Of Animal Husbandry, PIGS and The 'Don't Know' Tories

Pinky Barroso: So what shall we do tonight, Brain?

Brain von Rumpy-Pumpy: What we do every night, Pinky:

try and set up a Euro Government and

so take over the world!

APOLOGIES FOR THE PARAGRAPH GLITCH: FOR SOME REASON BLOGGER IS PLAYING SILLY BUGGERS WITH THE FORMATTING! > MARKS A PARAGRAPH

> I am in the very heart of the enemy's camp, to wit the European Parliament - or it would be the 'heart' if the entire circus had not gone off on its monthly peregrination to Strasbourg and posting will now come mostly from here. Today the European Council is engaged in some animal husbandry, that is saving the PIGS.

> Saving their own bacon, more like. That which was foretold when the Eurozone was established - with the Euro as a vanity currency designed to give the European Union one veritable and visible sign of its being a Sovereign Independent nation State in its own right - has indeed come to pass. This is that the Euro is not and can never be a 'one size fits all' currency, especially when candidate entrants lie about their economic and fiscal status and even then the rules are bent by the EU Comrades to squeeze countries of doubtful compliance with the rules into the corselet that is the Euro.

> The Euro removes from the members of the Eurozone any sort of genuine economic independence and sovereignty - as it is intended to do - so that soi-disant 'governments' no longer have the flexibility and nimbleness of devaluation and interest rates at their command to manoeuvre their way out of the sort of economic crises that now beset the so-called PIGS nations: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (and, one might add, with the probable inclusion in due course, when the market gets round to it, Italy).

> By comparison the UK went through this particular nightmare in 1992 on 'White Wednesday' when the markets assailed our currency and forced the UK from the ERM, thus trashing John Major, Norman lamont and the Tory party's reputation for economic competence in just twenty-four hours.

> Now the same nightmare is being played out for the PIGS. Greece is the current basket case and it is to address its particular torture that the European Council assembles this day in Brussels. Talk is of a bail-out, something which is supposed to be forbidden under the rules of this particular EU fantasy, ie The European Stability and Growth Pact and the Maastricht Treaty.

> Thus Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Daily Telegraph informs us:

> Germany backs Greek bail-out as EU creates 'economic government'

> Germany is preparing to drop its vehement opposition to a rescue package for Greece, fearing that a rapid escalation of the debt crisis in Southern Europe could endanger German banks and damage the euro.

> It may be in the 'rules' that you cannot bail out a country that is imploding financially, but, hey, what are rules when set against the objectives of Le Grand Projet, to wit the creation of a Super State called Europe? In fact the EU Comrades will see in this particularly black cloud and distinctly silver, not to say golden, lining. What better reason, in their eyes, can there be than such a crisis but for the EU to sweep aside national governments' control of their own economies and replace them with, yes, you've guessed it, control of the entire EU economy by the PolitbEURO.

> The Telegraph goes on thus:

> Herman Van Rompuy, the EU's new president, has submitted a text calling for the creation of an "economic government" that shifts responsibility for economic planning from national authorities to the "EU level". In a parallel move, Commission chief Jose Barroso said Brussels has treaty powers allowing it to take the reins of economic management.

> "This is a time for boldness. I believe that our economic and social situation demands a radical shift from the status quo. And the new Lisbon Treaty allows this," he said.

> "Economic policy isn't a national, but a European matter. No modern economy is an island. When a member state doesn't make reforms, others suffer because of that."

> Let it be quite clear then: the EU plans to take away the final rights of government from the member states to manage their own affairs. Just savour the sentence: "Economic policy isn't a national, but a European matter." The threat to the UK's final vestiges of indpendence cannot be clearer. So the plan, whilst the ink is still dry on Lisbon, is to proceed full speed to European Government.

> The Independent too has its own take on this:

> The new President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, is using the financial crisis sweeping the eurozone to launch an audacious grab for power over national budgets, leaked documents reveal.

> The Independent has seen a secret annexe to the letter being sent by Mr Van Rompuy to European Union heads of government inviting them to the summit to be held tomorrow in Brussels.

> In an early and muscular assertion of authority over national governments and over the EU Commission, the Van Rompuy note states: "Members of the European Council are responsible for the economic strategy in their government. They should do the same at EU level. Whether it is called co-ordination of policies or economic government, only the European Council is capable of delivering and
sustaining a common European strategy for more growth and more jobs."

> [....]

> "An EU source explained:

> "It has become clear to everyone that this economic crisis can't be solved by individual member states, such as Germany helping out Greece. What we need is the same kind of mechanism that we have now imposed on Greece in order to monitor and survey eurozone countries. So the idea is to put all European economies under surveillance. You can expect some important decisions to be taken this week."

> So there you have it. The game, people, is soon to be over and the likes of Brown, Cameron, Sarkozy, Merkel and the priapic Berlusconi, not to mention the Zapteros, the Papandreous, Balkenendes will soon be relieved of any further responsibility for the messes they have or might yet create. They can no longer be trusted not to make a total horlicks of economic management.

> Let the EU technocrats run the show.

> This is all set down for Thursday's summit here in Brussels. Curiously, according to the Indie, this little Cabal is keen to avoid the limelight:

> "The summit will be held away from the usual redoubts of the Euro bureaucracy, in Brussels' Solvay library. "Van Rompuy wanted to create a far more intimate atmosphere without an army of advisers," a source said. "There are a lot of tensions between member states right now, which he is why he decided to get them to talk in an open, friendly setting, starting with aperitifs. The idea is to have a proper brainstorming session and hear everyone's thoughts."

> In other words a secret deal is to be reached stitching up the economic governance over canapés, caviar blinis and champagne, in the time-honoured manner of the erstwhile 'smoke-filled room'. The people of the erstwhile member states (known formerly as 'voters') will not be invited to this particular little gathering, nor, you may be sure, will they ever be asked their opinion of it all for the last referenda ever have already been held. We will simply be presented with the New Order.

> Meanwhile, you could do worse than read Simon Heffer's thoughts on this particular travesty of democracy and EU law-breaking. One way or another it looks as though the people of Greece are being awoken to the fact that their ruling political class has spent the last few years in selling them all into, for the want of a better word, helotry.

> And what, I hear you ask, for ask you should, of our 'elected representatives', our MEPs in the European Parliament, that fig-leaf of democracy for the EUSSR? Where are they whilst all this is going on?

> It is a very good question. It might be thought that they would be close on hand awaiting their turn to say 'yea' or 'nay' to this particular development.

> Er, no.......they are actually all this week in Strasbourg paying court to the vanity of little Nicholas Sarkozy and France, taking part in the one-week-a-month Plenary at the EP's second home, deciding whether, inter alia to approve or disapprove of the new Commission.

> No need, then, for them to be distracted with something like an EU power-grab for economic government of the EU by the EU. They are, after all, not important in the scheme of things. Such matters are best decided, as they say, at a European level, i.e. by a small Camarilla of like-minded politicians keen to arrogate more power to themselves without the intrusive antics of democratically-elected politicians.

> The Commission, surprise, surprise, has been approved. UKIP rightly voted against its approval. The Tories? They abstained. To crown their risible policy on the EU since Cameron about-faced on his "cast-Iron guarantee" to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution, when it comes to deciding if they approve or disapprove of the body that will be promoting new legislation (lots of it) and executing policy (lots of it) in Brussels, they have concluded that they are a party of "Don't Knows".

> Thus is a great party with a history going back three hundred years reduced to irrelevance and impotence by its duplicitious leader: to say they are a joke is simply too kind. This is the party whose leader has told us that he is all in favour of our membership of the EU (in respect of which he has decided that there will not be an IN/OUT referendum on his watch) because membership, in his view, is in the interests of the UK, so there. Yet on a genuinely important issue such as who is to propose 70-80% of the laws that will come into force in the UK, the Tory Party cannot make up its mind.

> If it is contempt for Cameron that you feel on reading this, then that, I suggest, is to be mild and polite. I can think of other epithets for him, but this might be read by those of a sensitive disposition, so I shall forebear from deploying them. Meanwhile 'Old Cast-Iron' has been spraying 'guarantees' like confetti over at the Daily Express:

> "Q What is your position on Britain joining the single currency – we see some of its members, notably Greece, struggling badly at the moment?

> A. Very simple, one word: never. I was in the Treasury when we were in the Exchange Rate mechanism, and I said to myself: “Never again should we give up control of our domestic interest rates.” If I am Prime Minister and for as long as I would be Prime Minister, I would never take Britain into the euro, full stop, end of story.We should never have got ourselves into the financial mess that we are in but at least we have the flexibility of our own currency and our own interest rates."

> The problem with this is Dave's egregious record on little things like promises: he fibs. When he uses the word 'never', it should be taken with a pinch of salt (salt, people, salt).

> One fly in Dave's unguent is our old friend Article 3.4 of the Treaty on European Union which has a rather different view:

> 4. The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro.

> Note the word 'shall' here, which to any lawyer explicitly comports the notion of 'obligatory' or 'mandatory'. The time will come when Cameron, who has already shown his yellow-streak over Europe, will simply be told to get on with taking us into the Euro or else. At which point he will assume the position and abolish the pound.

> Finally who is actually doing the job of being an opposition in the European Parliament, now that the Tories have decided that they have no opinion on such things?

> Why, UKIP's Nigel Farage, of course. Whilst the Tory party awaits the call to power, it has shoved Europe not so much on´to the backburner as down in the cellar. Given its leader's own pro-EU proclivities, it is terrified lest the business of Europe spills out into public discussion during an election period (perish the thought) of its own ludicrous EU policies to which he has, unilaterally and without so much as a 'by-your-leave' from his party, committed the Tories. Tories have now become the Basil Fawltys of politics when it comes to the EU: "For God's sake don't mention the EU!".

> So here for your delectation is Nigel doing what he does best, sticking it to the EU in characteristic fashion. But it is not merely giving the EU Comrades a hard time that is the point: ths issue of the EU is far too serious a matter for mere obloquy:

> People of Buckingham take note: you could do a lot worse (such as re-electing Squeaker Bercow) than putting Nigel Farage into the House of Commons to reflect the 2.46 million people who voted UKIP at the European elections last June and at the same time to provide the genuine voice of Euroscepticism which the ruling political class seeks at best to sublimate and at worst to suppress whenever it can. Perhaps then he might become a focus for dissent on Europe (and other matters attractive to those of the right) for the new intake of Tory MPs in May who may find little solace for their own views on such things in the utterances of Cameron, Hague and the rest.

COMMENT THREAD

Our Man In Havana.......is a Bulgarian

Sir David Scott c. 1945 in full Diplomatic fig.
Nowadays Our Man In Havana is more
likely to be dressed in a rumpled
brown suit made in Sofia or Bratislava

An EU Foreign Minister ('High Representative for Foreign Affairs' in EU DoubleSpeak) only became a legal reality just 53 days ago. First appointee Baroness Ashton of UpMoscow has yet to be confirmed in office. The EU Diplomatic Service ('External Action Service' or 'EAS' in EU DoubleSpeak) likewise is 56 days old: yet already it has opened 50 'EU Embassies' across the world. That was quick, I hear you say.

Er, well, not really...........The EU Comrades were so supremely confident of getting the Treaty of Lisbon signed, sealed and delivered that they had, long before the final ratification by the Czech Republic just ten weeks ago, been spending, utterly unlawfully,Taxpayer's money on setting up both the service itself and having arrangements for Embassies - the ultimate vanity symbols of the EU's new-found statehood - securely in place.

Thus we are told by The Daily Telegraph's Bruno Waterfield:

Embassies in the key capitals of Beijing, Kabul and Addis Ababa, the seat of the African Union, are regarded as marking a major shift to giving the EU a role as a global player to rival nation states.
The embassies will takeover national bilateral missions in the 54 countries where they are set up, headed by ambassadors who are empowered to speak on behalf of the EU as a whole.

We should not, however, be in the least surprised by this news, for it has long been an open secret that the EU was preparing for this moment well in advance.

Two things are vital here.

The first is that we must take very careful note of the importance that the EU Comrades place on the rapid, nay instant, build-up of the physical embodiment of its new-found legal personality as an entity empowered to enter into foreign relations under Article 37 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU):

The Union may conclude agreements with one or more States or international organisations in areas covered by this Chapter.

That is no more and no less than the legal arrogation to itself by the EU of its right to enter into foreign relations in its own right, to which I shall return in a moment.There is also a second reason behind all this haste. It is the impending General Election for the soi-disant UK Parliament, an event which has been troubling the EU Comrades from the very moment that Smuggo Tony Blair graciously told the British People that they would, on this one occasion and as an act of great condescension, be allowed their say on the matter.

Since then both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have junked their commitments to a referendum as quickly as they could, leaving only David Cameron and his 'cast-iron guarantee' as a potential stumbling block.As we now know, Cameron's 'cast-iron' guarantee was also junked as soon as he could decently off-load an embarrassing and unwanted policy: within hours of the Czech ratification all pretence that he wanted us to have our say was abandoned with a huge sigh of relief.

But, pending that shameful and utterly dishonourable act of duplicity, the EU Comrades could never be sure that final ratification of the Treaty would come before a UK general Election and with it a UK Referendum which would kill Lisbon dead for ever - well, for as long as any Zombie is ever dead, that is. They were utterly terrified that the British People would, by the negligence of the Collabos in the Tory Wing of the collaborationist EU Party (Britain's ignoble heirs to the likes of Degrelle, Mussert and Laval), stop Le Grand Projet in its tracks.

Phillipe Pétain & Pierre Laval:

Collaborationists who came to a sticky end

Thus the EU Comrades have been getting their ducks in a row long before they had legal authority to do so. Until 1st. December last they had no right whatsoever to be spending Taxpayer's money on leasing/buying 'Embassy' buildings or on staffing them. Yet here we are but eight weeks into the birth pangs of EUtopia and we have fifty EU Embassies up and running. They had, in fact, been spending hard long before the result was known.

It is, far and away, the most visible sign to the outside that the EU is no longer just any old international organisation but that it is now able to say: "L'Etat, c'est moi!"

And why, you might be forgiven for asking, is that so important? Well, we have been here before. In fact here, here, here and, indeed, here.

Or, to put it another way, why is it, do you think, that so much of the energy of Lisbon is directed at the nuts and bolts of the office of EU Foreign Minister and of the EU's External Action Service?

If one looks at Treaty on European Union (TEU) and The Treaty on The Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) - the product of the road from Rome to Lisbon via Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice - , the changes to the Institutions of the EU are actually not fundamental. But by comparison acres of space are devoted to the EU's 'common foreign and security policy' and its sibling the 'common foreign and defence policy'.

There is good reason for this. The Montevideo Convention on The Rights and Duties of States 1933 sets out the criteria for a state to be, in customary international law, identifiably a sovereign independent state:

Article 1

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

a ) a permanent population;

b ) a defined territory;

c ) government; and

d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Of these, (a) and (b) are indisputably satisfied by the EU.

As to (c) Lisbon's adumbration in Article 13 of the TEU of the institutions of the EU is merely a recital of the work done by Maastricht, Nice and Amsterdam. On any rational view those institutions are the institutions of government.

But the final link, the final piece of the jigsaw was missing. Sure, the EU had some foreign relations power pre-Lisbon. But Lisbon was, as a matter of international law, the final, missing piece of that jigsaw in providing that full capacity to enter into foreign relations and the physical capacity to do so (The EAS).

The news in the Telegraph today is simply confirmation of the fact that the EU is de jure and de facto a State in customary international law.

One of the effects of all this is that, as the Telegraph points out, many UK missions are being closed, the Foreign & Commonwelath Office being sutiably relieved at the saving of money thereby occasioned. For this Glrious Moment in the EU's history has arrived at a moment when the member states are faced, in effect, with the Perfect Storm of a major recession and economic crisis. The saving of money by cash-strapped Chancelleries from Dublin to Valetta and from Lisbon to Helsinki is nothing more than a moment of ectasy and opportunity for the EU Comrades.

Thus, when next you lose your passport after a night of salsa and rum on your next run to Cuba, you may well find out that 'Our' man in Havana is..........a Bulgarian.

The fate that awaited Laval was a rather

summary trial and an appointment

with the firing squad...........

FINAL NOTE: On 1st. December 2009 I posted a GrumpyPost suggesting Dan Hannan had not acknowledged my earlier posts on the Montevideo Convention. Indeed I sent him a GrumpyGram email to the same effect. He has now emailed to say that he reached the Montevideo Convention by other means, a proposition I now accept entirely and I thus withdraw any suggestion of larceny.......and hope he will accept this apology, in the spirit that, of course, great minds think alike............

COMMENT THREAD

Where There's Brass, There's Muck

Rick: How can you close me up?
On what grounds?
Captain Renault:I'm shocked, shocked to find
that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce]
Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud] Everybody out at once!
[Casablanca (1942)]

Here's another angle on the scam that is Carbon Trading. When debit cards were first introduced in the UK I prosecuted several supermarket checkout girls who had been helping themselves to customer's money using the newly introduced cards. The company security officer witness told me that it took their staff under a week from the moment of introduction to work out how to steal using the cards.

It will, therefore, not come entirely as a surprise to learn that the bad guys have worked out how to subvert the European Emissions Trading Scheme to help themselves to loads and loads of money.

What is even less surprising is that they have chosen to use one of the most prevalent scams that exists in the European Union, the so called 'carousel fraud' scheme (also known as 'Missing Trader Fraud').

Given that carousel fraud is so widespread, you would have thought that the EU would have thought twice before making the trade in carbon emissions credits liable to VAT and that they should have thought to make it subject to a special trading tax.

Those of you who know the EU only too well will thus be unsurprised to discover that, yes, they did indeed decide to make it part of the VAT regime. Doubtless the unelected and unaccountable officials of the Brussels Diktat simply saw the word 'Euros' followed by lots of zeros as being the putative take for the Euro Coffers and wet their pants in their haste to batten onto the vast sums that might be accreted to service Le Grand Projet.

Others plainly saw matters differently. The Daily Telegraph gives us an example:

It is a building site, formerly a derelict car park, in a deprived part of West London, where the neon glow of curry houses and late-night grocery stores could not be further from the wealth and glamour of London's financial markets.

Described as a "consulting" business, this is the address of a UK company that has signed up to trade carbon permits under the European Emissions Trading Scheme in Copenhagen. But there is no trace of its existence on the Companies House database.

At the newsagent next door, nobody has ever even heard of emissions trading – the system where companies buy and sell the right to emit carbon dioxide – and there has not been a building there for many years.

That in many ways encapsulates just how simple it is to defraud this scheme, and, indeed, the EU as a whole. For it forcibly reminds us that the EU Court of Auditors has refused for over a decade to sign off the EU accounts on the grounds, inter alia, of the vast amount of fraud within the system. This is but another exemplar of the egregious nature of the European Union.

What the Telegraph report also suggests quite clearly is that the Scheme is not subject to any sort of even the most cursory of checks:

.............hundreds of UK companies selling anything from hair loss treatments to electronics have mysteriously registered to buy and sell carbon permits in the Scandinavian nation – mostly in the last 18 months.

Many give addresses in the regions such as Yorkshire, Lancashire, Essex and other places not known for their links to the world of finance.

This suggests that ten minutes of an investigator's time and a search engine would rapidly reveal the dodgy nature of some of those entities which are registered to tarde under the scheme. It also suggests that no such checking is undertaken.

We are not, of course talking about small potatoes here. The sums involved are those which would keep a small African country afloat, even one (and there are many) with a rampant kleptocrat as President:

Just a few weeks ago, Europol, the cross-border police force, said that carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90% of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn).

Just read that figure again: up to 90% of all such trading in some parts of the EU is fraudulent.

Of course one of the attractions of the scheme is that it involves no tangible goods, merely a set of digital impulses in computers which might be bought and sold at the click of a mouse, unlike the typical carousel fraud which often involved, for example, mobile phones which had a least to be shipped around the EU for the scam to work properly.

Belatedly the levying of VAT is to be ended and replaced by some other impot: cue the sound of a very large stable door being closed after a whole herd of shire horses has bolted through it.

Unless and until more stringent checks are introduced, however, the criminals will find other ways to defraud the taxpayers of the United Kingdom of huge sums of money, indeed billions of pounds at a time when Gordon Brown has so beggared us that we need every penny we can get.

So just as we have seen the splendid stripping bare of the financial interests of the great Dr. Rajendri Pachauri by my blog colleague Richard North at EU Referendum, we are now getting a look at the dirty entrails of the schemes which he and his ilk have foisted upon us. Thus we are able to contemplate two very different scams: the cult of Anthropogenic Global Warming and the Cult of Mammon dancing merrily hand in hand on their way along the street to who knows where and to the general acclamation of a lot of very stupid people.

You really could not make it up.

COMMENT THREAD

Titter Ye Not At John Selwyn Gummer

Gummer once forced his young
daughter, in a shameless
exercise of exploiting his family,
to scarf a beefburger to persuade
us of the safety of British Beef
during the scare about
Creudzfelt Jakobs Disease (CJD).
How nauseating.

John Selwyn Gummer, a used leftover from the Major years still to be found peddling EuroCrap in the House of Commons, has announced his retirement from Parliament. This will bring belated Christmas cheer to all free-born Englishmen for this is a genuine dyed-in-the-wool member of the EuroTaleban. A Champagne day, then. His observations to the East Anglian Daily Times (EADT24) (Hattip: ConHome) concerning his departure are, however, utterly beyond parody:

Bitterly disappointed at the failure of the Copenhagen summit earlier this month, Mr Gummer said he had to choose his priorities for the next few years.

“Copenhagen was a total disaster,” he said. “Telephone conversations with colleagues throughout Europe convinced me that international action is needed if the calamity of climate change is to be avoided.

“My Suffolk Coastal constituency has 74 miles of coastline. That makes me doubly determined to do everything I can to stop a calamity happening.

“I feel passionately about the subject. This is the danger that most faces us and unless something is done, the world will be in real trouble.

“But if I am to concentrate fully on the environment, I cannot devote the time I would wish to my constituency. I fully intended to serve one more term as MP for Suffolk Coastal, but Copenhagen changed all that.

“I sincerely hope and believe that David Cameron will become Prime Minister next year with a large majority. However, if the Conservatives end up with just a small majority in Commons, the pressure will be on all his backbenchers to be full-time MPs, especially in the first year when legislation has to be carried.

“I realised I could not do both jobs well and therefore I have reluctantly told my constituency association that it must look for a new candidate.”

Nothing to do, of course, with his moles for the removal of which he got the Taxpayer to pay.

Reading his little homily, I am moved to enquire: Why do so many politicians think that they have it within their gift to save the world?

I suppose it must have something to do with having people fawn over you for donkey's years. Eventually such constant sycophancy leads its object actually to believe he or she can indeed walk on water.

The balance of the EADT article provides a further large dollop of mephitic manure:

Mr Gummer travelled to Oxfordshire just days before Christmas to consult Mr Cameron about his plans. [I really liked that bit: Elder Statesman seeks advice of young whippersnapper.....oh la!]

European experts on climate change agree that Mr Gummer is uniquely placed (sic!) to play a pivotal role in trying to bring a post-Copenhagen consensus on the issue. And Mr Gummer believes the United Kingdom has a huge advantage in global negotiations.

“We are an important part of the European Union and we have a better way of talking to the United States to ensure that it is prepared to cut emissions,” he said. Mr Gummer believes the new member states of the EU have to be helped by the bigger economies to work towards cutting carbon emissions. [Which is presumably why the Brussels Diktat is forcing Lithuania to junk its nuclear power station and replace the 70% of Lithuania's energy it produces with energy produced by CO2 emitting technology]

“We have to demonstrate to nations such as Slovenia that it is worthwhile ­- indeed vital - to make the effort,” he said. He believes one of the big tasks ahead is to hold intelligent conversations with members of the public to convince them that every action they take, however small that seems, will make a contribution for the greater good.

Mr Gummer said: “Attitudes change. Take the stand-by buttons on electrical appliances - today's machines use far less energy in stand-by mode than they did even a few years ago.

“In 1998, I held meetings with Coca-Cola about phasing out harmful hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) from their processing plants. The company invested in the technology and has announced that it has achieved this aim.”

As an MP for a rural constituency, Mr Gummer knows communities need the incentive of sustainable transport to enable them to reduce their dependency on cars.

“I would like to see every parish clerk with their own laptop so that they can organise transport,” he said.

“For instance, lists could be made available which would enable car-sharing to become a reality for work and shopping.”

Barking, absolutely barking......

COMMENT THREAD

Lithuania: The EU Bill Falls Due

Lithuania generates 70% of its domestic
energy at Ignalina Nuclear Plant.
Now it must be closed because of a fiat
from the Brussels Diktat.
Goodby energy security! Goodbye sovereignty!
Goodbye freedom of action! Goodbye public debate!
Goodbye democracy!

Lithuanians were doubtless told in 2003 - as many an aspiring EU member had been before and will be again - that joining the European Union would bring jobs, prosperity, streets paved with gold, fields filled to brimming with milk and honey, peace, Eden and mother's apple pie all rolled into one.

Now, however, the Lithuanians are about to be presented with the bill.

Some seventy per cent of her domestic energy is generated by a Soviet-era Chernobyl-style nuclear power station called Ignalina. As part of the deal struck by the ruling Lithuanian political class in its headlong rush into EU membership the plant was deemed to be a potential disaster in the offing and they therefore agreed to close it.

The world five years on is a very different one, energy-wise, from that in which Lithuanian politicians cheerfully tossed their energy security into the greedy hands of the Brussels Diktat.

Now, however, the EU says it must shut.

For Lithuanians the price is going to be very very painful.

In the first instance the cost of energy is set to rise by an eye-watering 30%. Think of how that will jigger the household budget of your average Lithuanian......

Next is the little problem of energy security. Lithuania was proud and pleased to regain its independence after some sixty years of groaning under the Russian yoke and counted Ignalina as an important manifestation of that independence. Now they are going to be forced to replace its energy with ebergy derived from its hated enemy: Russia. And, since Russia strong-armed Ukraine with an energy cut-off not so long ago, Lithuanians will understand only too well what the loss of energy security will now mean: having to kow-tow to Russian bully boys once more.

Indeed, as the Telegraph reports, they have already had a taste of Russian tactics:

In 2007 Russia shut down an oil pipeline to Lithuania for "technical reasons" in the wake of sale of a Lithuanian oil refinery to a Polish company instead of a Russian firm.

Note the date: membership of the EU did not stop Russia from flexing its muscles. Nor will it now. A 30% hike is probably a politician's figure: chances are it will be a lot more than that in short order.

But what of the wider implications for Lithuania?

The fact is that their politicians betrayed their independence in a fundamental way for a mess of pottage to a group of foreign unelected and unaccountable functionaries. Orders now come from the centre. Why is that any different from the way it used to be in the old Soviet Union?

Now it may well be that this plant is a nightmare waiting to happen. It may well be that it should be shut. But that, given the consequences of shutting it, should surely be the subject of informed public debate amongst the citizens of Lithuania whose bills are now set to rise so dramatically. Surely those who have to pay the bill should be the ones to decide how best to solve the problem?

But no such debate can now take place. It is set in stone and must close. Democracy? Let the Little People talk and then do as they are told. They should be grateful they were allowed in so quickly. The plant begins to close in the next couple of days.

Thus it ever is with the Brussels Diktat. It is the Big State writ large. Mummy knows best, so shut your plant and get your wallet out.

COMMENT THREAD

Smuggo: A Prophet Without Honour

Whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap

It is devoutly to be hoped that history will be profoundly unkind to Anthony Blair. No man has had a more malign effect, by a very long chalk, on British politics and the British body politic than this charlatan of a snake oil salesman. His words of hurt indignation at the galling disdain of his fellow countrymen reported this weekend will have brought pleasure to many.

He no longer stops the traffic here and may never do so again unless it be in the back of the Black Maria on the way to the Bailey for his trial. Of this fact he complains to The Sunday Times:

He’s all but given up trying to convince people in Britain he means well. “I’ve got a problem with the UK media. They don’t approach me in an objective way,” he says. “Their first question is how to belittle what I’m doing, knock it down, write something bad about it. It’s not right. It’s not journalism. They don’t get me and they’ve got a score to settle with me. But they are not going to settle it.”

He gets a better hearing abroad these days, which is one of the main reasons he spends so much time overseas. “It’s not true that nobody likes me! Reading the papers in Britain, you’d end up thinking I’d lost three elections rather than won them. There is a completely different atmosphere around me outside the country. People accept the work that you are doing, as it is. They don’t see anything wrong with being successful financially and also doing good work. If I did what these people who criticise me here wanted, I’d end up sitting in a corner, but that is never going to be me.”

Aw, Diddums! Here is the authentic voice of the man who has been found out for what he is.

Some of us, of course, never fell for Blair or Blarism, or the clever addition of the word 'New' to Labour. New Labour was merely Old Labour wearing an expensive Armani suit. That we know for sure given the way in which Old Labour has re-emerged under Gordon Brown: they never went away, you know.

Others, notably the gullible middle classes (who had lost their collective folk memory of how Labour governments always end up by trashing the UK economy and always end up siphoning off the resources to prop them up from the pockets of that self-same middle class) fell for Blair in a big way.

The Tories too fell under his spell, indeed to some extent the Old Sorcerer is still wielding his wand over them, though these days it is mostly by proxy through the Sorcerer's Apprentice, one Lord Mandelson. That any Tory leader should think of himself, even vaguely, as 'the heir' to Blair is shocking but now that we know a lot more about David Cameron, perhaps unsurprising. Perhaps too such admiration is reflected in the hesitation many true Tories feel in embracing Cameron.

It was the Ecclestone affair which should have alerted the swooning masses as to the true nature of the little crook they had actually installed as Prime Minister.

Labour had pledged to ban tobacco advertizing in its manifesto for the 1997 General Election, supporting a proposed EU Directive banning tobacco advertising and sponsorship.

At this time all leading Formula One Teams carried significant branding and loot from Big Tobacco.

The Labour Party's stance on banning tobacco advertising was reinforced following the election by tough statements from the Health Secretary Frank Dobson and Minister for Public Health Tessa Jowell (wife of convicted businessman David Mills who was corruptly bribed to perjure himself by Silvio Berlusconi who is, in turn, one of Blair's best friends).

With some serious money at stake, Ecclestone appealed 'over Jowell's head' to Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, who arranged a meeting with Blair. Ecclestone and Mosley, both Labour Party donors, met Blair on 16 October 1997, where Mosley argued:

"Motor racing was a world class industry which put Britain at the hi-tech edge. Deprived of tobacco money, Formula One would move abroad at the loss of 50,000 jobs, 150,000 part-time jobs and £900 million of exports."

On 4 November 1997 the "fiercely anti-tobacco Jowell" argued in Brussels for an exemption for Formula One. It was a shameful and disgraceful turn-about.

One might point out that tobacco sponsorship of F1 is now long gone. F1 is still here, as storng as ever. It reminds us in microcosm of the big lie that is put about by Europhiles about the Uk losing jobs if we we ever managed to extract ourselves from that appalling institution.

Media attention initially focused on Labour bending its principles for a "glamour sport" and on the "false trail" of Jowell's husband's links to Benetton. But then the newshounds caught the scent.

On 6 November correspondents from three newspapers inquired whether Labour had received any donations from Ecclestone.

Lo & behold, he had donated £1 million in January 1997. He had read the writing on the wall for tobacco sponsorship of sport and was quick off the mark to ensure he had an ear to bend in new Labour.

On 11th. November Labour promised to return the money on the advice of Sir Patrick Neill. On 17 November Blair apologised for his government's mishandling of the affair and stated "the decision to exempt Formula One from tobacco sponsorship was taken two weeks later. It was in response to fears that Britain might lose the industry overseas to Asian countries who were bidding for it."

In 2008, the year after Blair stepped down as Prime Minister, internal Downing Street memos revealed that in fact the decision had been made at the time of the meeting, and not two weeks later as Blair stated in Parliament.

Thus was exposed the fact that from the word 'Go!' Blair was wont, whenever the mood took him, to lie through his back teeth. Astonishingly the media and the public allowed him to get away with this piece of knavery and this huckster remained in office until 2007. We now know that Blair awoke every morning with a lie on his lips and delivered himself of untruths morning noon and night.

Now, of course, after the grave matter of taking the nation to war with Iraq on a false prospectus, after 'cash for peerages', after his debauching of Cabinet government, after his poisoning (along with Alistair Campbell, the most controversial Propaganda Chief since April 1945) of the well of political discourse in the UK, after gifting us Gordon brown, the once-deluded public knows better, a lot lot better, the true nature of this veritable mountebank.

I advocate a careful read of the Sunday Times piece. It lays bare so much of the man and how he has proved to have been a deeply malignant cancer at the heart of british public life.

There is one particulalry telling quote. Had Alistair Campbell been at his side, he might have been prevented from informing us:

I’m a social entrepreneur now,” he says defiantly. “I can engineer social change on my own terms, outside of a big government bureaucracy.”

Social engineer? Who, pray, anywhere in the world, let alone in the UK, has given Blair a democratic mandate to indulge in some social engineering?

This is, of course, the true nature of the man. He has never cared for the accountability thingy and is now able to indulge his meddling without interference from anything so obstructive as an electorate. Here then is the anti-democrat at work.

In theory the Chilcot enquiry ought to put this shyster firmly beyond the pale for ever and a day. Sadly that enquiry lacks the teeth of any proper cross-examination. I had been looking forward to Blair being turned over good and proper but instead he is to be interviewed by an establishment club. They might just as well have poured the whitewash over it all now and saved us the money.

Still, we may have the odd bit of pleasure from this process. The fact that Blair knows that he is now a prophet without honour in his own land and that it rankles is something which brings a warm glow.

COMMENT THREAD

eBorders Leak Through EU Sieve

The UK Borders Agency loves this sort
of picture as bolstering its image
as the tough guy on the block
rousting illegals. The reality is that
UK Borders are about as
secure as Tiger Woods' zipper

The Treaty on the Functioning of The European Union (TFEU) may not be Joe Public's bedside reading - like all Eurospeak documents it is not exactly accessible to ordinary folk - but time and again it comes back to kick the interests of the British People in the teeth. Now it has carefully trashed the heart of Labour's much vaunted eBorders scheme, effectuvely neutering it.

The theory of eBorders is that anyone who wants to come into the UK will, regardless of citizenship, place of residence or whatever, have to provide copious information to the UK authorities before travelling to he UK or face refusal of entry thereto.

Such things as your credit card details or how you paid for your ticket, passport details, travel plans, indeed pretty well anything relating to your journey that you might hitherto have regarded as strictly private would now have to be handed to the UK Border Agency who would store the same in some huge database - and we know, do we not, just how wonderfully secure that would be, do we not!

Given the sheer size of the number of visitors each year to the UK, it is self-evident that such a scheme is going to cost us lots and lots of money.

Unfortunately for the STASI-state in which we now live, this Orwellian desire to track everyone's movement (why don't they just microchip us and have done with it?) has just run onto the rocks of, apparently, our old friend The Treaty of Rome in its latest transmogrification, The TFEU, or rather Article 45 thereof.

This is one of the keystone provisions of the EU without which the whole idea of the single market would very rapidly collapse: the guarantee of free movement of people for the purpose of employment.

Thus the Daily Maily reports to us:

Labour's £1.2billion 'electronic borders' scheme to protect Britain from illegal immigrants and terrorists descended into a shambles last night.

The project's success depends on logging every passenger movement in and out of the UK so police, border guards and the security service know who is here.

But, in order for the scheme to be ruled legal by EU bureaucrats, the Government has been forced to make a raft of concessions to Brussels.

These include EU citizens and their relatives - regardless of nationality - being allowed to enter the UK even if they refuse to hand over their personal details in advance.

Effectively, the crucial compulsory element of the eborders scheme has been stripped away for millions of people.

Even non-EU citizens will be entitled to fly to Britain without providing the details in advance to eborders so they could be scrutinised. They could, however, then be refused entry.

There is also a promise that carriers - such as airlines - will not face sanctions if they do not pass on passenger data.

It leaves a potentially gaping hole at the heart of a flagship policy which was supposed to make borders secure.

The fiasco emerged on a day of drama for the Home Office, which had been insisting all was going to plan with the hugely expensive project.

The scheme involved forcing passengers to give a raft of details before making any journey via UK ports and airports so these could be shared among police and customs officials.

The data included credit card details, holiday contact numbers, travel plans, email addresses and even any previous missed flights.

They were then supposed to be checked against lists of terrorists, criminals and immigration offenders. Those who failed the checks would have been refused permission to fly.

But in a report shown to the Home Office yesterday, MPs on Westminster's home affairs committee said the policy was likely to be struck down by EU law.

EU countries must allow free movement of each others' citizens as long as they hold a passport - a right which demanding advance travel information would infringe.

Whoops!

It does not take much imagination to realise that any would-be terrorist has merely to lay hands on some documents purporting to show he is an EU citizen and, under this regime, he's in.

In short the whole programme is useless.

Now it might be thought desirable to have a scheme which did permit us to check anyone coming here in the manner envisaged. Just a moment's thought will remind us, however, that the determined terorrist, if he really wants to come here uannounced, can pretty well so so with impunity. We are, let us remember, an island with several hundreds of miles of coastline. So the whole idea is rubbish anyway. Far better instead of trying the scatter-gun approach to spend the money thus wasted on some rather more effective intelligence-led processes.

So all the eBorders scheme will do is to create an enormous database much of which is likely to be inaccurate in any event and which will open up yet new sources of identity insecurity as these same details are left collecting and mouldering electronically in the computer databases of airlines, Eurostar and ferry lines.

Al-Quaeda operatives meanwhile will simply buy a yacht and sail here.

There is a cheerful irony here.

It has dawned on the British People that the three Collaborationist parties have effectively blagged the sovereignty of the United Kingdom (which, as any fule kno, belongs to that selfsame People) and hocked it to a load of unelected and unaccountable foreigners.

Those parties - Labour, Tory and Lib 'Dems' - have worked this out and thus find other sticks with which to beat the Euro drum.

One example of this has been the Lib 'Dems' who managed to come fourth in the elections to the EU parliament such is the national enthusiasm for their 'sell your granny to the EU' approach. Realising that their serial acts of Federasty go down with all the hydrodynamic qualities of a one pound lead ball in a pond, they have of late resorted to claiming that we 'need' the EU because it 'ensures' co-operation in the fight against international terrorism and international organised crime.

That particular piece of rubbish now lies in the skip. Far from ensuring our security, our membership of the EU is actively undermining our (admittedly feeble) attempts to protect our borders.

Again.

More money we do not have is simply pissed down the drain.

Again.

COMMENT THREAD

Comrade Ashton of UpMoscow Speaks

Herman: Und zo, Mein Liebling Cathy,
vot shall vee do tonight?
Cathy: What we do every night....
you rumpy whilst I pumpy and
when you're done, we take over the world!

Baroness Ashton of UpMoscow, lately the doxy of one Duncan Rees, erstwhile General-Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, has relieved herself over the leader pages of The Times of her first pensées as the Andrei Gromyko of the EU. They are, for someone who has risen, as they say, without trace, predictably anodyne.

Her offering may have all the attraction of a bowl-full of brussels sprouts but I fear that I cannot allow this momentous occasion - the arrival on the scene of a new star in our Great European Sky - this Castlereagh, this Salisbury, this Curzon, this Eden, this Bevin, - to pass without succumbing to the temptation to stick the boot in.

Thus this Colossus of British Political Life,tells us:

The reputation of the EU in the world is a good one, based on our strong values of freedom and democracy

Er, that is the EU which has such respect for democratic values that it either ignores or requires to be reversed any Referendum the result of which is 'NO' to their project, isn't it?

We are also a superpower economy made up of half a billion people.

And we would like to be a superpower. But we won't ask the half billion people if they want us to be one as they might not get the right answer.

All the charisma of a
dead haddock:
Baroness Ashton of UpMoscow
arrogates to herself the right to
speak for 500 million citizens of
the EU, not one of whom has ever
been asked to vote for her.

After all, I am the Chosen One, The Select of 27 heads of government, a deal done at a sumptuous dinner. That is democratic enough, isn't it? Saves on the ballot boxes, doesn't it?

What we also need is concerted action to achieve our goals.

And if that squirt Miliband sticks his oar in, I'll kick him where it hurts and tell him where to stick his banana.

The European External Action Service will be based in Brussels, with representations throughout the world. It should be a network that is the pride of Europe and the envy of the rest of the world, with the most talented people from all member states of the EU working in our common interest.

The Diplomatic Services of the Member States will be stripped of anyone who is any good at this diplomacy thingy: after all, now we are a super-state, these provinces do not need diplomats, do they?

European foreign and security policy is relevant to European citizens, even if the work is by its nature often happening outside our borders. So we must continue to have an open and serious debate within the EU on our foreign policy goals.

Open & serious debate? In The EU? Oh please..........

Throughout my career, I have tried to make actions speak louder than words

Such as going on lots of demos at Aldermarston and Greenham Common with a view to undermining the security of the United Kingdom and giving aid & comfort to my pals in Moscow.

I also have a strong record on equality, civil liberty and social justice as a UK minister

I am so sad that I was never given the chance to receive the approbation and acclamation of the erstwhile citizens of the former United Kingdom by seeking election to that public office. Getting Tony to grease the pole for me was a whole lot easier.

Er, that's all folks.

COMMENT THREAD

The BBC Used to Believe in Global Cooling

The BBC was once just as fiercely
a proponent of global cooling as
it is today a proponent of
global warming.

As I listen yet again to the Government Propaganda Service (aka The BBC) allowing an Anthropogenic Globing Warming fanatic oodles of unfettered and unchallenged airtime asserting that he is right and we are wrong, I was reminded of another time when the BBC was just as determined to persuade us that we were on the cusp of a new Ice Age.

A while ago I suddenly remembered that sometime around the early 70s the BBC had as its 'Book at Bedtime' a scary novel which it put out under the title "Fratellini's Winter" to which I listened with some fascination.

I have since been trying to find out more about the book, but no search produced such a title. A little creative googling has now unlocked the mystery. This revealed that it was actually culled from a novel by Sam Youd called "The World In Winter". One can see why they might have changed it....

Anyway this is the opening premise:

The story involves a new ice age hitting Europe, British refugees fleeing to Nigeria, and what a later group find when they return.

As the story opens, Andrew Leedon, a London-based television documentary producer, is given a new story to research: an Italian scientist, Fratellini, has proposed an imminent fall in solar radiation for the forthcoming few years which may lead to harsher winters. Leedon meets with David Cartwell, a Home Office civil servant and useful source, to see if he can find out more. Cartwell quickly becomes a close friend of Leedon, but also begins an affair with Leedon's wife, Carol.

The winter of that year is, as predicted, long and harsh, but by January is it becoming clear to insiders that the solar downturn is worse than Fratellini had calculated and no upturn is in sight. By March, food stocks are becoming dangerously low, rationing has been imposed and the Government imposes martial law. Those in the know, including Andrew's estranged wife, sell up and move south to the tropics and countries such as Nigeria. Leedon stays behind, as inner London is finally cordoned off from the rest of the UK to protect the seat of power – an area called the London Pale – as the rest of the country is abandoned to starvation and barbarism.

Finally Leedon is persuaded both by Carol and by David Cartwell to exit the country while safe passage is still possible. Taking with him Carwell's wife Madeleine, he moves to Lagos in Nigeria, finding that the tables have now turned – white refugees fleeing from the ice-bound northern countries are living in slums, unemployed or with only menial jobs, and penniless, as African governments have withdrawn recognition of currencies such as Sterling and no longer recognize the British Government, with reason, as it no longer exercises sovereignty over its own land.

You can just see there why it would have appealed to the pit of Marxist Vipers that is the BBC. They must have loved the idea of the destruction of the UK and all us white folks become the menial servants of Africa - a nice little morality tale.....

Yet it was for another reason that it stuck in my mind as I recall that when the reading ended there was a discussion programme at the end of it which went on about global cooling and then moved seamlessly into 'of course this could all happen if nuclear war were to occur and we have a nuclear winter', thus allowing an easy excuse for them to enagage in a bit of CND propaganda. I wonder if Baroness Ashton of UpMoscow was listening.......

The reason I remember all that is because it was the first time that I realised that the BBC was not in the least bit impartial but was in fact a leftist-inclined institution that had an agenda. Nothing has changed over the years. I had until them been persuaded by the myth that the BBC was the purveyor of impartial facts and balanced opinions. In short I had my penny dropping moment.

Since the next Ice Age seemed to have stalled, the BBC has swopped horses, as we know. Yet the purpose is the same: climate is a cudgel with which to beat those nasty wicked plutocrats who stand in the way of kind, compassionate liberals as they go about their business of making this world into a delightful, peaceful, if warm, land of socialist milk & honey.

COMMENT THREAD