The rest of the speech is the usual blah about benefits of the EU, much of which has nothing to do with it – economic growth in the Czech Republic was stronger before it became a member.

There is a certain amount of bare-faced lying as in her assertion that it is the national governments with the European Parliament that pass the legislation, forgetting for the moment about the role played by her and her colleagues. And, anyway, does that not smack of inter-governmentalism that leads to Terezin and worse?

And, of course, the right to petition the Commission (the Commission? I thought it was the national governments and the European Parliament that legislated.) as long as you get 1 million signatures and even then the Commission has every right to refuse. In any case, this is a juvenile idea, guaranteed to produce any number of silly suggestions. Hardly a substitute for democratic accountability.

For a display of really muddled reasoning, I refer our readers to the fragrant Commissar’s ten reasons for signing up to the Constitution. A mish-mash of inaccuracies and irrelevancies, if ever I saw one. Space and an inability to keep a straight face, prevents me from quoting them but it is always better to read these things in the original.

Well, no, I can’t resist the last one:

“Finally, my tenth reason for supporting the Constitution is that it gives more direct power to the people. As I said earlier, if you manage to collect one million signatures in a significant number of EU countries, you can ask the Commission to propose a new law or policy.

In effect, this gives you a right of initiative that had previously been reserved for the Commission alone. That is real progress for direct democracy in Europe.”

It is not just history the woman is incapable of understanding but even ordinary political concepts. Her idea of direct democracy appears to have been culled from mediaeval fairy tales and legends of the righteous king listening to his people. For her information, many of us in various European countries have long gone beyond petitioning rulers to lend an ear to our pleas.

Memo to Margot - 1

2005-05-10T16:51:00.000+01:00

Dear Vice-President Wallström,

You seem to be getting into trouble with your pronouncements on history, religion, philosophy and politics. May I, therefore, in the interests of international solidarity help you out a little. Here are a few points you might like to follow, with background information further down.

1. Try to speak on subjects you are actually familiar with. Maudlin sentimentality does not make up for ignorance.

2. Make an effort actually to say what you mean. Unless you really do mean that there was sixty years of peace everywhere in Europe, do not say it. If you have no idea what kept the peace in the part of Europe you refer to, find out.

3. Do not try to curry favour by discarding cardinal aspects of your own religion. Christians will be offended and others will despise you. In other words, dear Margot, do not refer to Jesus Christ as a “wandering Jewish teacher [of] 2,000 years ago”.

4. If you are going to quote political thinkers, make sure they did not say anything that can be quoted back to you. As a rule of thumb, Edmund Burke, that great opponent of the French Revolution, supporter of tradition, constitution and democracy is a particularly difficult one from your point of view.

For example, you quote him saying: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Very nice. Well done. There are, of course, people across Europe who quote that one to urge people to fight the European Union and its rather undemocratic nature (Were you elected to be Vice-President, Margot?) but that is of little import.

But have you looked at his other sayings? For example: “But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice and madness, without tuition or restraint.”

Or have you seen this: “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.” You might like to contemplate that one as you look around at the unelected, unaccountable Commission that you so ably participate in.

Or, the next time somebody mentions, the names Jacques Barrot or José Barroso, or enquires too closely about the various unresolved scandals of corruption in the EU structures, you might like to remember the following saying by Burke: “Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”

5. And finally, dear Margot, may I suggest that you fight your own battles. Do not get the moderator of your rather infrequent blog to defend you. It is not edifying or attractive to hide behind your staff.

Two weeks and no posting

2005-05-09T18:45:00.000+01:00

It seems that the fragrant Commissar may be suffering from midnight sun madness. How else can one explain her behaviour?

She is supposed to be trying to persuade the people of Europe of the immense benefit the Constitution for Europe will bring to them. To this end, I believe, she started her ill-fated blog, which she now updates about once a fortnight if then. What on earth does she think is the point of that?

We have reached the point when the discussion on the comments section concerns everything and everyone rather than the fragrant Margot herself. She remains severely absent from it.

As we know, she has decided to make her views known by explaining to all and sundry that if we do not sign up to the Constitution, there will be another Holocaust. I presume she will explain that she was quoted out of context but bearing in mind the silliness of her other pronouncements and bearing in mind that the midnight sun is nearly upon us, I would not put anything past her.

But what is happening to the next posting? Margot, why are we waiting? You haven’t abandoned us, have you?

Why don't they just go for a flat tax?

2005-05-05T11:09:00.000+01:00

Not everything in the world revolves round today’s British election. In Germany they are still trying to figure out how to salvage their economy. And they have come up with another tax reform, this one aimed at small businesses that were closing down or, worse from the government’s point of view, moving out of Germany, because of the destrcutive inheritance tax.

Accroding to today’s Daily Telegraph, the German cabinet has approved plans to abolish inheritance tax for small family owned firms and to cut corporate tax rate from 25 to 19 per cent, bringing Germany’s combined federal, regional and local tax rate for businesses down to 32 per cent, nearer to the EU average.

“Searching for new ways to lift Germany out of the worst slump since the 1930s, finance minister Hans Eichel said small and medium-sized family firms could be handed down to heirs free of tax - provided they keep operations going for ten years.

The concession is limited to firms worth less than €100m (£68m). The tax rate is to be tapered down by one tenth each year.”

The reform, particularly that of the corporate tax rate is said to be prompted by stiff competition from the East European countries, many of whom have gone for low corporate taxes (though sometimes for high other ones).

More to the point, a number of them have introduced or are thinking of introducing a flat rate tax that is much more likely to encourage growth, deter evasion and simplify tax paying for most of the victims.

After all, one does not have to be an economist on the Milton Friedman level to see what is wrong with the German proposal to create special deals for small family owned firms (a proposal that crops up periodically in this country as well).

It adds another level of complication and another level of bureaucracy; it acts as a disincentive for firms that might like to grow or expand their ownership; and, above all, it encourages further and more complex evasion strategies.

We, at Veritas think it is quite incredible that so few politicians in Western Europe can see what is right under their nose. Special deals here and there and small cuts in tax rates are not going to solve the problem of sclerotic economies.

A bold and ruthless reform is needed. How about flat tax? We think it is a good idea. Is anybody out there agreeing with us? It would, of course, devastate the public sector – all those community outreach officers and noise pollution inspectors would have to go – and strengthen the private sector. Can’t see mainstream politicians going for it.

A sensible comment from Mr Blair?

2005-05-04T18:59:00.000+01:00

Surely not. But we are nothing if not broadminded in Veritas and are ready to acknowledge that even Our Tone might occasionally be right.

It seems that he has made it clear that he dislikes EU summits or European Councils as they are officially known. In fact, he has been known to mutter “acerbically” to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that a particular meeting was “A joy as ever.”

So, the theme of the British Presidency will be, apart from the perennial one of cutting down red tape and regulations (yawn, not again), fewer summits or Councils. In fact, Mr Blair wants to go back to having just one, at the end of the presidency.

That is how it used to happen, but round about 1998, emergency Councils were introduced to decide … well, it is hard to recall what the particular emergency was at the time.

Some of us did predict that what started as an emergency would probably become the norm and that came to pass. It is now considered to be the way things are that each Presidency should have two Councils. Mr Blair will have only one, unless something important does crop up.

This is where we hit a snag. What is important? Would a French no and/or a Dutch no considered be important enough to call an extra meeting to discuss the future? Would an unresolved budget?

We shall see. As it happens, nothing much is decided during those Council meetings, anyway. At least not in the open and only a kremlinological close reading of the various Presidential Conclusions can throw up minutely detailed differences between them. The real decisions and agreements during other meetings, quietly and unobtrusively.

News from the Low Countries

2005-05-04T18:33:00.000+01:00

April 30 is a holiday in the Netherlands – Queen’s Day. That is when the Dutch celebrate their Queen’s birthday.

By a sheer coincidence, no doubt (though some have called it Goebbelian, which is a little hard) that was the day in which it was made public that back in the days of the country entering the economic and monetary union, the guilder was deliberately devalued by 5 to 10 per cent.

In other words, the Dutch people had 5 to 10 per cent of their salaries, pensions and savings written off. And for why?

According to former Finance Minister Zalm, getting a higher price for the guilder was “a politically unreachable goal”. People’s salaries and savings? Pooh, who cares about that?

Mr Zalm had also assured people that prices would not rise and inflation would not, in any circumstances, follow the adoption of the euro. It seems that he was not entirely accurate, or so the Director of the Dutch Central Bank says now.

“We could ascertain that the Guilder was 5 to 10 percent undervalued against the D-Mark. It is always difficult to establish a balanced exchange rate, but one can say without doubt that the Guilder was undervalued.

With the exchange rate fixed and unable to adapt itself, the prices adapted themselves.This was later followed by a multiplying effect; our competitive position strongly weakened because of extreme salary increases.”

News like that is best released on a holiday, when people might not pay attention to it. Unfortunately, this did not precisely work, as, with the referendum approaching, even holidays do not interfere with interest in the way politicians manipulate information, particularly when it has to do with European integration.

Meanwhile, in the other part of the Low Countries, Belgium, things are not looking too bright. They are not due to have a referendum and, indeed, if Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has anything to do with it, they may well do away with democracy altogether.

The Flemings are becoming more and more disgruntled by what they see as their hard work being squandered by the Walloons, who seem to be natural recipients of government funds in one way or another.

On top of which, the latest figures on economics make sad reading. This is what the Economist City Guide to Brussels says:

“Belgian workers are the most expensive in the world, according to a recent survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Belgian employers spend an average of €53,577 (£36,480) a year on each worker—more than Britain (€46,451, £31,628)or America (€33,195, £22,602), and marginally ahead of both Sweden and Germany.But take-home pay is much lower than the headline figure. The reason that Belgian workers are so costly is the very high payroll taxes the country needs to fund its health and social security systems. One trade-off for such good services is an unemployment level that is now close to 13%.”

The figures do not show where the highest level of unemployment is. None of this is good advertisement of the eurozone or the whole concept of further European integration, unless, of course, we use the old socialist argument: if socialism does not work, it is because there is not enough of it.

So far, European integration has not produced the economic growth and political stability it keeps promising. I expect, we need more of it to achieve what it has not delivered so far.

And to think that there are still people out there who say that Veritas goes over the top when it says politicians are not to be trusted, ever.

A reminder

2005-05-03T23:53:00.000+01:00

The fragrant Commissar Margot Wallström seems strangely shy these days. Another week and a day and no posting on her blog. Nor has she responded as yet to any comment (apart from the clearly planted one on sex slavery and even then, her acolytes and spokespersons seemed angered when the words United Nations were mentioned).

We feel compelled to remind her of her duty to provide us with information and communication, not to mention entertainment. What does she have a blog for? What are all her assistants, spokespersons and press officers for?

In short, Margot, why are we waiting?

Is Veritas the only party to care about the British Constitution?

2005-05-02T17:21:00.000+01:00

The big news after the non-event of revealing the legal non-advice on the Iraqi war (exactly what makes a war legal and who decides that on the basis of which legal structure?) is Gordon Brown’s statement that in future British soldiers should be sent to war only with the approval of Parliament.

Mr Brown was actually a little woolly in what he said, as he is still trying to play each side against each other on whatever issue happens to be to hand.

“Now that there has been a vote on these issues so clearly and in such controversial circumstances, I think it is unlikely that except in the most exceptional circumstances a government would choose not to have a vote in Parliament.

I think Tony Blair would join me in saying that, having put this decision to Parliament, people would expect these kinds of decisions to go before Parliament.”

John Reid, formerly Defence and now Health Secretary, supposedly a close ally of Tony Blair’s (possibly because the man is the Prime Minister) rushed in to support Gordy:

“This is already our policy, of the whole Cabinet, since we did it. The Prime Minister decided that some time ago.

That's why we had three debates on substantive motions before going into Iraq.

This is and has been for some time the policy of the whole Cabinet led by the Prime Minister.”

This is supposed to reassure wavering Labour supporters who might be worried enough about the Iraqi war to vote Lib-Dem.

The chances are that anyone who is going to vote in this election over Iraq or, to be precise, the WMD and dossier fiasco, since events in Iraq itself have moved on, will have made the decision already.

Still, we should look a little more closely at those comments. In the first place, it is clear that when people like Brown and Reid say Parliament, they mean the House of Commons, it being the part that can be controlled by the government, the whips, various lobbying and pressure groups.

Before long we shall be told that the House of Lords should have no right to make decisions that concern the lives of British servicemen and women (the ones who have been deprived of the vote thanks to either chicanery or inefficiency in the MoD).

Secondly, it would appear that the Cabinet, if, indeed, they do agree with Mr Brown and Dr Reid, assume that the make-up of the House of Commons will always be the same. NuLab or OldLab, they all seem to share the opinion that, contrary to historical evidence, they have some sort of a natural right always to govern us (or at least sit there pretending to do so).

Thirdly, and very importantly, this is another sneaky change to the British constitutional structure. Going to war has always been a Royal Prerogative, exercised by Her Majesty’s Government. This may or may not be a good idea. But if a big change like that is introduced and one of the few areas in which there is a separation of powers is destroyed, it ought to be done clearly and openly not through statements to the media.

Fourthly, there is the question of how we define war. Will Parliament have to debate and decide each time British soldiers are sent somewhere under whatever auspices, or only when it is done to help our allies, the United States and Australia?

Which brings me to the fifth and, possibly, most important point. If Mr Brown and Dr Reid, not to mention the rest of the Cabinet, really do think what they say they think, then they had better vote against the forthcoming European Union Bill.

As we have written before, the Bill in its original form consisted of a great deal more than just the usual amendment to the European Communities Act and the provision for a referendum on the Constitution. It included Articles that gave enormous powers to the Foreign Secretary.

The Bill fell in the scramble before Parliament was dissolved but will have to be brought back, though if it is a Labour Government on May 6, Prime Minister Blair may well decide to wait till the news of the various referendums on the Continent comes through.

Let me remind our readers what else is in the European Union Bill if it is brought back in an unchanged form:

“Section 5 is entitled Implementation of common foreign and security policy and tells us that

(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for one or more of the following purposes –

a) Implementing an obligation of the United Kingdom created and arising by or under the common foreign policy provisions or a related agreement, or enabling such an obligation to be implemented;
b) Enabling the exercise of rights enjoyed or to be enjoyed by the United Kingdom under or by virtue of those provisions or such an agreement;
c) Dealing with matters arising out of, or related to, such an obligation or such rights.

(2) The powers conferred by this section include power to amend enactments or subordinate legislation.

The section goes on to deal with the creation of summary new offences and the methods whereby the Secretary of State may make regulations. These are our old friends the Orders in Councils, otherwise known as Negative Statutory Instruments.

Negative SIs are published by order of the relevant Secretary of State and placed before each House, where they lie for 40 days unless somebody manages to initiate a debate and win it to reverse the Order.

This process is virtually impossible in the House of Commons, where even if such a motion is passed the Instrument goes to the relevant Standing Committee, where it is dealt summarily, committees being filled in proportion to the number of MPs each party has in the House.

In the Lords there is a possibility of praying against and Order and debates do happen. They rarely lead to anything. There have even been occasions when the government lied quite blatantly, saying that one House annulling an Order was inadequate and, therefore, the vote was ignored.

In certain cases, as the relevant section of the European Union Bill, the Secretary of State can avoid the distinctly non-onerous procedure altogether, if he can insert a “declaration … that the urgency of the matter makes it necessary for the regulation to be made without [Parliamentary] approval”.”

In other words, if the Bill becomes an Act the Secretary of State will acquire enormous powers to by-pass Parliament completely, should a particular policy, even if it involves sending troops in, be part of the common foreign and security policy.

This will not change, even if there is a referendum and a no vote on the Constitution. The referendum, let me emphasise, will not be on the Bill. How can it be?

For the purposes of the Bill, the common foreign and security policy (though not the treaties) is defined as that in the proposed Constitution. Please, do not relax too soon. Changing definitions to do with European Treaties is a matter of very little import.

There have been many Statutory Instruments, barely noticed in Parliament, that did just that: changed various definitions, extending executive power by stealth.

I wonder if Mr Brown or Dr Reid or the other members of the Cabinet actually realize any of this.

The Council of Europe may send the shock troops in

2005-05-02T00:21:00.000+01:00

Maybe they have been reading this blog. First the OSCE made some comments about sending a delegation or two made up of representatives of newly democratic countries to Britain, to see how it is done. Postal votes? Hmm. What a good idea. Beats the vote early, vote often instructions.

That was going to be an exercise in studying democracy. But, it seems, that there might be something more serious coming from the Council of Europe, described by Scotland on Sunday as the organization

“which oversees democracy and human rights across the continent”.

I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that. The CoE’s record on the Communist and post-Communist states is patchy; some of its members, acquired in haste, leave a good deal to be desired as democracies; and it has failed rather spectacularly in ensuring that the European Union became a democracy.

For all of that, the Council of Europe does have something of a record in monitoring elections and producing reasonably useful reports.

It seems that there is some discussion about sending in lawyers to investigate the British electoral system as it has evolved under the present Labour government and, possibly, to recommend improvements.

In the opinion of Murdo Macleod, the newspaper’s correspondent:

“The news is a major embarrassment for the UK, which is a founder member of the CoE, because the organisation usually investigates the voting systems of countries with little history of democracy, such as the former Eastern Bloc nations.

The move comes amid growing evidence of widespread misuse of the postal ballot system and the setting up of a new police hotline dedicated to reporting incidents of voting fraud.”

If he were not a journalist he might ponder on the fact that news should be a major embarrassment for the UK, not because of its role in the founding of the Council of Europe but because until recently this country was considered to be the mother or parliamentary democracy.

The Council of Europe has been alerted by various British MPs, who are also delegates to its Parliamentary Assembly.

“One of them, the Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon, Malcolm Bruce, has raised the issue with Eric Jurgens, who is the chairman of the CoE’s Council for Democratic Elections and a veteran of election monitoring. Although any investigation will still have to be approved by the Council which he chairs, the fact that Jurgens believes there is a reason to investigate is almost certain to ensure a probe will go ahead.”

The new-fangled Department for Constitutional Affairs maintains that it has not been approached by the Council of Europe.

It is interesting that it should be a Liberal Democrat MP to raise the issue. News reaches us that at least one Liberal Democrat MEP has been accused of certain malpractices.

According to former MEP for Itchen, Test and Avon, Edward Kellett-Brown, Christopher Huhne, the well-known advocate of further integration has been using his European Parliament expenses to fund the printing of an election leaflet in Eastleigh. This is, of course, against all the rules of the European Parliament (and goodness knows those are lax enough). My own guess is that there will be many more complaints of this kind in the weeks to come.

The Electoral Commission has also come out of its long-lasting stupor to contact one of the largest unions, the GMB, to ask it for some explanation of the thousands of pounds it has spent on advertisements in national newspapers that condemn Tory policies. There are strict electoral rules about spending by third parties.

While we are on the subject, has anyone else noticed the huge Unison posters that have been appearing on street corners with messages that also condemn Tory policies? One hopes the Electoral Commission has noticed them.

We may note in parenthesis that the unions clearly do not believe the polls. Otherwise, why would they suddenly rush into the electoral fray, desperately attacking the Opposition, when the Government is, allegedly, about to be returned with another huge majority?

It has been noted before that Tony Blair is not content to be known as the only Labour leader to have led the party to two, probably three victories but wants to go down in history as a statesman of some importance. At the moment it looks like he will be known as the Prime Minister who reintroduced widespread corruption and electoral fraud into this country, for the first time since the mid-nineteenth century.

You mean they mentioned Europe?

2005-04-29T23:17:00.000+01:00

Well, well, just look at that. Mr Blair actually referred to a European issue during the election campaign. Alas, it was so uninteresting, that nobody noticed.

Asked by Sky News, Mr Blair suggested in a slightly languid fashion that most probably there would be no referendum on the euro and, therefore, Britain would not go into economic and monetary union, should he be returned to Number 10.

He could not, it seems, recommend a yes vote because

“If the economics aren’t right, if it won’t help your country economically, you don’t do it.”

Furthermore, he did not expect any changes on that front in the foreseeable future (just reading this stuff makes one write in cliches).

“Now, at the moment there is no part of business and industry clamouring to say we need this for our economy, so it doesn’t look very likely. On the other hand,things can always change and the sensible thing to do is keep your options open.”

The following morning he tried to “clarify” his positiong during the daily press conference, explaining that

“Politically the case for going in is strong – economically we have to meet the tests.”

The Tories jumped on it, sort of. Oliver Letwin did say that there would be no joining the euro under the Conservatives because it would be bad for the economy. The Liberal Democrats announced that the Prime Minister should not prejudge the issue – there would have to be careful reports back to Parliament on the five tests and and a referendum.

Oh dear, one can’t help yawning. In the first place, the euro is not the issue at the moment. There are many other European problems, not least the Constitution.

In the second place, what is that strong political case for going in? Blair did not explain but, disgracefully, the Conservatives did not ask.

In the third place, why oh why are the main parties still pretending that the project is one of economics and the decisions are taken for economic reasons? Wouldn’t it be nice to have some grown-up politicians who treated the electorate as if they, too, were grown-up? Dream on.

We return to the Tillack case

2005-04-27T17:01:00.000+01:00

Not long ago, Hizonner the Mayor the Mayor of LondON announced that he would support any campaign Veritas might like to start to remove immunity from any official. Unfortunately, as we shall show in another posting, Our Ken did not seem to be clear on who had immunity and for what reason.

Perhaps a summary of the case of Hans-Martin Tillack, journalist for Stern magazine might clarify matters somewhat, particularly as the subject has been covered by this and one or two other blogs in the past.

We have written of the fact that his office was raided twice, his computer confiscated, his boxes broken into. We have mentioned the fact that although the raid was carried out by the Belgian police, it had been clearly initiated by OLAF, the Commission’s own anti-fraud investigative body, because Hans-Martin Tillack had written some hard-hitting exposés about them.

We have also mentioned that, for some reason, the British government continued to view this matter as an internal Belgian one, until the former head of OLAF explained what happened to the House of Lords Sub-Committee.

Mr Tillack has received the Leipzig Prize for the Freedom and the Future of the Media, though one rather wonders whether there is much future for the freedom of the media in the EU.

At the same time the highest court in Hamburg, the Oberlandesgericht, ruled that it could not prevent present and former members of OLAF from sppreading unsubstantiated slanderous stories about the journalist, as a protocol of April 8 1965 grants EU civil servants a life-long immunity from legal proceedings “in respect of acts performed by them in their official capacity, including their words spoken or written”. And that includes setting the Belgian police at an investigative journalist. Hizonner might like to think about that a little.

Now, to take up the story. If national courts have no jurisdiction, reasoned Tillack and Stern, then they must go to the European Court of Justice, to ensure that the Commission will not be able to see the notes and documents the Belgian police had confiscated from the journalist. These have not been returned although he has not been charged with anything.

Last October the Court of First Instance absolved OLAF from inciting the Belgian police to arrest Mr Tillack and refused his plea that OLAF and the Commission be prevented from seeing the documents.

Now the European Court of Justice quashed Tillack’s appeal against the ruling of the Court of First Instance, in effect allowing the Commission and OLAF access to the documents and, potentially, to the names of the journalist’s sources.

So far the Commission has not asked to see anything and, in fact, the spokeswoman for the Administrative Affairs Commissar, Siim Kallas (himself in the past under investigation for improper political financial affairs in his home country) seemed to be giving muddled statements:

“For the moment the question does not arise, as the matter is still under investigation.

Press freedom and the right of journalist to protect their sources are enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. But press freedom is not granted without limitation. [Or, in other words, press freedom stops when EU officials are investigated.]

If a journalist himself becomes a suspect or is linked to an investigation, it is for the individual national authorities to decide which measures can be justified and whether they can be justified.”

Since the individual national authorities had been incited by OLAF; since no charges have been preferred; and since OLAF officials have been slandering Mr Tillack with no national authority having the right to stop them, that last statement can best be described as disingenuous.

But then, according to the same spokeswoman, “under EU staff regulations, officials are obliged to blow the whistle if they see evidence of wrongdoing”. And then they have every right to be bullied, threatened and persecuted.

Mr Tillack and his employers, backed by the European Federation of Journalist, who have been wringing their hands somewhat impotently on the sidelines, plan to go to the European Court of Human Rights, to retrieve those documents.

To be continued.

Hizonner and friend go for the under-10 vote

2005-04-27T16:11:00.000+01:00

Our readers would be forgiven if they were somewhat bemused by the picture on the front page of last week’s Croydon Advertiser [text only]. There was a photograph of two men, one in a distinctly dingy mac, clutching bits of paper, standing in front of some children, shown to be rather uncertainly waving at the camera.

Closer inspection revealed the man in the dingy mac to be Hizonner the Mayor of LondON and the other one his friend the local Labour candidate, Geraint Davies.

It seems that the pair of them had been canvassing among primary and nursery school pupils. At least, they were not kissing babies or handing out sweets, merely balloons.

As Mr Davies said, when asked about the curious notion of standing outside primary schools with balloons (a practice severely discouraged by heads, teachers and parents):

“If they didn't want them, they didn't take them. It’s a free world and it's normal to canvass. You don't need to vote Labour to have a balloon.”

Well, the freedom of the world is a matter of some doubt, particularly in those parts of it Hizonner supports, but, we presume, Mr Davies meant this is a free country, though that word would not sully his lips.

In any case the assumption is questionable. It is normal to canvass but not outside or, in at least one case, until they were asked to leave by the Head, inside, a primary school. Under-10s do not have the vote and their parents, by and large, do not take kindly to children being used as political tools. Quite a few parents expressed their dissatisfaction.

It is a rare child that will refuse a bright red balloon and where does that get us? A potential Labour supporter? Or perhaps, Hizonner and his friend want to start troops of young pioneers and would-be young pioneers in Croydon.

She just wants to deal with every-day issues

2005-04-25T18:11:00.000+01:00

Yes, indeed, after a ten-day gap, the fragrant Commissar has put up another posting. I am delighted to say that there are some comments on it already, few anything but wearily critical.

Margot starts in a fluffy bunny mode with her eldest son, who is, mark you, a student of political science, wanting to know almost tearfully why the Swedish papers are assuming that his mother is aiming at the leadership of the Social-Democratic party, when she stated in “black and white” that she did not want to be considered for the position.

Does the lad not know that whatever politicians deny categorically must be true, particularly if it is something underhand? Of course, he cannot help having the mother he has, but if he wants to survive in the big bad world, let alone in political science, he had better learn this very easy lesson.

There is a great deal more about her commitment to her job and the many tasks she has in trying to sell the whole project to the people of Europe. As the opinion polls in one country after another move in the “no” direction, the fragrant Commissar, we assume, must be feeling quite pleased with herself. After all, her staff seem to remain loyal. One of them has even put a comment up, urging us to read Margot’s own explanation of the Social-Democrat Party’s little trouble with inflated declarations.

But hey, she has finally responded to a comment:

“I warmly welcome a debate on the horrendous slave trade with women and children for sexual purposes that goes in Europe and the world every day. I completely agree with you, Ms Gisela Strauss, that it is not only a responsibility for non-governmental organisations to tackle the problem of trafficking in human beings — even if the NGO‘s make an important difference for many of the people that are used as sex slaves. Trafficking is part of cross-border crime and should be dealt with through improved cooperation between the police as well as the judicial systems in Europe. It is important when trying to prevent these terrible crimes that we also look at the demand side of the “trade”. Communication is also a crucial key to this problem so that we reach the young girls and children that risk becoming new victims.”

And we are all against sin. Nobody could possibly suggest that the particular comment could have been a put-up job, to give the fragrant Commissioner a chance to reply to something that is not too close to the bone and is not critical of her or of the project.

Furthermore, sharp-eyed readers would have noticed a certain omission. There seems to be no reference here to the sex scandals that surround the United Nations and its staff wherever they happen to be.

Most comments on the blog are about the European Union, its many regulations, its destruction of the European economy and social structure, its corruption and suchlike matters. It is Margot’s job to sell the Constitution. That is what she gets an inflated salary for, as well as many expenses, perks and staff. But she chooses to publish a bromide about sex slavery.

Is she ever going to engage in that dialogue she keeps promising?

Carry on bidding

2005-04-25T15:09:00.000+01:00

Lord Coe, in his Jim Dale-like “straight role” in the Olympic bid farce has managed to get himself into a mess.

Over the week-end there was another round of presentations by the competing cities for the right to go bankrupt by staging the Olympic Games in 2012. It all went well on the day, as these things go with no doubles entendres but the bid began to unravel the day after.

London, it seems, came up with what is generally described as “sweeteners”. In the process, according to Mihir Bose, they made two crucial mistakes:

“The first mistake was to include a specific money pledge of $50,000 to each national Olympic committee. True, London were not going to give a cheque of that amount to each Olympic committee. In fact, any money paid would eventually go to places in the United Kingdom. This was a credit, which would defray the costs of using a UK training base. In modern Olympics, training immediately before the Games is considered crucial, but the poorer associations cannot afford such training camps. The way the offer was worded and the fact that a price was mentioned alarmed many IOC members for whom the memories of past corruption scandals were evoked.”

Corruption scandals to do with the Olympic Games and the bids? Surely not?

Yes, dear reader, apparently there have scandals. Specifically there was one uncovered in 1999 (though not that long ago, this seems to have slipped Hizonner’s memory) to do with the Salt Lake City bid, when “sweeteners” were offered to members of the IOC.

Of course, London’s überbid is not in that category. Shame on us all for thinking it. No “sweeteners” or special deals are being offered to individual members of the committee, merely to organizations.

What was the other mistake the London bidders made?

“The other, even bigger, mistake was that in surprising rivals Paris, New York, Madrid and Moscow, London surprised the most important man in the Olympic Movement, IOC president Jacques Rogge. He was displeased to know nothing of the proposal and, fearing it might start a bidding war, which would get out of control, ordered an investigation by the Ethics Commission. This forced London into a humiliating withdrawal.”

The offers in the überbid had not been made public in Britain either, until they were announced by Lord Coe:

“But, unlike their rivals, London did not stop the campaign there. The next morning they unleashed their National Olympic Charter, which contained the pledge of a $50,000 credit, and Athlete Charter, which offered free rail travel in the UK for two weeks before and after the Games, free stay with British hosts for athletes' families, £60 of free phone calls and a discount card of between 20 and 50 per cent on selected restaurants, shops and theatres in London.”

Hmm. Who is going to be paying for all that? Or for the “flexible” air travel and capped hotel prices?

Anyway, all this has had to be withdrawn, despite the regret expressed by some of the officials. For instance, István Gyulai, the Hungarian chief executive of the International Association of Athletics Federations said:

“… London has been trying to help important stakeholders. However, rules have to be respected. The international federations are very pleased about these commitments from London, such as the ceiling on the prices of hotel rooms. They are not bribery.”

Maybe not, but offers of this kind make it understandable why Hizonner and Lord Coe are less than anxious to cost the bid properly and publicly.

Happy (belated) St George's Day

2005-04-24T23:58:00.000+01:00

Anyone who happens to have been in the Great Glass Egg in the last few days and used one of its lifts would have seen that Hizonner the Mayor of LondON is, for the second year running, supporting the celebration of St George’s Day.

Now this is very odd. After all, for years, while Hizonner proudly handed Traflagar Square over to St Patrick’s Day celebrations, Diwali celebrations, all-sorts-of-everything celebrations, he has always refused to let the people celebrate the day of the England’s patron saint, it being a nasty display of nationalism in his opinion.

All of a sudden, he is not only allowing it, he is supporting it, for all the world as if St George needed Red Ken’s support. Not even the dragon would want it.

A closer look at the support makes one feel that maybe we had better celebrate April 23 without Hizonner’s interference. For some reason the Mayor finds it impossible simply to proclaim that it is a jolly good thing to mark the day. It has to be surrounded by all sorts of ifs and buts.

A celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday at the Globe Theatre is listed first on the website. It seems to have been a typical LondOn day with families indulging in a severely cleaned up version of Tudor entertainment. I bet there was no bear baiting or cock fighting or bare-fist boxing.

Visitors were encouraged to go on the stage and recite their favourite bits of Shakespeare. My tender nerves did not allow me to attend this preposterous event but I wonder how many people recited the obvious: the ringing patriotic lines from Henry V?

Next we have the Hizonner’s support for celebrations in Trafalgar Square. The website is so cringe-making that I feel our readers ought to have the text in full:

“The Mayor is inviting the general public, sporting heroes and sports fans to participate in a national initiative to celebrate St George's Day.

To make a clear statement to the world that England is a nation opposed to racism and that London is the ideal home for the 2012 Olympic Games, thousands of pictures are being gathered of the public and celebrities shot against a white or a red background. These images will be assembled into a large cross of St George, displayed in Trafalgar Square for one day only on St George's Day.

The final few images needed to complete the flag will be taken live in Trafalgar Square and you are invited to central London to have your picture taken and join this important initiative to stamp out racism for good.”

How does that wretched Olympic bid come into this? Will dragon slaying be one of the sports? Methinks not.

And why precisely does Hizonner equate Englishness with racism? I do not remember a call to stamp out racism when St Patrick’s Day or Diwali was being celebrated in Trafalgar Square.

This assumption that only the English are racist is becoming tiresome. Has Hizonner looked round the world recently? Has he, by any chance, noted the number of race and ethnic hostilities, wars and massacres that have taken place in the last year or so with not one of them having anything to do with England or the English?

Does Hizonner know any history? Oh why do I bother to ask!

Anwyay, there we are. Hizonner is supporting St George’s Day as another day to fight against racism and for the Olympic bid 2012. On the whole, I suspect that all those people who have for years demanded the right to celebrate the festival in the centre of London, would probably prefer it if the Mayor would just but out of it and take his sordid little political shenanigans somewhere else.

And as the Bard, whose birthday it was yesterday, said it:

“Cry God for Harry! England and St George!”

Bring on the dragons.

A new aspect on Greek practices

2005-04-24T11:12:00.000+01:00

We have written a great deal on this blog about various interesting details of Greek finances, particularly in connection with the disastrous Olympic Games last summer.

However, word is getting round that there is another aspect to all this: the hitherto undeclared friendship between Commission President Barroso (foremerly known as a free-trader, now as a free-loader) and one of the richest people in Greece, Spiros Latsis, whose business includes a number of projects that have received EU money, which, needless to say, did not reach the required destinations.

The full story is covered on the EUReferendum blog and in the Booker column this morning. Happy reading.

And the next Napoleon will be ...

2005-04-23T17:47:00.000+01:00

You don’t ask you don’t get. That seems to be the motto of that great and good (you mean completely unknown) London MEP, Nirj Deva. Of course, if you ask you may not get either, but that does not seem to bother him.

Mr Deva, a former MP until the electors of Hounslow got bored with him, a present member of the European Parliament, and self-styled Ambassador-at-Large for Sri Lanka, has thrown his hat into the ring for the next Secretary General of the United Nations.

Fresh from the great success of failing to reform the European Parliament’s freebies (woops, sorry, expenses) system, Mr Deva, who is leading the European Parliament delegation to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (nice one Nirj!), has announced to the United States Council on Foreign Relations and, later, to St John’s University (no, I don’t know what it is either) that

“…as it is Asia’s turn to provide the Secretary-General of the United Nations he had been asked by numerous organisations to be a candidate to succeed Kofi Annan when the time comes.”

Before we go any further, one or two things need to be made clear. Nirj Deva may have been born in Sri Lanka but he is a British citizen (and, as he no doubt, likes telling people) an EU citizen as its consequence. Otherwise he would not be in the European Parliament and would not have been in the House of Commons.

Britain is a permanent member of Security Council. No Secretary General can be from a major country, let alone from one that is a permanent member of the Security Council. Ergo Nirj Deva cannot be SecGen. Q, as they used to say, ED.

Of course, he can suddenly discard his British and EU citizenship but that would mean relinquishing his place in the euro-trough. Somehow I cannot see the estimable Mr Deva doing that.

Getting away from that conundrum, what are Mr Deva’s qualifications for this post?

“They see me as a bridge; being personally and politically rooted in Asia and Europe on the one hand; and my with long standing commitment [sic] to the development of Africa Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) on the other.”

His basic understanding of civil engineering does not seem to be that hot either, but he is not applying for a job that has any useful aspect to it.

So, um, how will he deal with the variour problems that the UN has faced recently? According to his press release

“He called for a closer involvement by citizens to create a new driving force for the effective delivery of aid, and for holding governments and NGOs accountable and transparent through the use of interactive real time internet technology. Being committed to the Millennium Development Goals, he has included the "Quick Wins" solutions on eradicating poverty, in the European Parliament Development Budget of which he is draftsman and called for a New Partnership with developing countries to strengthen, align and build capacities in partner countries receiving European aid.”

I wonder if any of our readers will be able to explain what “interactive real time internet technology” is and how it will suddenly make the UN and NGOs accountable to anyone at all. It is of particular interest, as my spies tell me that Mr Deva does not quite know the best way of switching on a computer.

Further on, he gets into an even bigger muddle. On the one hand, he sees it as the UN’s job to eradicate child labour, as well as child trafficking and child soldiers. On the other hand,

“Another way of promoting sustainable development is through Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME’s) which in developing countries are often family businesses. He called for a greater role for the European Investment Bank, which has a lending base three times the size of the World Bank, to play a major role in assisting the private sector in developing countries and demanded cuts in bureaucracy which increased poverty, stifled growth and encouraged corruption in developing countries.”

But not family enterprises that employ their children, one assumes. When do children stop being children? Are we going to impose the oh-so-successful British system of reluctant fifteen-year-olds in classrooms learning nothing?

Rising to a crescendo of lunacy Mr Deva’s press release and preliminary election manifesto ends with the following stirring words.

“The Secretary-General is more than an Administrator – he is the public face of the United Nations, and it is to him that the people of the world will rightly look when problems need to be solved. He is not a dictator, he is not a line manager - he has limited powers so he must above all be a consensus-builder. This is not a job for a bureaucrat – it is a job for a politician, and perhaps it is time for an outsider who is not steeped in the culture of foreign relations, and especially not in the culture of the UN.

Above all he needs to remember that his job is not about institutions - it is about people. He is the servant of the people of the world whether they be rich or poor and whether they be weak or powerful. He must work with their governments and the international institutions which they have ordained, but he must never forget that his overriding purpose is to achieve so far as he can conditions in which individual men and women can live in peace, and develop and enjoy their human potential to the full.”

Mr Deva was last seen wandering round the endless corridors of the European Parliament in a tricorne with a cockarde pinned to it, one hand tucked into an immaculate white waistcoat and the other one pointing onwards and upwards.

Another week ....

2005-04-23T12:50:00.000+01:00

… and no Margot. Or no new posting anyway. All we get is that old bromide about the Pope’s eyes and her musings about referendums.

No postings and no responses from the fragrant Commissar. Is she too busy sorting out her problems with the Swedish equivalent of the electoral commission? Incidentally, this rather pathetic peccadillo confirms what we, in Veritas at the London Assembly, firmly believe: political parties must not be financed by the state.

Is she trying to work out why Sweden, that supposed utopia of gender equality now feels the need for a new feminist party and is having a somewhat belated debate about continuing domestic violence? (Apparently, in Sweden of all countries the subject has been taboo for all these years.)

Or has she, simply decided that really this was not a good idea after all?

Neelie is disappointed

2005-04-21T18:02:00.000+01:00

Poor “Nickel” Neelie. You have to feel sorry for her. There she was, happily ensconced on endless corporate boards, minding her own business (and the advantages that business gave her). Then suddenly, wham! She becomes the Commissar for Competition and great things are expected from her.

Single-handedly (well, nobody REALLY believes all that stuff about free-marketeer Barroso or free-trader Mandelson any more) she is expected to transform the social-democratic agenda of the single market and the continuing habit of picking national winners, prevalent in most member states, but particularly France and Germany.

So the lady is not completely happy with the results on the annual scoreboard of state aid, published yesterday by the Commission.

“I am disappointed that the overall level of aid relative to GDP has not fallen in line with the commitments undertaken by the member states themselves at the Stockholm European Council in 2001.”

Never mind, she said, brightening a bit, there has been “a welcome shift in aid towards general objectives, such as research and development”. Hmm.

The figures for 2003 are predictable or disappointing, depending on your point of view.

The 15 member countries gave out €53 billion (£36.2 billion) in grant and subsidies in that year, almost half the budget being accounted for by France and Germany. Not that it helped their economies much but then state aid rarely does.

As Carl Mortished says in today’s Times:

“Germany is consistently the biggest provider of state aid, handing over €16 billion in 2003. In second and third place were France and Italy, which spent €9 billion and €7 billion, respectively. Britain gave €4 billion but in relation to economic weight, Finland led the field with subsidies equal to 1.4 per cent of GDP.”

“Most of the state aid granted in 2003, some €32 billion, went to the manufacturing and services sector and €14 billion was given to agriculture and fisheries. Germany’s inefficient coal mines absorbed €3 billion.”

The Commission gave a dusty response to Gordon Brown’s suggestion that the competition directorate should become a stand-alone body, independent of the Commission. One must admit, they have a point. What precisely would the benefit of that be?

But it is hard to see why Commissar Kroes should be disappointed. Did she think that just because politicians gave undertakings in Stockholm or whereer, they would keep to these when national votes are at stake?

How does she think the sort of social-democratic economic system she, presumably, favours can be run without endless redistribution of funds. Just wait till the East Europeans get seriously in on the act. Then Neelie will really have something to complain about.

Children must be seen and not heard

2005-04-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

The EU is clearly enamoured with Victorian views of education. Or, at least, with what we think of as Victorian views of education, the best known of which was the famous saying “children must be seen and not heard”.

There cannot be another reason for the recent announcement by Hans-Horst Konkolewsky, director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, as the Daily Telegraph acknowledges:

“But the education sector is a hidden source of risk, said Mr Konkolewsky,especially where today's more raucous pupils are housed in hard-floored, echoing Victorian classrooms, built for the days when children sat silently, copying from a blackboard.”

Well, I expect we can go back to that delightful system.

According to him when Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 June 2002 relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise comes into effect next year, all primary and nursery schools as well as day care centres and playgroups across the European Union will have to conduct a noise level assessment.

If the level in any of these institutions is found to be above 80 decibels (and almost all will be), the heads, managers, owners, what have you will be legally obliged to do something about it.

What will they be legally obliged to do?

“Actions required could involve fitting acoustic tiles on classroom ceilings, giving staff longer breaks or reducing class sizes, said Mr Konkolewsky.”

And if none of that worked? Would they be obliged to contain the children in something resembling those wonderful pens that Romanian orphanages had and, for all one knows, still have? I’ll bet on this score Romania is ready to join the European Union tomorrow.

This little problem was foreseen by some of us. I am very pleased to say that when the first news came through of proposed and rapidly implemented EU legislation to reduce the noise level of toys, I suggested that it is children they need to ban. After all, as every parent knows, the biggest noise of all comes from the little angels themselves.

It has taken the EU a couple of years but it has caught up. I cannot wait to see how they will implement this particular aspect of the Noise Directive and what will happen when, as is inevitable, much needed nursery and play group facility will disappear because small children will not stay quiet.

Back the Bid - Bully Business

2005-04-19T19:41:00.000+01:00

Time to have a look at what Hizonner’s pet project the potentially catastrophic Olympic bid for London for 2012 is up to. According to the Mayor of LondON, as publicized by his propaganda rag The Londoner, supported by London’s long-suffering taxpayer to the tune of something like £1.5 million a year, the people of London support the bid.

Well, the rag amends its assertion, a million people have signed up in support. (Are they all Londoners? Who knows?) 10,000 have volunteered to help. This is clearly not an overwhelming support and the rag, which is read and even known by next to nobody in London, has called for more signatures and more volunteers.

Some of the volunteers, as we have already pointed out, will be used as billets for families of competitors, which should cheer everyone. Nevertheless, the numbers are not precisely overwhelming and more are being called for. They are unlikely to come forward through reading The Londoner.

One of the great boasts of the Olympic Bid and its motley supporters, Hizonner the Mayor, Cherie Blair, Lord Coe et al is that the Games would prove to be a great boost to London’s economy.

In fact, London’s economy is doing quite well, thank you, or would be if it did not have to put up with spiralling taxes, extending congestion charge and the never-ending flood of regulations, much of it from the EU, so loved by Hizonner.

In particular, there are numerous businesses already in the area that needs to be cleared in order to regenerate it by creating an Olympic Village. These businesses are extremely successful but they are not happy at the moment.

It seems that in its rush to create that huge economic success (such as the one in Montreal, Sydney and Athens) called the Olympic Games, the London Development Agency (LDA) is bullying the existing businesses to pack up and move out after being paid considerably less than the market value of their land.

Most of these firms are based on the Marshgate Lane trading estate and are being offered between £700,000 and £900,000 an acre, whereas the true worth, they maintain, is between £1.2 million and £1.5 million an acre, maybe more if flats are to be built there.

The LDA maintains that the businesses are looking for “casino money” and is threatening to use compulsory purchase orders, if necessary.

The businesses are threatening to complain to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Let us set aside the vexed question of the precise worth of the land per acre. One cannot help asking the following question: what is the point of shutting down and relocating successful businesses, some of which had been given money by the LDA to move to the area in the first place, in order to create and Olympic Village?

What kind of regeneration starts by destroying success? And what will happen if, as it is almost certain, the Olympic constructions remain empty and crumbling, a giant albatross round London’s neck? How are we going to feel about the destroyed businesses then?

Surprise, surprise - Greece says yes

2005-04-19T18:50:00.000+01:00

As the French support for non surges (to some extent thanks to l’escroc Chirac’s overweaning TV appearance) and the Dutch yes campaign begins to panic, we have to declare ourselves to be underwhelmed by the news that the Greek parliament has voted the Constitution for Europe through.

268 deputies voted in favour, 17 against and 15 were absent. This makes Greece the fifth country to ratify the Constitution and the fourth to do so without bothering to put the question or the information to the people of the country.

Given the amount of money Greece receives under various funds and given the fact that it relies on the Commission’s good will to have its growing divergence from the growth and stability pact as well as various financial peccadilloes excused, can we really be surprised by that vote?

Come to think of it, if the vote were left to parliaments alone, which member states would have a different result?

Governance by management

2005-04-18T20:37:00.000+01:00

We have seen a fine example of the way politics and administration has eroded in this country in the recent statements made by Sir Ian Blair in an interview with Sir David Frost on Breakfast with Frost.

Sir Ian stated slightly incoherently that the recent Bourgass case, in which a failed asylum seeker, who was not deported despite the decision to do so, turned out to be a terrorist, intent on poisoning large chunks of this country’s population and actually murdering a police officer.

This, according to Sir Ian, shows that there is much to be said for ID cards:

“We have to go to a place where we do know who people are. We now have the technology, I think through iris recognition, to go to that and I think that would be very helpful.”

Well, with respect, Sir Ian, it would not be in the slightest bit helpful. First of all, let’s face it, Kamel Bourgass was in this country illegally, therefore his iris print or whatever it is Sir Ian is talking about, would not be on anybody’s records.

On the other hand, various young lads who had been picked up innocently taking a hike through Afghanistan, festooned with AK-47s, hand grenades and other such accoutrements of the average tourist, were actually British citizens and would have had perfectly legitimate ID cards that would not, surprisingly enough, have said under occupation: terrorist.

Then there is the undoubted fact that the technology one person can invent another person can copy.

It has to be added that in December Commander Mick Messinger (don’t these people use real names any more?) gave evidence to the plenary session of the London Assembly, in which he explained that ID cards would be quite useful. For instance they would help the police to identify people who had collapsed in the street after a terrorist attack.

And to prevent that attack or help with security afterwards? Well, um, no, he could not quite see how they could be of any use at all.

Apart from the need to have senior Commanders and the Commissioner of Scotland Yard singing from something approximating the same hymn sheet, there is the disturbing fact that the unelected head of Scotland Yard, a supposedly impartial servant of the country, has unobtrusively entered the electoral process by making statements on a subject that is a political and electoral hot potato.

Alan Milburn immediately seized on the interview and challenged the Conservatives to answer the simple question of whether they would support ID cards by a simple yes or no. The answer, of course, ought to be a simple no, but no political answer is that simple.

Veritas has, of course, given that very very simple answer. No, we do not support internal passports a.k.a. ID cards. As it happens, we are not all that keen on senior police officers interfering with the political process. Is Veritas the only party that cares about democratic processes?

However, Sir Ian’s completely specious comment will, no doubt, be used by supporters of ID cards as a valid argument. It is nothing of the kind. Sir Ian has not been asked any of the critical questions about it and has not explained what he thinks they will achieve, bearing in mind their expense, logistical difficulties and intrusion on the personal liberty of law-abiding citizens.

But, given that this is election time, he should not have made statements like that. It seems that this argument no longer applies in our managerial state. (I shall not use the word meritocracy. There is dam’ little merit about the police force at the moment and Sir Ian might turn his attention to that little problem.)

Single issue? Us?

2005-04-15T18:49:00.000+01:00

Veritas, as we have pointed out, is now becoming a completely different single issue party: low tax. In fact, it is a little more complicated than that. Veritas is the first British political party to come out in favour of flat tax.

This is what Damian Hockney, Deputy Leader of Veritas and Leader of the group in the London Assembly (a.k.a. the Dear Leader and Voice of Reason), who has added the position of Veritas spokesman on tax to all his other illustrious ones, said on the subject:

“10 million of the poorest people in Britain will have their whole tax bills cancelled and for everyone else a one-page tax form will replace the growing burden of paperwork and bills. And if the experience of other countries is followed, the flat tax will yield more revenue, not less.

We are in the absurd situation where someone who earns £5,000 a year pays income tax. The poorest third of families pay almost 10% of their income in tax. Under Veritas, they would pay nothing. It would be better and more productive to take something like 10 million people out of the tax net, slim down the bureaucracy and give people their own money to spend.

All money earned above £12,000 a year would be taxed at 22%. In line with other countries, we would also commit to reducing this as the benefits worked their way through the system. There is also an argument for increasing the personal allowance massively, to something like £25,000. Figures from both the Adam Smith Institute and from the Taxpayers' Alliance show that this could be done.”

So there you have it, dear reader. Veritas is not against foreign ideas, no matter what the rather ridiculous main stream media may say. Flat tax has been introduced in a number of countries with a great deal of success.

Among these, several of the post-Communist East European economies have found that a flat tax system has produced both a higher tax revenue and a faster growth than any of the complicated systems of western Europe, known to friend and foe as “Old Europe”, not least for its sclerotic political and economic ideas.

Could Veritas turn the tide of political discussion in Britain? Watch this space.

Veritas, the low tax party

2005-04-14T19:49:00.000+01:00

The launch of the Veritas manifesto, of which more anon, was reasonably well covered by the media, both print and electronic.

We particularly liked the reference in the Evening Standard:

“Like the Liberal Democrats, the minor parties are unveiling manifestos today,including George Galloway’s anti-war Respect Party and Robert Kilroy-Silk’s new anti-EU and low-tax vehicle Veritas.”

Clearly the low-tax vehicle is not Rover.

George Galloway is not precisely a threat to Veritas. Not satisfied with an anti-war platform (well, he would want his pal Saddam Hussein back in power, wouldn’t he) he is also producing all the old Labour policies that nearly destroyed the country in the sixties and seventies and most certainly destroyed the Labour Party in the eighties: renationalization, greater union powers and tax increases.

Alas, the man who was trying to lambast government policy towards Rover turned out to be the owner of at least one Mercedes.

So much better to be known as the party that wants to introduce a flat tax and take low-paid workers out of the pernicious tax-welfare trap.

The Russians will send the Constitution into space

2005-04-14T18:44:00.000+01:00

The Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori will be carrying a copy of the as yet unratified Constitution for Europe (presumably it will be wheeled along in a trolley) as he boards the Soyuz rocket that is due to take off tomorrow from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

So, finally, that document will be in the environment that is most appropriate for it: space. It is not quite clear what will happen to it eventually. One assumes Signor Vittori intends to come back to earth at some later date. Will he bring the hefty document back with him? Surely, the EU is not so wicked as to pollute space with it.

Meanwhile, Günther Verheugen, Commission Vice President has waxed lyrical on the event:

“In orbit, the constitution will not only encompass Europe, but the whole world.Let us hope that this symbol of European identity will be well received both by Europeans and by the peoples of other continents.”

Someone should do something about Herr Verheugen’s medication in our opinion. It is the rocket that will be going … well, we are not sure where it is going but it is not encompassing Europe or the world except in the rather megalomaniac imagination of the Commission Vice President.

As for the symbol of European identity (what, all 400 odd pages of it?) being received joyfully by peoples in various continents, one hopes Herr Verheugen did not mean that literally.

The thought of that document descending from space at some unsuspecting African or South-East Asian village to cause greater chaos than the tsunami ever did, fills one with dread.

Then again, maybe the Americans and the Australians can send their navy and air force to rescue anybody whose life is being destroyed by the new Constitution for Europe.

Adopt a soldier, says Veritas

2005-04-13T23:48:00.000+01:00

It seems that when it comes to electoral rights, there are at least three categories of people in this country. There are those (most of us), who have one vote, which we may or may not use on May 5.

Then there is the growing number of postal voters, such as the ones in certain parts of Birmingham or Blackburn. Among these the cry is becoming vote early or late, vote often, as long as you vote the right way.

And then there are members of the services, stationed overseas who have been risking their lives, fighting for our interests and ensuring that Iraq and Afghanistan have their first free and fair elections. They, it seems, will not be able to vote in our elections.

This interesting story has been going round some parliamentarians and has finally been brought out into the public by the The Herald.

“Ivor Caplin, the armed forces minister, told the House of Commons in January that 100,000 advisory leaflets would be distributed to bases from Basra to Benbecula by early the following month to allow soldiers, sailors and airmen to have their names included on voters' rolls in their home constituencies.

But the first leaflets were not handed out until March 1, only 10 days before the final registration date. Many units did not receive them until after the deadline, military sources said.”

In other words, around 80 per cent of our troops overseas will not be able to vote. We appear to have gone backwards in technological development. In 1945, with hostilities continuing and with huge numbers of British forces overseas, ballot papers went out, were filled in honestly, returned and counted honestly. (And brought in the first Attlee government.)

Now fast forward to 2001 and with all our technology we do not seem to be able to ensure that our servicemen and women vote in an election that has been signposted months ago.

Nor does it seem that anyone is too upset about it all.

“Peter Viggers, a parliamentary representative on the Electoral Commission, admitted that the leaflet initiative advising service personnel how to secure their votes had not been implemented "as speedily or effectively" as anticipated.”

Dear, dear. Note the passive aspect of the statement. It “had not been implemented”. Nobody is at fault. It just happened, guv.

“An MoD spokeswoman said: "The leaflets were produced and delivered. It was up to individual units, ships and bases to distribute them."

She could not,however, give detailed dates for the arrival of the documents.”

Well, that’s all right then. The MoD airhead probably went off to her statutory lunch break with the clear conscience of one who has done her work well.

It is no wonder that there are dark mutterings among some of the military:

“Jeff Duncan, manager of the Save the Scottish Regiments campaign, questioned whether the delay had been deliberate.

He said: "This government is treating our servicemen and women with contempt. This is just another example of that contempt.

"It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that perhaps Labour did not want to create the climate under which a military constituency of perhaps 250,000 potential voters facing defence cutbacks would make their displeasure plain at the ballot box."”

It is difficult not to feel some sympathy with that point of view but we suspect total incompetence rather than evil intentions on the part of the MoD. Then again, it is worth remembering that similar shenanigans were perpetrated in the United States under our Tony’s best friend Bill.

Veritas has a few suggestions on how to solve the problem. It seems, in the light of all the stories of postal vote chicanery, government refusal to deal with it and, now, soldiers not being able to vote, that this country must be put on the danger list.

It is not too late to send OSCE observers even for this election but, certainly, we shall need them for next year’s referendum. Incidentally, will the troops overseas, who have a fair idea of what Europe means to them, get the referendum ballot papers in time? Care to bet on that?

Then there is the purple indelible dye that so many Iraqis sported proudly on their election day. Was there any left over? Could we possibly have it here? It seems to me that we are beginning to need some extra security measures to ensure that our elections become free and fair.

In the meantime, bearing in mind the number of people in Britain, who find this election campaign of appalling tedium, we are suggesting that they might like to adopt a soldier. Find out how individual servicemen and women would have voted if they had not been disenfranchised by the MoD and cast your vote for them.

Veritas says: Adopt a soldier. Cast a vote for our brave boys and girls.

Horses for courses

2005-04-10T22:09:00.000+01:00

Our readers may not realize this but the great Margot, the fragrant Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation has explained in an interview that, although the Constitution is the same for every part of the European Union, the way of selling it has to be different as one size cannot fit all.

This does raise the question of why is it only in propaganda that one size cannot fit all, not in important matters like economic, fiscal or regulatory policy. One presumes, the fragrant Commissar, does not really believe that one size not fitting all business, but realizes that at certain level she has to communicate with people, who, alas, do not have her superior wisdom in understanding the beauties of the project.

It seems the Commission, as a whole, shares the Commissar’s concerns. So worried are they about the way the EU is being presented in France (and they do realize that the vote is not going to be on the Constitution alone) that they have decided to postpone discussion of a crucial policy paper.

The paper was to discuss reform of the state aid system, a point of many clashes between the EU and France, who is given to bailing out large companies that are on the skids. The names, Alstom, Bull, France Télècom spring to mind.

There are several problems. First off is the wretched Lisbon Agenda, that is supposed to produce that dynamic European economy by 2010, clearly an impossible proposition while large amounts of taxpayers’ money flows into failing “dinosaurs”. On the other hand, Chirac has already promised even more money to help national “winners”.

Then there is the question of the Single Market, something everybody is terribly keen on, until it comes to real competition.

Thirdly, there is the position and attitude of “Nickel” Neelie Kroes, brought into the Commission, theoretically, to shake up the whole system of competition and state aid.

However, all these laudable aims are being put on hold. The French are not happy with what they see as a “neo-liberal, Anglo-Saxon” development in the EU (if only!). And they may, in their disgust at the thought of not being able to use large amounts of various taxpayers’ dosh to prop up ailing parts of their economy, vote non to the referendum.

That is the problem. And the solution? We shall abandon all those ideas of single market, free market, competitiveness and not even discuss anything like a reform of the state aid system.

Anything to get that Constitution through.

The Dutch join the battle

2005-04-08T17:59:00.000+01:00

The Dutch government has made it clear that it is having serious thoughts about the referendum. In particular, they have suggested, there will be no need for one in the Netherlands if the result of the French one on May 29 is a resounding or even a whispering non.

That leaves open the question of what will happen if the French oui scrapes through à la Maastricht. Well, then the Dutch government will have to fight the battle and in not very auspicious circumstances. The pan-European malaise of disgust with an establishment that seems to have lost any contact with the reality of life as it is lived by the vast majority of the people, has overwhelmed much of Holland as well, particularly after the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh.

Now they have something else to worry about. A new Vote-No campaign has been launched in the Netherlands and this is a serious one.

Looking at its website, even our rudimentary knowledge of Dutch (helped by a separate e-mail from one of the leading lights of the organization) informs us that the campaign will revolve round ten basic issues:

1. Loss of national sovereignty
2. Incomprehensible constitution (the French, as we know, have as good as acknowledged this officially)
3. Greater abuse of power
4. Even less democracy
5. Loss of veto rights
6. More bEUrocracy (clever, that)
7. More money into bottomless pits (the Dutch is fairly clear: Meer geld in bodemloze putten)
8. More terrorism
9. One European army
10. All power moving to France and Germany

We wish them luck and shall do our best to help. We shall also keep our readers informed about further developments.

Double vision

2005-04-07T19:22:00.000+01:00

It is always instructive to watch the spin that is put by the media on various euro-jamborees like the ongoing frank and open discussions about the next EU budget, decided, incidentally for seven years at a time, thus ensuring that elections or the choice of a new Commission will make no difference whatsoever.

For instance, Graham Bowley, of the International Herald Tribune, thinks of the rather sordid little log-rolling exercise as a grand clash of two different visions.

In one corner, ladies and gentlemen, we have the Commission, backed by a number of member states (all of them net recipients of funds), making a pitch

“… for a well-funded union, one that has enough money to dole out development aid to its poorer backwaters, to fight crime and illegal immigration, stimulate a high-tech future and run its federal institutions well”.

A rag-bag of political aims, one might say, some good, some bad and some plain ridiculous.

“In this vision, Europe is without borders, run more and more from Brussels – one, according to José Manuel Barroso, the commission president, that has ‘has the means to match its ambitions’.”

The truth is that no organization could have the means to match the EU’s ambitions either territorially or politically. What President “free-marketeer” Barroso means is a Europe that he and his colleagues that include the “free-marketeer” East Europeans can run as a centralized, redistributionist mega-state. (Please note my avoidance of the word superstate that seems to offend so many people.)

So that is one vision but it does not, alas, occupy the field unopposed. There are those mean-minded representatives of donor countries, who do not think that any more money should be handed over to the EU, particularly as a large proportion of it is never properly accounted for.

“The difference in billions of euros between these two positions are not large, especially when compared with the size of national economies.

At one level, the debate is about politicians playing to national galleries, engineering disputes to deliver victories down the line.

But there is also a more substantive clash between those whose vision of Europe is one where national barriers fall and where economies of scale are best served and cross-border problems are best solved by working together – on the environment, transport, crime, immigration, even defence – and those who are resisting the transfer from national capitals of money, and power, to Europe’s centre.”

We do have to be so very careful, as Superintendent Bell used to say in the Reggie Fortune stories (we are nothing if not erudite on this blog). Analyses like Mr Bowley’s are very insidious.

On the one hand we have people like President Barroso or Budget Commissar Grybauskaite, who want to introduce all these wonderful ideas like international co-operation, economy of size and high-tech economy.

On the other hand we have those mean little national politicians, who just play up to their gallery at home and refuse to hand over any more money to “Europe’s centre”.

Dear, dear. Where shall we start? Perhaps by pointing out that we are not talking about Europe’s centre which is anywhere between Berlin and Vilnius but the self-appointed capital of the European Union.

Then, perhaps we should point out that playing up to the national gallery could also be interpreted as being held accountable by the people who elect you, which could, perhaps, be called democracy, not something that encumbers our various Commissioners and euro-apparatchiks.

Above all, though, the two sides Mr Bowley and, let’s face it, not only he, put up in opposition are nothing of the kind.

Environmental problems are either global or, much more likely, local, best solved by the local areas without the heavy-handed ideological intervention of “Europe’s centre”. The words waste disposal and landfill spring to mind.

Economies of size are best achieved by individual firms through agreements. Whenever they are imposed by “Europe’s centre” (and the word eurofighter springs to mind here) they are not only not efficient, they are not even economical.

Then there is the problem of all those parts of the economy that have been handed over to “Europe’s centre” like fisheries and agriculture.

It is important to remember that the arguments for the increased budget produced by the “free-marketeer” President Barroso and his minions have nothing to do with economic or any other development and everything to do with further integration, more centralized power, unaccountable to the elector or the taxpayer, and redistribution of funds in an old-fashioned socialist way.

The first cuckoo?

2005-04-07T17:47:00.000+01:00

I saw a very odd sight on the Hammersmith and City line train the other day: an abandoned copy of The Londoner, Hizonner’s propaganda newsletter, that costs the unsuspecting London taxpayers around £1½ million a year.

Until that moment no-one I know or have ever heard of had admitted to seeing, let alone reading, let alone abandoning the strange rag. Yet there it was, as large as life but not nearly as realistic, as Oscar Wilde might say.

Who could conceivably have taken the trouble of carrying the propaganda sheet to the train and then leaving it there for other takers (none of whom actually obliged as the rag remained forlorn on a seat all of its own)? Could Hizonner have hired a troop of agents, whose sole task is to leave copies of The Londoner on London Transport? I think we should be told.

The fragrant Margot is back

2005-04-06T15:33:00.000+01:00

Indeed she is, though, let’s face it she is a far less elegant personality than Cruella, if her own description of herself is anything to go by.

It seems there is to be no explanation as to why a personal blog that was to be updated twice a week lapsed to once a week and then to a fortnight. Apparently the poor thing was unwinding from a stressful job.

Well, I guess it is quite stressful to be Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation but I also think that she might have used the time quite profitably to find out what she is talking about.

This blog is businesslike in a fluffy sort of way (fluffiness being the hallmark of this particular blog), apart from her last line with a laughably trite attempt at philosophical musing:

“And springtime seems to bring out the best or the depression of people – buy a new skirt or a shot gun?”

Presumably that is not an either-or situation but, in any case, if the fragrant Commissar wants to muse on the contradictions inherent in spring, she could look at very many examples of literary writing that put it all much more cogently and profoundly. Start with Chaucer and T. S. Eliot, Ms Wallström, both writing about April and looking at the month in very different ways.

The bulk of the posting is to do with the Constitution, her highly paid job being the explication and advocation of it. Alas, she does keep getting things wrong.

At this point I should mention, à la Margot, that I had to have a cup or so of strong coffee to clear my head in order to understand what the fragrant Commissar is actually trying to say. (I also read a chapter or two of a Mrs Pollifax novel but that did not help, merely underlining the sheer silliness of the Margot blog.)

So, here we go. It seems that there are three aspects to the Constitution: symbolic, institutional and policy. The last is of no importance, according to the fragrant Commissar, because very little has changed in most policy areas, a fact that some (presumably including Vice-President Wallström) regret.

As a matter of fact there are quite a few changes, especially in the justice and security areas as well as the abolition of the national veto in more areas, but, hey, who’s counting.

What about the other two aspects?

“From a SYMBOLIC point of view it is fundamental – because it describes the values and objectives of the European Union, it strengthens the European citizenship and gives explicit rights to all of us and it even establishes common symbols like a flag and an anthem (which of course complements the national ones).”

Ahem, who exactly is Commissar Wallström to give us explicit rights? Here we can see the crucial difference between the two world views: there are those (and we on this blog are among them) who think that rights come from the people either as individuals or as a nation, and are handed to the state by agreement for a certain purpose.

Then there are those, and Commissar Wallstöm is among them, who think that rights are something the state can grandly bestow on the people.

“From an INSTITUTIONAL point of view it is very important – because it explains that the EU can only do what member states confers upon it, it explains how decisions will be taken in a more effective way and it gives more power to the national parliaments and citizens, who can oppose or propose an initiative supported by new provisions in the text.”

This statement is known technically as a lie. Well, all right, an untruth. Let us be courteous. The Constitution does not explain “that the EU can only do what member states confers upon it” (let us disregard the curious grammar there as presumably the fragrant Commissar’s secretary did not have time to check it).

On the contrary the Constitution explains that after it had been adopted the superior status of European legislation will be rooted in the Constitution itself. Furthermore, it explains that the EU will decide whether national governments will be allowed to legislate on matters it will generously leave to them.

As for the “more power to the national parliaments and citizens …” – well, you do wonder whether the lady has actually read this document.

In the first place how is it that we do not have the power to control our legislation? In the second place, by what method can citizens or national parliaments propose or oppose and where does the text give anything remotely resembling an explanation?

In the third place, the Protocol that deals with the role of the national parliaments explains that they can, indeed, object to certain legislation and if enough of them do, the Commission is duty bound to pay attention.

It is not, however, bound in any way to do anything about that objection. So, where is this great power?

One thing has not changed. The fragrant Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation may have had an invigorating holiday and may have come back full pep and vim. But she is still not replying to any of the comments on her blog.

A new press release from Veritas at the London Assembly

2005-04-05T17:02:00.000+01:00

Veritas at the London Assembly is continuing to campaign on the subject of Europol. It has released the following press release:

Veritas Condemn EU Police ‘Lifetime Immunity From Prosecution’

"The Police Are Not Above The Law"

Veritas at the London Assembly is calling on the Mayor to join its members in condemning the government’s acceptance of EU police officers operating in Britain with lifetime immunity from prosecution. These Europol officers will have authority to steal, lie and even kill in the course of their duties. Members of the public will have no right of redress.

The European Communities (Immunities and Privileges of the European Police Office) Order 1997, already in force, states: "such persons shall enjoy immunity from suit and legal process in respect of acts, including words written or spoken, done by them in the exercise of their official functions." And as the Europol force is now being turned into an operational police force, this means that actual police officers will have immunity.

Damian Hockney, leader of the Veritas Group, said: "It beggars belief that the government are prepared to allow foreign police officers to operate on British soil unchecked by the law. As a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, I am deeply concerned that an outside force can operate in London without authority from the Met, completely free of any oversight or constraint."

So you reckon there is no connection?

2005-04-01T16:11:00.000+01:00

On occasion I have been chastised by my readers (at least that shows there are readers) of paying too much attention to various transnational organizations (the so-called tranzis) at the expense of writing about our own dear European Union and its doings.

My own explanation is always the same – these two are not separate. Those who believe in the European Union, believe in government by the tranzis, who would lord it above the democratic nations with their (more or less) accountable governments and comprehensible legal and constitutional systems.

However, it is always a pleasure to be able to show some evidence of this connection.

Word reaches us from another blogiste-confrère that there might be an interesting development in the career of one Franz-Hermann Brüner, at present Director-General of OLAF, the Commission’s own anti-fraud unit, that has been embroiled in more scandals than Enron.

Its most recent achievement was a report, which we shall cover in more detail, that showed beyond any possible doubt (well, errm, beyond any doubt that members of OLAF might have) that the millions of euros handed over to the Palestinian Authority over the years could not possibly have gone to any terrorist organization.

Mind you, they have no idea where it did go and for some reason none of it actually went to the Palestinian people, but that has not stopped OLAF from pronouncing on the subject.

So where do you think Franz-Herman Brüner might be going? Give up? I’ll tell you.

You may have noticed that there has been a certain flap in that holy of holies, the United Nations. Among other things the Volcker Report mentioned was the fact that Dileep Nair, who heads the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services, had hired an assistant using money from the oil-for-food programme.

So what you might ask. A busy man like Mr Nair needs assistants. Unfortunately, this one did no work for the programme. No-one seems to be able to establish whether said assistant did any work at all.

Nair is about to come to the end of his five year term, so this report has not come at a particularly good time. Not only is he being charged with violations of UN staff regulations but there is a strong possibility of old charges that had been dismissed with a contemptuous shrug resurfacing. These, needless to say, have to do with sexual harassment (are they all at it?) and hiring favouritism on the basis of nationality (yes, they are all at it).

So, Fred Eckhard, UN chief spokesman (there’s a job I would not want for all the tea in China) has produced a short list of possible successors. And who heads the list? Yup, that’s right. Our own Herr Brüner.

And there are still people out there, who think there is no connection between all these organizations and the tranzi staff that fill them?

Olympic venues still cost Greek taxpayer money

2005-03-31T20:46:00.000+01:00

The Greek government has finally decided to do something about those Olympic venues that have not been used by man or beast for six months.

And yes, dear reader, you have guessed it: they are not going to be sold off. Well, presumably, buyers are not exactly rushing with open wallets. Instead, the majority will be leased to the private sector for development.

According to the BBC World Service website, the Greek government has explained that

“…that many [sites] will remain as sports facilities, with some extra commercial activity allowed, such as restaurants, cafes and theme parks.

But others will be fully converted into conference centres, museums and academies.”

Whether Greece actually needs that many sports facilities with or without commercial activity or quite so many conference centres, museums, academies (Ah! Shades of Plato), bearing in mind how many there are already, remains a moot point.

The trouble is that the Greek government is under pressure to prove that the whole shebang has somehow been worthwhile (and continues to be worthwhile) to the Greek taxpayer.

The figures at present are as follows: Greece is reckoned to have spent £6.4 billion on the Games. £1.6 billion went on the basic construction of 30 sites. As none of them are functioning, at least £53 million a year is being spent on maintaining them.

The government insists that plenty of Greek and foreign investors have shown interest in the leases, though they seem to have done so very quietly. Nobody can suggest a single name and even the authorities admit that some sites will be hard to shift.

In the meantime the long-suffering taxpayer will go on footing the bill. Or it will be shifted on to the EU taxpayer in general.

Even Hollywood luvvies turn on the EU

2005-03-31T20:13:00.000+01:00

Quelle horreur! Hollywood luvvies, who are supposed to make statements of deep disdain for President Bush and his administration are now turning on the European Union.

Well, one of them is, but he is a big-time luvvy. Richard Gere has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, in which he describes his recent visit:

“I was in Europe this month to receive an award from the Geuzen Resistance 1940-1945 Foundation on behalf of the International Campaign for Tibet. The Geuzen Medal honors the memory of Dutch resistance heroes who fought the Nazis by recognizing those today who resist repression, discrimination and racism, and the Campaign was recognized for promoting human rights and self-determination in Tibet through nonviolent means. It was a very proud moment for those of us who care deeply about Tibet and the brave Tibetan people--and certainly for me as the Campaign's chairman.”

Wonderful, you might say. Europe, having suffered from horrors, largely invented by its own people, recognizes the relevance of tyranny to all times and all peoples.

Well, not quite, as Mr Gere points out. Europe is, of course, refusing to recognize the problems that Tibet, Taiwan, Chinese dissidents, Chinese journalists, non-Chinese people in China and many millions of others face. Indeed, as Mr Gere points out in the article, the European Union is ready to reward China for its oppressive and tyrannical activity by lifting the arms embargo, imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Above all, Mr Gere wants Europeans to help “the Dalai Lama resist a future Tibet determined solely by Beijing's interests”. Not much to ask, is it, from countries that spend a lot of time remembering past oppressions and rightly honouring its victims and those who fought for freedom. Apparently, it is.

M le Président l’Escroc

2005-03-31T17:22:00.000+01:00

I trust our readers remember the last presidential election in France that provided us all with so much entertainment. They will, no doubt, recall that the run-off was between Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen.

They will also recall the slogan that persuaded the French populace to turn out, hold its collective nose and vote for Chirac: “Votez pour l’escroc, non pour le fasciste.” Vote for the crook not the fascist.

Since then various unkind people have been referring to Chirac as l’escroc. But they are not the only ones. Oh dear me, no. Try putting the word l’escroc into Google, that fount of all modern knowledge.

The first reference is to the official website of the French President, complete with (selected) biography, picture, speeches, whatnot. Curiously enough this is the English language website though it responds to a French word. Perhaps they know something that the whole world has already acknowledged.

Actually there are some other interesting aspects to the website. I mean, who knew that Jacques Chirac (or Jacky as he liked to be called in his youth when he was obsessed with American culture, American films and American fashions) has, among his many other decorations (a bit like the leaders of the late unlamented Soviet Union), a Croix de la Valeur Militaire.

Well, the Croix may be listed but its reason is not. Try as we might we cannot discover where l’escroc practised his valeur militaire. It was suggested to me rather unkindly that he might have got it for standing in front of his troops.

But then M le Président l’Escroc also has the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (aerospace industry) and numerous other medals. For example, he is a Chevalier du Mérite Agricole, des Arts et des Lettres, de l'Etoile Noire, du Mérite Sportif, du Mérite Touristique.

Any information on the reasons for this excessive display of merit will be very welcome. Unlike the fragrant Margot this blog genuinely welcomes all comments. We even reply to them.

It is time for this blog to come to the aid ...

2005-03-30T19:44:00.000+01:00

… of the fragrant Margot Wallström. For those of our readers who do not know, the delightful Ms Wallström is the Commission Vice-President, in charge of Institutional Relations and Communication.

In other words, the lady is in charge of selling the European project and, particularly, the somewhat beleaguered constitution to the sceptical populace of Europe. Or, as some of us call her, the Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation.

Presumably the fragrant Margot was chosen for this task because she looks presentable, unlike many of her colleagues, a blonde Swede, with no known criminal charges against her. The trouble is that she has been in the bubble for two long and actually believes the propaganda.

Clearly, she feels that the message is wonderful but the presentation has been somewhat askew. So, she has decided to present herself as the Commissioner with the human face, to which end she has started a blog on her Commission website.

The blog, updated twice a week (except when the Commission is on holiday, presumably) is supposed to be a mixture of personal and political. Unfortunately the personal has been rather silly and the political risible. Equally unfortunately, most of the comments have been from eurosceptics, who have pointed out her inconsistencies, lack of knowledge and slightly skew-whiff attitude to life.

While the fragrant Margot maintains that she loves debates and will not silence her critics (though in her most recent entry she wondered how soon the Norwegian government will have the courage to call another referendum – there were a few comments about that), she has not replied to any of them, merely shaking her blonde head and smiling bravely in adversity.

Now her colleagues have decided to come to her rescue. The following comment appeared on the Commission’s internal notice board, intracomm:

Margot's blog: get involved!

Did you know that Vice-President Wallström is writing a twice-weekly "web
log" (or "blog")? Please check it out on her page of Europa, and join in the
very lively debates going on there!

Hundreds or even thousands of people visit this site every day, apparently,
but so far most of the comments posted there are from anti-EU individuals, some
of them legal experts or journalists. So far, very few of us pro-EU people seem
to be willing to face the sceptics, reply to their arguments or answer their
very probing questions.

So, dear colleagues, especially you economists and lawyers out there,
please take a look at this "blog" and respond to our critics!

David Monkcom /DG Press

And, indeed, the payroll has been mobilized as one or two comments have appeared, praising the fragrant Margot and her amazing courage for publishing a blog. But courage is as courage does. She, herself, is still absent from the discussion. On the other hand, les critiques have loved it. Not only have the knowledgeable attacks increased but various people with access to the Commission intranet have gleefully identified all Margot’s supporters that happen to be on the payroll.

So, it has occurred to us in Veritas at the London Assembly that our readers would like to get involved. After all, one must not let the Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation think that she is not being listened to. And just to remind you all, the blog address is: http://weblog.jrc.cec.eu.int/page/wallstrom.

Do let the fragrant Margot know that she is being listened to.

There seems to be some misunderstanding

2005-03-28T21:07:00.000+01:00

The usually sensible and well-informed business section of the Sunday Telegraph had rather an odd article in it yesterday. Martin Baker was profiling John Elliott, chairman of EBAC, that sells water coolers all over Europe, and a well-known eurosceptic (though his achievements as chairman of NESNO ought to have beeen put into some context of what really happened in the North-East with regards to Neil Herron and his merry men and women).

Mr Elliott has been prominent in the Business for Sterling and No to the euro campaigns; he clearly dislikes regionalization of the UK; and he absolutely loathes the bureaucracy that emanates from Brussels and crushes any kind of entrepreneurial spirit across Europe and Britain.

Nothing odd about that, you might think. One assumes most businessmen and businesswomen think roughly along those lines. Not according to the Sunday Telegraph’s finest, they don’t.

Martin Baker finds that there is an

“… obvious irony in all of this [growing sales across Europe] is that Elliott is a loud eurosceptic”.

Perhaps it is the loudness that has surprised Mr Baker. Otherwise, for the life of me I cannot see what is so ironic about a eurosceptic who trades internationally. Au contraire, Mr Elliott is just the sort of successful businessman who is likely to be clobbered by the eurocracy and regulatocracy, who having never done a day’s work in the real world, assume that nobody can possibly get on in life without being told how to do so.

The Working Time Directive, says Mr Elliott, is the most stupid thing ever. Mmm, well there is hot competition, but we need not argue that point. Still, it seems to surprise Martin Baker:

“It is, in fact, bureaucracy that Elliott dislikes. He may be a eurosceptic (and is violently opposed to any idea of Britain ever dropping sterling) but he is not anti-European or xenophobic.”

Like duh! Really, if journalists in the Sunday Telegraph business section produce this sort of bilge, what can one expect from other sections of the media? Perhaps, Mr Baker should spend some time out in the real world, even reading this blog.

Play up, play up ....

2005-03-27T23:46:00.000+01:00

Readers of this blog will know that we keep a close watch on developments in the sporting world, particularly on developments in the EU sporting world. Some of our readers may not realize this but sport is to become an EU competence under the terms of the constitution.

Whether that will involve the Commission dealing with British footballers and football fans remains to be seen. We suspect President Barroso will balk at that.

In the meantime a conference was hosted by the King Baoudoin Centre and the European Policy Centre in Brussels on sports participation in the EU. Well what else can one do about sport but to hold a conference? We presume there were no compulsory physical jerks at the beginning or running on the spot in the middle. In fact, it is curious that, given the subject, we have heard nothing about the content and amount of food consumed during and between the intensive discussions.

Curiously enough, last week’s Sunday Telegraph ran an article about children playing games in school playgrounds or, rather, not playing them because of the endless health and safety regulations. One might think that this would worry the great sports wallahs that gathered for the conference.

Not so, but far from it. Health and safety regulations, many of them products of the EU regulatory machine, were not discussed. Instead Dr van Bottenburg from the W.J.H. Mulier Institut in the Netherlands (honest!) presented a paper on sports participation in the EU.

Unfortunately, the study seems to have been marred by loose definition of sports participation and insufficient data, particularly from the new member states. But Dr van Bottenburg was less than sanguine.

It seems that the situation has actually been getting worse even in the old member states:

“He observes that there there was a significant rise in the number of people taking part in sport between the 1960s and 1990s but that over the past ten years this development appears to have stagnated in a number of countries (Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Spain and Slovenia), or has begun to decline (UK and, possibly, France; among young adults in Sweden
and, as regards time devoted to sport, the Netherlands and Denmark; in a competitive and championship context in Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy).”

It is one of the oddest things about the European Union that the more money and effort is put into a project the worse it performs. Until the 1990s before the EU decided to take interest in the sporting activities of its citizens, they seemed to get on quite well, doing all sorts of useful and healthful things.

Since then the numbers have been falling though, unquestionably, most people have enough leisure time to indulge at least in walking.

Clearly, what is needed is a constitutional decision that sport “can and should be dealt with across government ministries and across EU departments”. Whether this is sport as practised by professional competitors or physical activity by ordinary folk is unclear. Knowing the EU and its fanatical desire to control everybody’s life and to centralize all activity, probably both.

One interesting subject that will no doubt rear its head quite soon is that of the EU Olympic team. Indeed, we have already had a foretaste of that with the rather weird calculation of “European” medals after the last, highly expensive Games in Athens.

Apparently the “European” medals far outstripped those of the United States, Russian and whoever else. Therefore, some commentators suggested, we should have a single European team.

Actually, properly calculated per head of population, the number of “European” medals were nowhere near the top of the league. In any case, if there were one EU team, we would presumably not have all the various national representatives in it and the number of medals would consequently be somewhat lower.

At the same time the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) – one wonders how many four course lunches they consume – has issued a statement that they think that obesity in Europe has been underreported. 200 million adults across the EU may be overweight or obese.

One wonders what that means. Obesity is a scientifically defined term based on body mass, height and weight. But overweight? That can be anything from slightly plump to quite fat and happy. After all, do we actually want everyone to be stick insect thin and possibly suffer from eating disorders? (Presumably there is a separate task force that deals with that problem, also peculiar to the developed countries.)

As for obesity, well, most of us know the solution to that: eat less and move more and have nothing to do with international task forces.

Meanwhile, the Commission has announced that the number of obese children is rising by 400,000 per year and something must be done about that.

The Health Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, has launched the EU’s Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, explaining that

“… he will act together with industry and consumer groups, health experts and political leaders to tackle obesity. The Platform will pool expertise and act as a forum where good practice from one country is disseminated and replicated across Europe.”

Whether there is an obesity problem or not, its notional existence is to be used for two things: an attempt to interfere even more in people’s lives and to integrate health, diet and sport policies across the European Union.

In fact, the Commission is not ruling out the possibility of legislative approach if the present voluntary one does not work. Given that, as we have said above, the situation has been supposedly getting worse in tandem with greater interest both by individual governments and the EU in the subject, it seems we shall not avoid legislative action, for which there is a judicial basis in the constitution.

What, one asks oneself, would that legislation be? Compulsory sports for all? A diet police knocking on people’s doors and counting the number of potatoes they eat with their meals? And, above all, will the Commissioners show us a good example and lose some of their own surplus flesh? After all, we know from the blog run by the Commissar for Truth and Reconciliation, the fragrant Margot Wallström that their lives are beset with temptation in the shape of enormous lunches, dinners and many, many drinks parties.

And, of course, we need to look at another aspect of the pan-European sports competence. After all, if “Europe” is to be united in sporting terms, why do we worry about which capital is to be bankrupted by holding the 2012 Olympic Games? Why is that well-known europhile, Hizonner the Mayor of LondON campaigning to hold them in London? Tut-tut, such unreconstructed nationalism. We, in Veritas at the London Assembly, are ashamed of Ken’s xenophobia and little Englandism.

Freedom of the press, EU style

2005-03-24T00:18:00.000Z

We know how much the European Union likes journalists investigating various matters. After all, we know what happened to Hans Martin Tillack, the German journalist who had the temerity to write about fraud and incompetence in the Commission’s anti-fraud organization, OLAF.

He was libelled, arrested, held by the Belgian police, his documents and computer were confiscated and he has been told that he has no redress against EU officials past and present, who slander him, as no national jurisdiction has any power over them.

Now we hear that the European Parliament’s leadership is proposing tough restrictions on photographers and cameramen who try to take pictures or film members when not involved in official duties.

Internal documents talk of banning journalists who violate these rules for anything up to two years from the Parliament buildings.

The fact is that the MEPs are sick and tired of film sequences that show them signing up for daily allowances and leaving immediately after that.

They do not like being photographed having a jolly nice time at the taxpayers’ expense instead of doing any work.

So, obviously, these photographs must not be taken and if they are, the films must be seized and journalists thrown out of the building. If they are lucky.

The rules, if agreed on, will give a five-member committee inside the Parliament, called the Quaestors, powers to decide which areas of the complexes will be closed off from journalists when.

At the moment the situation is entirely unclear, with rumours going round and future rules discussed by committees behind closed doors. In the midst of it all, a spokesman for the Parliament told journalists that “our commitment to an open institution is still standing”.

Depends on how you define an open institution, I suppose.

The Greeks have really done it

2005-03-19T11:22:00.000Z

According to official figures Greece has recorded a budget deficit in its GDP of 6.1 per cent, that is exactly twice as large as that allowed by the Growth and Stability Pact. To be fair, Greece had massaged figures in order to get into the single currency and has never actually been within the allowed margins.

This, however, goes beyond any previous achievement and is the highest deficit recorded by any member of the economic and monetary union since 1999. The figures may not be entirely unconnected with the financial black hole that was last year’s Olympic Games.

Economists, such as those at Goldman Sachs, maintain that the latest figures prove the need for economic discipline though they do not explain why that discipline should be created arbitrarily by bureaucrats at the centre of the European Union.

Nor do they explain how that discipline can be imposed on small countries like Greece (and part of the discipline is the extraction of massive fines that would, if applied, create an even bigger problem) while Germany and France manage to get off scot-free each time.

In the meantime the Greek government has explained the problem in its own way. A statement from the Finance Ministry blamed it all on the fiscal disorder left behind by the previous, Socialist, government (may even be true) and promised financial transparency in future.

The Big Five decide

2005-03-19T02:18:00.000Z

What a lovely expression that is: the Big Five (not, I hasten to add, the Famous Five, who were more useful in fighting all sorts of national and international baddies, as I recall).

It is redolent of early twentieth century and inter-war politics. Then it became the Big Three, then the two Superpowers and then there was one with the EU aspiring to be the other and so on.

The Big Five in this case are Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain and their interior ministers met this week in Granada to co-ordinate the fight against terrorism. One wonders whether Charles Clarke regaled them with his own tales of woe at the stroppy House of Lords that would not let him pass whatever legislation he wanted in whatever form he wanted.

Anyway, they met in Granada and came to various agreements: to co-ordinate their approach to North African countries in order to be able to deport terror suspects back to their homeland. Actually, the French seem to be doing this already without any co-ordination and a goodly number of the terror suspects in Britain are not from North Africa. But never mind, it’s the thought that counts.

Agreement was reached on better sharing of information on such matters as fingerprinting, DNA, ballistics, criminal intelligence, stolen vehicle and identity theft. The precise method of sharing this information will be decided by a panel of experts to be set up, though the principle of it all was agreed by the ministers at the meeting.

There will be further work to develop exchange of information on people suspected of activities related to terrorism and on sharing information about air passenger movement.

There may be joint action to shut down websites of fanatical groups. This is a little ominous as the definition of fanatical is rather vague. If they mean terrorist then this may be the right time for France and Spain to stop pandering to some of their own Islamic groups and recognize Hizbollah and Arab Jihad as just that.

One cannot help asking: were there no exchanges of information between police forces in the past before the great and good Javier Solana came along and demanded greater co-ordination of activity? Was Interpol not operative? In fact, why do we never hear that word in these discussions?

Could it be that all these agreements have nothing to do with the fight against terrorism and everything with the ongoing attempts to integrate police and judicial activity across the European Union?

Giving what away?

2005-03-18T18:09:00.000Z

As we read headlines about the boring budget or the … yawn … give-away before the general election budget, we have to ask ourselves, what is it the Chancellor is supposed to be giving away.

It seems that having taken large amounts of the taxpayers’ money and spent it on the ever growing public sector (not, if you are wondering, the more useful part of it like doctors and nurses or real teachers), he has now decided, with infinite generosity, to “give” some of the money back to us. On condition, of course, that we spend it wisely, as he tells us to.

(By the way, it seems that this week's Jobs section of the Guardian, that Mecca of the public sector, was 114 pages long. How very jolly!)

In this he is akin to the European Union that also takes a great deal of our money and very generously “gives” some of it back, to be used in projects we may or may not need or want.

Meanwhile the Adam Smith Institute has done its usual annual calculation of Tax Freedom Day and found that, give-away budget nothwithstanding and, indeed, as a result of that budget, it has slipped another three days to May 31.

That’s right, dear reader, for the first five months of this year you will be labouring for the government and for yourself only after that. Give away, eh? Give what away?

The Adam Smith Institute proclaims that taxes should be made simpler, fewer and lower.

Unsurprisingly, Veritas believes that, too. In fact, the tax policy we shall be unveiling soon, will concentrate on those three aspects and will be built on the ideas of a flat tax, successfully introduced in a number of countries during the last decade. Who knows, it might come to pass in a United Kingdom, outside the high tax, high regulation environment of the European Union.

Think outside the box, says Veritas

2005-03-13T10:07:00.000Z

In response to the report published by the Commission for Africa last Friday, Veritas has issued the following press release:

VERITAS SAYS:

DOUBLING AID WILL NOT HELP CONTINENT

A GENUINE FREE TRADE POLICY IS NEEDED

Damian Hockney, the Deputy Leader of Veritas has today criticized the report of Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa, describing it as being unimaginative, old-fashioned and unable to think outside the box.

“They are right to say that we need to change certain trading policies such as CAP, the Common Fisheries Policy, various export subsidies and the sugar regime,” – said Mr Hockney, who is also the leader of the Veritas group in the London Assembly.

“But they still place emphasis on handing out of aid and cacellation of debts. Most developing countries do not think of that as the answer to their problems. They want to be able to trade in order to develop economically.”

Veritas has pointed to the European Union’s protectionist policies as being among the most harmful influences on African countries.

The Common Agricultural Policy prevents African producers from selling food to European countries.

The Common Fisheries Policy deprives African fishermen of their livelihood and any possibility of economic development.

The sugar regime deprives developing countries of a reasonable income for their produce.

“One can go on listing the problems indefinitely,” – said Mr Hockney. –“Wearing red noses, making silly jokes on TV and producing reports that seem incapable of any new ideas are clearly not the answer.

“Veritas appears to be the only party that is working on policies that would genuinely benefit the people of Africa, rather than the corrupt and oppressive governments that are in power.

“We need to concentrate on opening up trade and on helping African countries in the creation of a social and political environment where private property, contract law and free expression are crucial. That would create a real partnership between the developed and the developing world.”

Ends

Will small businesses survive local government?

2005-03-11T19:28:00.000Z

How nice to think that Hizonner the Mayor, otherwise known as Our Ken, still has a cheerleader in the media. Mind you, it is an American newspaper, published in Paris, aimed largely at American expats, diplomats, businessmen in Europe and other suchlike individuals not normally liked or even appreciated by Hizonner, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. A cheer leader is a cheer leader.

Last Monday’s International Herald Tribune, for reasons best known to itself, published a long article of praise for Our Ken. Not a single critical opinion featured. Amazing. You’d think this was The Londoner.

Incidentally, they do mention The Londoner, as part of the compulsory “he is such a cheeky chappie, he gets away with everything” encomium, no longer seen too often in the British press, who have become rather tired of Hizonner’s goings on, except when he calls a Jewish journalist a German war criminal.

“Alongside the successes, flashes of the old Red Ken showmanship also occasionally reappear.
In 2003, he turned loose four hawks - Stripey, Squirt, Nelson and Nathan - to rid Trafalgar Square of most of its pigeon population. He opened a free newspaper, The Londoner, which regularly reports on the mayor's activities.
Occasionally he strays into foreign policy. He longs for the day when the Saudi royal family swings from lampposts, he said last year. He has few good words to say about President George W. Bush. Last week, he said that Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, was "a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office.”

Gosh, just look at him. Isn’t he a scream? Exactly, how does the losing of four hawks show his socialist credentials? Pigeons are not, so far as one knows, emblems of capitalist exploitation and, in any case, the whole exercise smacks of the sort of huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ behaviour that Hizonner says he abhors.

We shall not spend too much time on Hizonner’s excursions into foreign policy, except to remind all our readers (something the Trib seems to have forgotten) that he not only calls for the imprisonment of a democratically elected political leader but supports and extends the hand of friendship to known advocates of terrorist murder, the oppression of women and the killing of homosexuals. So much for Hizonner’s views on politics.

The free newspaper is, of course, nothing of the kind. At the moment it costs the unfortunate taxpayers of London £3 million a year and likely to rise. A little item in today’s Evening Standard informs us that Hizonner is about to give West Ferry Printers, half-owned by Friend of Ken, Richard Desmond, an eight per cent rise in the contract.

Nor is The Londoner precisely a newspaper. It is more a propaganda sheet for Our Ken, his own version of Pravda. So, I suppose, it does show his old red credentials after all, in their most Stalinist forms.

The article is theoretically all about Hizonner’s stated support for more high rise construction for business and residential purposes but that little story gets lost in general breathless praise of the wonderful achievements. (Reasonable enough, as, huff and puff as he might, he has no say in what gets built where and, especially, he has no say in the City of London.)

So what is the greatest achievement?

“The application of market principles - to London's roads - brought what is probably Livingstone's biggest success as mayor. In 2003, he put an electronic loop around the inner city and began charging commuters £5, or $9.60, a day to drive into central London.”

First things first. Taxing people is not the application of market principles. The system does not pay for itself, let alone produce profits to be ploughed into London transport, as promised.

It has had a detrimental effect on business in Westminster and is viewed with horror by Kensington, Chelsea and Fulham, the home of flourishing small businesses, who may well be destroyed by the extension of the congestion charge.

None of this is mentioned by the only other person interviewed by the extremely lazy author of this article, Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics and a “longtime Livingstone watcher”, for which read cheer leader.

He merely talks of the great success of people using buses (they always did) and tube trains (if they function). Anyone would think London transport under the highly paid Bob Kiley (bonus this year: £365,000) is a huge success.

By a strange coincidence, there was an article the same day in the Daily Telegraph, about the plight of small shops in town centres.

At first sight this was another whinge piece: supermarkets, parking, blah-blah-blah, we are all doomed. But on closer inspection one found interesting points.

Most of what was driving the small shops towards possible closure were the results of state activity, the biggest of these being a proposed rise in minimum wage and a very big increase in business rates.

Minimum wages are beyond Our Ken’s control but when it comes to raising local taxes and business rates for his pet projects, not least the lunatic Olympic Bid, he is up there with the best.
Then there is the congestion charge. Richard Tyler quotes Kevin Hawkins, director-general of the British Retail Consortium:

“Some local authorities have really put themselves out in an imaginative way to do everything they can to tempt consumers back to the high street. But it varies enormously. There are some successes, some are trying and there are others that apparently don't give a damn.”

Among the latter we can safely put Hizonner the Mayor of LondON, whose extremely imaginative approach is to extend the congestion charge to areas of London that are full of small businesses. Possibly, it is that rather than the four hawks that show his red credentials.

Richard Tyler in the Daily Telegraph discusses the highly onerous business rates.

“From April 1, the average retailer will see its business rates bill rise by 10pc, with far greater increases hitting those based in the south-east.”

Not only that but an extra level of regulation, bureaucracy and interference is being inflicted on the small businesses:

“The property pains, or gains, will not hit immediately as changes in bills will be smoothed over four years. And the smallest retailers will also benefit from a relief scheme, which subsidises premises valued at less than £10,000 with extra payments from those at more than £15,000.”

Can one imagine a greater counterincentive than that? No small business (and with property valued at less than £10,000 is very small, indeed) will ever want to grow. After all, it is very easy to get to the over £15,000 mark, where you start paying increased taxes. Is this what the government and the local authorities call helping SMEs, the wealth creators and main employers of the economy?

Then there are other burdens:

“James Lowman, a spokesman for the Association of Convenience Stores, which has 32,000 individual shop owners as members, says recent changes to the licensing laws would also clobber local shops. From February 7, he says those supplementing their income by selling alcohol or late-night food saw the cost of a three-year licence jump from £30 to as much as £600.”

Which brings me to the point that Veritas will be making as part of its policy making. It seems absolutely ridiculous that local authorities should be raising money by destroying those who create wealth. Is it not time to review the whole subject of what it is local government does and how it raises funds for it?

Worth noting

2005-03-11T14:16:00.000Z

The current issue of eurofacts quotes from an article published in Die Welt on February 23:

“From a liberal view, the EU Constitution remains a questionable document. It’s bulky, difficult to understand, and incluedes requirements that are more likely to hurt a free, competitive, western-oriented Europe than to help it … It creates an un-economic zone, whose competitiveness will be reduced and whose anti-western instincts will be written into law … nothing could be worse in view of the economic problems which the states of Europe currently face.”

I like that “western-oriented” and “anti-western”. So do we talk of developing countries in Asia or Africa. Time was, Europe was the bulwark of western liberal ideas.

In Marxist terms, the EU has turned away from “European methods of production” – private or semi-private, flexible, innovative, on an appropriate scale – to “Asian methods of production” – large-scale, centralized, geared to state glorification rather than individual or social improvement, caught up in size and unwieldiness.

The supposedly free-market, liberal Commission President Barroso and the supposedly free-market representative of the new economies, Lithuanian Budget Commissar Dalia Grybauskaitė, together with their colleagues have been bleating the same thing: we must have more money in the EU budget in order to push forward with grand EU projects.

The Constitution is undoubtedly anti-liberal, anti-western in its philosophical terms; but so is the entire structure and its denizens. And that includes, alas, the representatives of the new member states.

Here is to the next fifty years

2005-03-07T23:17:00.000Z

An article by John Blundell, Director-General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, in today’s Daily Telegraph, reminds us that his institution is fifty years old this year. The birthday is being celebrated with the publication of a new collection of articles, entitled Towards a Liberal Utopia. They are also having meetings including one that I hope will be a trenchant discussion on climate change and Kyoto.

Whenever I hear people telling me that it is preposterous to suppose that Britain will ever function outside the EU or that it is unthinkable that Europe could ever go any other way I think of the Soviet Union and the certainty so many people had that it would always be there and would be so powerful that the only way to escape thralldom would be to continue providing watered down versions of its economic and social system.

And whenever people wonder why any of us should waste our time painfully working out alternative ideas to the victorious europhile tendency I think of the IEA. For a couple of decades its denizens did just that: worked out, sometimes painfully, sometimes less so at convivial lunches, ideas that seemed completely mad.

What, privatization of the “commanding heights of the economy”? Preposterous. (We hear the same about health and education now. Letting people make choices? Preposterous.)

Breaking the power of the union bosses? Ridiculous. Turning council homes into private property, thus increasing the market? Oh, come on!

Yet, these things have come to pass and Britain is a better place for that. It is the sectors that are still in the state’s hands that malfunction to an extraordinary degree.

But there are two things the IEA did not foresee: one is the malign influence of the European Union and the other is the tenaciousness of those who want to go on running our lives for our own good, naturally. If they cannot own the means of production, they will regulate them.

It is with the remnants of the old order and the new tyranny that the anniversary volume deals with and Mr Blundell gives a quick summary in his article.

Like many utopias, there are aspects that one wonders about. Are the great sages of the IEA still underestimating the tenaciousness of those in charge, for whom the simple theory that he expresses means nothing:

“So what will my successors be battling against? There is never a shortage of human folly. Yet I think we are learning collective lessons. We've learned that free trade and open markets benefit everyone, especially the poorest. We've learned that the state is inept at active roles but can be creative as a regulator or adjudicator.

We've learned that duties we took to be those of local authorities are better done by others – especially schooling. The NHS is something of a British cargo cult now. In a generation we will have learned that medicine is much like any other expertise and needs neither mystification nor monopoly.”

Much these people care that others can do their work better. They need their highly paid jobs and, in any case, would these others make the “right” decisions.

Now I sound like all those who laughed in the fifties and sixties. After all, many of the reforms advocated at the time have gone through. But the acceptance of the need for freedom and personal care and responsibility has not yet taken a very deep hold on this country. It will happen.

Among other things the volume predicts that by 2055, the next big anniversary

“The UK will have seceded from both the Common Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy, those vivid and corrupt failures. The grand project to regulate every aspect of life will have crumbled and the ghost of the EU will be a loose free-trade area. Once the penny had dropped that the billions living in Third World misery could become wealthy if we stopped suppressing them with "aid" and let them trade, their economies took off.”

“Within a generation there will be one simple flat rate tax: 20pc.Nobody will bother evading. The Government has duties to perform but it need not take half our income and do what it does so badly. Some taxes do not invite tinkering. Inheritance tax will have gone. Tax Freedom Day will have moved from June to late February. And tax returns will be the size of postcards.”

“The notion that most children have to be coerced into council-run schools will have evaporated by 2055. We will regard the compulsion of parents and pupils as counter-productive and the equivalent of the old Navy press gangs. Private teaching institutions may emerge from China and India, the two dynamic capitalist nations of the 21st century.”

Well, let us hope so, indeed. And let us also remember, as Mr Blundell, reminds us:

“The IEA was sparked into being by the sage FA Hayek observing that political activity was futile without the weaponry of good ideas. It is ideas that eventually rule the world. The future belongs to capitalism; socialism will soon be a matter for archaeologists.”

While I must reluctantly disagree with that last comment, I can only cheer the first one. It is, indeed, ideas that rule. Politics without ideas goes nowhere. European integration was a biggish idea and can be defeated only by other big ideas and we in Veritas at the London Assembly intend to play our part in formulating them.

Meanwhile, happy fiftieth birthday to the IEA.

France names the day

2005-03-04T18:21:00.000Z

President Chirac has clearly decided to bring the happy day forward: the referendum will now be on May 29, some months ahead of the original plan.

The lead of the Yes campaign has been steadily whittled down. At present it stands at 58 to 42, but the campaign has not started yet. In 1992, a sizeable lead was whittled down to a bare (and rather controversial) win of 51.05 per cent after a long and seemingly good campaign on the part of Mitterand’s government and, in particular, the Minister for Europe, Elisabeth Guigou.

Some of the political heavyweights are already lining up on the no side - Philippe de Villiers, Jean-Pierre Chevenement and Laurent Fabius, among others.

Much of the campaign is likely to revolve round the proposed entry of Turkey into the Union and the social reforms introduced by the French government because of the stagnating economy but seen by many as the direct result of EU legislation.

Though Chirac’s calculation is clearly to prevent too long a lead-in as that might give the no side an even better chance, some commentators feel that a spring referendum is not necessarily a good idea. The March Council is likely to make yet another attempt to relaunch the Lisbon Agenda for jobs and economic development. This, in turn, may increase various social concerns.

France, as the self-proclaimed European champion, has tried to be the epitome of the European model – so much more civilized and relaxed than the growth at all costs North American one. Unfortunately, recent economic data have shown that the “European model” is not precisely viable. This will be a hard pill for the French to swallow and they may take their anger on the government in its guise of the yes campaign.

At the very least, the result is expected to be very close.