I'm going to squeam and squeam until I'm sick

Yesterday EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso turned up at a gathering of the political group leaders in Strasbourg to have what is described as an "Extraordinary exchange of views". They were talking about the Constitution amongst other things.
" I don't understand the nervous reactions (from the European Parliament's political leaders) to my statement that it is useless to return to the constitution. It is simply a fact, and you'd better recognize it. (On the 22nd Sept Barroso said " In the foreseeable future we will not have a constitution, that's obvious. I haven't come across any magic formulae that would bring it back to life.")
Let's first work, show that EU is necessary to get out of the crisis and then maybe we can come back with the constitution.
At this cold douche of common sense Hans Gert Poettering, the floundering and increasingly pointless Westphalian who heads up the EPP/ED to which the Tories are allied, reacted with truly heroic irrelevance and stupidity,
" No. The constitution has to be approved. We just have to wait for a new French president. (expected in 2009) Mr. Nicola (Minister of European affairs of Holland), told me that the constitution is not dead in the Netherlands. The Commission should give positive signals instead!"
He was backed up in this blind assault by his fellow Teuton and leader of the Socialist Group Martin "capo" Schulz,
" The referenda gave power to the Eurosceptics, and the fact that the "yes" side is doing nothing, makes the success of the "no" side. Where are those leaders who signed the treaty of Rome? If the national elites do not cooperate, there's no way we can succeed."
A better example of the new 'post-democratic' European elite's position could not be found. Here is the leader rejecting democracy because he finds the position of the people unpalatable.
Monica Frassoni, representing the Green group laid in,
" It is your (Barroso) fault! You said that the Constitution is dead, You are no leader. We don't have to act in the national capitals, but here, in Europe. Barroso let people think that we had given up on the constitution.

This is the authentic voice of your government. Worrying isn't it?

Little short of Shameful

In the wonderland of moral equivalence that makes up the European Institutions, I should have stopped being surprised by things I see hear and read. But this week I was brought up short again by vacuum that lies at the heart of most Eurocrats where moral perspective should lie.
Last weekend there was some very heavy rain in Brussels, one of the most chi-chi suburbs suffered a little local flooding.
This is how this event was written up by Dennis Mc Gowan in the editorial of Commission en Direct, the bureaurocrats own inhouse weekly newsrag.
“Last weekend, a number of colleagues were affected first hand by the very heavy rain which resulted in sudden flooding in various suburbs of Brussels, particularly Woluwe St Lambert. It gave some impression of what those in New Orleans experienced some weeks before,”

As I have mention to my American readership before, these people ae not your friends.

Southampton's Surrender Monkey

The cover story in this week’s Speccie has me at sixes and sevens. Peter Oborne is writing about John Denham, the man who resigned his position before the war started and now chairs the Home Affairs select committee. It is quite a paean of praise, but it just doesn’t work.
Denham is a classic of the old breed of dhimmitudinous socialist. Oborne is surprised when Denham explicitly suggests “that our foreign policy should in part be shaped by alarms about domestic policy”. It was ever thus, and if not then it should have been, so nothing really startling there.
What is remarkable, given the importance of his position is his, to my eyes, twisted prescription of how we in Britain should respond to the Jihadis who assail us from without and within.
What he feels should be done is a list of the worst counter ‘English liberties’ that this government is promoting.
“He said he was in favour of the ‘gathering of a wide range of information about individuals — cell-phone usage, travel information, centralising data for identity cards and so on”.
But the Government should not ban Islomofascist organisations such as al-Muhajiroun, because we need the consent of the Muslim population, and anyway there is “so much information is spread by the internet and in small groups” that banning them would be ineffectual. Incitement to terrorism should not become an offence – come back Omar Bakri – however it is perfectly OK to lock people up without trial, "There are clear circumstances in which preventive action — by detention, or otherwise restricting the liberty of individuals — is necessary”.
So we can do away we Habeus Corpus, but hold on what else mustn’t we do, that’s right he disapproves of the deportation of “small group of foreign radicals”. Interestingly he has no “objection in principle to removing people from the country or preventing them coming here if they are not conducive to the public good”, but I suspect he is talking about hunt supporters or President Bush.

The man would have us roll over in blind supplication to Islam, and would only raise a finger to stop us defending ourselves.
What on earth Peter Oborne is doing writing all this in hagiographical style I cannot understand.

The dark side to Jesse Owens's 4th Gold medal

Stuff you learn on the net,

"THE STORY of African-American sprinter Jesse Owens's great victory at the "Nazi" Olympics in Berlin in 1936 has always been upheld as a great symbolic victory of a multi-racial democracy against a racist totalitarian regime. Less widely known is that Owens won his fourth gold medal – in the 400-yard relay – because of anti-Semitism. Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, another African-American, were not scheduled to participate in the race. Their participation was the result of a last-minute decision by Avery Brundage, chairman of the US Olympic Committee and an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler, to remove two Jewish-American sprinters, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, from the lineup."

What do this lot,

HELEN FOSTER-GRIME
SIMON KOVAR
SETH THEVEZ
HAZEL CRABB-WYKE
DOUGLAS McCALL
GLYNIS DUMPER

have in Common?

They are the Lib-Dem activists vox-popped by the BBC at their conference this week.
After discussion we have come to the conclusion that some bored BBC type was wandering round looking for people with silly names. I ask you how else could they have come up with Glynis Dumper?

At last silence

"Due to a proofing error, a square was omitted from Kakuro puzzle 005, page 29, G2, yesterday, making it impossible to complete. (The absentee was the fourth square from the bottom and from the right, which should have read 23/24.) Apologies.

Imagine all those Guardian readers who spent all day trying to complete the puzzle instead of getting on with their jobs. Sounds like the most positive thing to have happened to local government in years."


A friend sent me the above email, the bliss

Sounds like a party

Tuesday 20th
Brussels
All day Working seminar of the College of Commissioners: “The future of Europe”

Love to see the agenda for tommorrow's meeting.

Hungary in the slow lane

In what may be a blessing in disguise for Hungary its ambitions to be in the first tranche of the latest EU enlargement to join the Eurozone, Eurostat will reject Hungary's plan to account for motorway building off-budget.
It seems that Commissioner Almunia got rather short at a press conference in Budapest with Hungary's Finance Minister János Veres, claiming in a neat piece of hypocrisy that Hungary's budget must reflect reality.
If they are unable to fiddle their figures the Hungarians will be unable to meet their deficit target of 3.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2005. This of course would have ramifications with commentators and analysts stating that would be unable to meet the 2010 euro zone entry deadline if Eurostat does not consent to excluding motorway spending from the central budget. Indeed the financial markets claim that this decision could boost the Hungarian public sector deficit by 1.3 percent of GDP.Of course the Hungarian Government are spinning wildly against this, I tend to believe the markets, rather than government spin doctors.


None of this is overly surprising however with the announcement today that "Bribery, backroom agreements or irregularities are involved in about 90 percent of the approximately 3,700 public procurement deals struck in Hungary each year". I am sure OLAF will do its best

This is Europe, then do what you are told little land

The Estonian newspaper Äripäev toady reports from a Washington economics seminar, "Is there a future for euro?", where the fate of Estonia's economic independence was discussed. "Joining the euro is a historic opportunity, which Estonia should make use of," says Professor Jeffrey Frankel from Harvard University. "Estonia has nothing to gain from its own currency (kroon) and anyhow, the country cannot have its own monetary policy and Estonia has understood this," claims Professor Allan Meltzer from the Carnegie Mellon University. We then learn that all the participants at the seminar emphasised that the future of euro and the future of the whole economic success of the euro-zone depends on the economic reforms, which are most necessary to be carried out in the bigger European countries. (European Parliament Transanslation)

So let me get this straight, Estonia should give up the Kroon because it "cannot have its own monetary policy", but it must rely upon France and Germany, and to a lesser extent the UK to reform their economies. And this the day Merkel failed to win the German election, the Estonians would be mad. And incidentally, if Estonia cannot have a monetary policy, then why should it be allowed to have an economic policy at all. Thus why on earth was it allowed to go ahead and institute a flat tax policy and lead the way in tax reform.
Well obviously it should never have done that.

More anti-Americanism from the top in Brussels

Margot Wallström is, as readers of this and other blogs will be well; aware the chief propagandist for the European Commission. TV friendly and personally thoroughly pleasant (I can vouch for that, she has always been perfectly amenable when I have had dealings with her, both professional and social). However she has her own Jekyll side. This was recently apparent over her stealth editing comments in a speech which likened Eurosceptics to Nazi’s at the former Jewish ghetto of Terezin. Now it has appeared again in what must be some of the more undiplomatic made by an EU Commissar for a while.

“Of course I do not hate the USA! On the contrary : there are so many things that we can learn from the Americans. But I will not hesitate to criticise the administration if they deserve it and I think that the victims of Katrina AND the US Government are best helped by making sure that the relief-system works better. And since most of you who enter this blog seem like intelligent, well-informed people you can make your own judgement about what role the colour of the skin still plays in the USA – and elsewhere…” - my emphasis.

A direct attack on the US government, which she is intelligent enough to realise people will read as the federal government, not the State governments. Then to follow through with a direct allegation that racism played a part in the response to hurricane Katrina.

Impressive, I am sure you agree. Now will the State department finally realise, these people are not your friends?

European Commission to cut euro zone growth forecast - or the dismal agenda

When was the last time anybody heard the opposite being said?

3rd August 2005

1st July 2005

25th May 2005

1st March 2005

3 Jan 2005

June 28th 2004
11th December 2003

Need I go on?

The Rt Dishonourable Member for Rotherham slates Blair in France

Denis MacShame, for it is he, launched an unprecedented attack on Britain and the Labour record in an interview with the French newspaper La Tribune on Thursday.

As the former Miniature for Europe over the period 2002 until the general election earlier this year,he is much in demand in the French press.

Denouncing fee trade and “liberalisme” he then went on to make some outrageous statement,
"Si vous voulez voir du liberalisme, pur et dur, allez voir la Nouvelle Orleans....Nous ne voulons pas d'une Europe a l'anglaise, mais d'un Europe qui satifasse les besions des citoyens".

My translation,
"If you want to see (the results of) free trade, pure and simple, go and look at New Orleans....We do not want a Europe like the UK, but a Europe which satisfies the hopes of its citizens".

What is extraordinary is that he not only seems to blame the Hurricane and its aftermath on free trade economics – thus falling into line with his German colleagues, but it his statement about Europe that take the biscuit. This man was our representative in the European Council of Ministers and by his own words he claims not to want to see British influence succeed in Europe!!
Now I had always known that he had failed to promote the British position, but before this I had thought he was incompetent. Now I know that he was in fact both dishonest and deliberately working against Britain’s national interest. I am shocked. What is even more extraordinary is his implicit criticism of Blair’s record in Government. If as he believes Britain fails to “satisfy the hopes of its citizens” then, pray what have he and his party been doing for the last eight years?

And for this shower in Downing Street have awarded him with a Privy Councillor position ),
“Asked why he had been made a member of the Privy Council, the PMOS said it was in recognition of his work as a Minister”.

Sophisticated Europeans

Excellent story reported on the front page of the Canard this week.

Philippe Douste-Blazy, the new French Minister for Europe was "visiting the new Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, Douste-Blazy, while looking at a map of Europe showing the number of Jews living in each country before and after the Holocaust, apparently asked:

"Were there no Jews killed in England?"
"But, Minister, England was not occupied by the Nazis!"
"But no Jews were expelled from England?" replies Douste-Blazy."

Hat tip Jerome at the European Tribune.

“A love song to our home”

With those words the Prom debutante Paul Daniel introduced Land of Hope and Glory at the Proms last night. Indeed he had prefaced those words with a far broader comment, “From whatever land you are from, and what ever land you care about I would just like to let you know that… this is a love song to our home".
The miserabilists at the Observer of course cannot handle it seeing it as it is a, “outmoded, flag-waving, white van-ish act.” Worse of course is that “a combination of BBC high-ups and public opinion won't hear of it.”
Myself I am astounded that the BBC in any way would pander to public opinion, what with it being taxpayer funded, but there again stop clocks and all, and don't you just love that elitist jibe at the so called 'white van man', you cannot be educated and a patriot in Holden's twisted mind. The only people who could possibly take pride in Britain are those who work hard and read the Sun.

However Anthony Holden, who is the past has shown his clarity and generosity of spirit thus
“it was Britain's resistance to full-hearted membership of Europe - our only chance, in my view, of survival as even a wannabe world power - that made me realise the full extent of the damage done by the monarchy to this desperately conservative, insular country, clinging forlornly (and often xenophobically) to its post-imperial delusions of grandeur, taking a decaying satisfaction in its past at the expense of any real ambition for its future”.However in his attack upon the tens of thousands in the Albert Hall, the 40,000 who attended in the pouring rain in Hyde Park, the 10,000 odd in Glasgow the 10,000 in Swansea and those in Belfast, the tens of thousands in Manchester, let alone those joining in Brussels of all places, he just hates them with the passion of the academic and elitist that he is,
“Those of you already disagreeing with this are unlikely to be bona fide music lovers who have listened to, maybe even attended, many of the 73 concerts leading up to the Last Night - which simply demeans them. It's just a party, I hear you say. Well, fine, hold it somewhere else, maybe at the headquarters of the British National Party”.

So what did we see in the crowd? Dozens of Welsh and Scottish flags, Northern Irish yes, and Southern, German, Dutch, Flemish (a lot of them), American, Canadian, French(?) Italian, Belgian, Australian, New Zealand, Breton, Cornish, and Palestinian of all things. Dammit I will even admit to seeing a few EU flags in there (two I think).
The singing was lusty, the carry on absurd – more Rocky Horror at times than Bayreuth but that is the joy of it.

The only prejudice, the only bigotry, the only hate about the whole event is in the tiny petty, unpleasant and scabrous minds of the likes of Holden
For shame sir.
Breath deeply and understand that what you desire is nothing less than failed self hate. We are not interested and we wish you only succour for your sadness.

This man defends our interests?

"Timothy Kirkhope, the head of the British Eurosceptics' group in the European Parliament, told Lidove noviny he has not read Klaus's latest commentaries in The Financial Times.
He said he does not follow every word of Klaus as he comments on a plenty of things, and often repeats the same views on the EU in his writings".

This is the same man who claims to represent teh Tories in teh European Parliament. This is the man who when he wrote his own paper on the European Constitution (despite having been a member of the Constitutional Convention) fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of the word subsidiarity; on page 43 of that paper his idea of subsidiarity is summed up by this when describing the initiationof legislation. He would remove ot from the Commission and hand it to the most centralising and federalist of institutions,
"2. The European Parliament shall have the right of initiative."

This is the fellow that is supposed to be able to present an alternative vision to which British people can cleave. This is the fellow who cannot be bothered to read the only serious contribution to that debate since the French and Dutch referenda.

Now tell me, are you suprised?

The picture - his delusional life
He of course does not live at Newby Hall, he just fancies himself grander than he is.


Further update

I was rereading the original article and I noticed this criticism of Vaclav Klaus.
"Klaus has set a precedent...when he vehemently started to comment on European affairs during the government crisis in the Czech Republic [this spring]. Paroubek is trying to launch action to put things right, which Gross was unable to do," political analyst David Kral is quoted as saying.

"It may produce an erroneous impression that the president speaks on behalf of the Czech Republic, but he actually does not. This is rather unfortunate, and the prime minister's response is quite understandable, as it is him who bears political responsibility for the Czech Republic's image abroad," Kral points out.

You will note the the Czech paper, the Lidove noviny, from which the quotation comes fails to tell us who this fellow is, whpopresumes to tell us about the legoitimacy of the elected President of his country to speak about it political viewpoint. So Mr Kral, who are you?

It seems that he is the the "president of EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy in Prague and the director of its EU policies programme. He also lectures at the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague".

So a paid apologist for Brussels, ah... that rather makes his position a little clearer doesnb't it?

Traditional Freedoms held as "poisonous" by British Minister

In an extraordinary outburst in the European Parliament Charles Clarke, the British Home Secretary today denounced defence of freedom as "poisonous".
He was responding to a speech by Nigel Farage MEP (Co-Chairman of the Ind Dem Group) who had asked whether the drive to a common EU war on terror was "worth us losing the presumption of innocence before guilt? Is it worth us losing our right to trial by jury? Is it worth us losing habeas corpus, our basic protection against the police state? "
Obviously in the case of this Presidency it is.

Terrorist rights as important as those they kill: Lib Dem.

"We do not agree with the President-in-Office (the UK in the person of Charles Clarke) when he said in London that the human rights of the victims were more important than the human rights of the terrorists".
The ghastly Graham 'toady' Watson, the vile leader of the Liberals in the European Parliament. I would love to see him say such a thing in Tauton, or London for that matter.
Maybe he could argue this point in a literalist sense at an ethics seminar, but this is politics and he is grandstanding in a place nobody knows for the benefit of the Human Rights Taliban.

Faeroese sheepskin : burnt offering on the EU altar

The name Faero Islands means in that Viking tongue "sheep islands", which is what makes the following tale even more invidious. In one of those examples of crass bullying protectionism come imperialism another traditional and profitable industry hits the dust. According to reports in today's Swedish press the EU is rejecting further imports from the Faero Islands. More than 50,000 Faeroese sheepskins will be burnt after the autumn sheep slaughter. The EU only allows import from slaughterhouses approved by the Union, and sheep on the Faeroes are slaughtered in farms, not slaughterhouses. But of course there is no suggestion that any animal cruelty actually takes place, it is just that the cost of the creating a sanctioned abattoir for this purpose and the whole checking/compliance regime is too great.
That'll teach those rebellious islanders to demand independence and refusing to be part of the EU.

EU interferes with German Elections?

Very hard to prove but it is the only conclusion I can draw from a very strange little story today. On the front page of today's FT Germany there is a story about the German opposition leader Angela Merkle and her attempt to do something about the spike in petrol prices at the German pumps. Her suggestion? To tap into the German strategic oil reserves in order to cut off the spike while the markets are still panicking about hurricane Katrina. It seems an eminently sensible way to deal with the price volatility, indeed it is one of the four reasons generally stated for the maintenance of strategic oil reserves in the first place. This suggestion which was backed by the FDP's Westerwelle has since been turned down by Schroeder (though he has hinted that he might offer to release some of Germany's reserves in a "internationally coordinated" action.)
However what was really odd was the response of the European Commission.
Says the FTD,
"On Thursday the European Commission clearly rejected these plans, "a member state can not release its reserves not arbitrarily nor totally nor partly", the spokesman of energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs told the FTD. The reason: "The height of the reserves is regulated through the EU. Changes must be approved by the commission".

I checked this statement.
The Constitution, Part III, Article 256 states,
"Union policy on energy shall aim to:...
(b) ensure security of energy supply in the Union",To do this it ahs turned what was a unanimity measure into a QMV (qualified majority vote) measure. (Hitherto energy policy was governed by TEC 308 / unanimity, this meant that essentially a government could what it wanted as it would always support its own position effectively vetoing any attempt to stop it. If QMV then permission would have to be granted by the Council).
This therefore made the spokesman's comments look distinctly threadbare. Was this another example of the Commission attempting to impose the rejected Constitution by stealth? But first some more checking, and sure enough in 2002 the Commission prepared a directive to take discretional control for the oil reserves.
This went, through co/decision to the European Parliament, where as the Karlsson report it was rejected in November 2003.Specifically over the issue of the Commission's attempt to gain "discretionary" control over the oil stocks.
Today I asked a friendly journalist to ask about this at the Commission press briefing. The spokesman in question was not available and the Commission flatly denied the story. What has happened though is that Ms Merkle has had a public slapping down by the Commission only a couple of weeks before the election.

Good riddance

I have previously blogged about the vile Lord (oh how he shames the title) Watson of nowhere special. However it seems that he has been found guilty of “to a charge of wilful fire-rising that put the lives of hotel guests in danger.”.
Setting fire to curtains whilst pissed and “hiding his matches in the sporran of his kilt”. What is astonishing is the tripe boiled up by his advocate,
“Paul Burns, defending, told the court: "The events of this night are as incomprehensible to Mr Watson as they must be to the many people who have looked at them and puzzled over them."It is not perplexing. They are not incomprehensible. He is as culpable as the drunken louts he and his kind denounce every day. Will he get an ASBO? Will he be bound over to keep the peace? Will he have a restraining order demanding at least a gap of two yards between himself and any soft furnishing?
It seems that the slug is resigning from his position as MSP for Cathcart, but will he be thrown out of the Lords, or will he still be able to put his charcoal crusted mits over legislation from London?