Democracy Watch ~ Stories from the Press ~ warmwell.com
See also: http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/links/links.html for articles monitoring the State and Civil Liberties in the UK and in Europe
ARCHIVE
June 27 2003 ~ "With no real Parliament, Britain must have a surrogate one, a media organisation like a sumo wrestler, with rolls of fat..."
"..How else to resist a regular headbutting from Downing Street? How else to stand four square against the most egocentric, least-checked government machine in the Western world?" The ever excellent Simon Jenkins in the Times today. "This week's scrap between the BBC and Tony Blair's aide, Alastair Campbell, offers rich pickings for future scholars of spin. For Mr Campbell to play poor diddums against “media lies” on any subject is laughable. Equally laughable is his charge that his critics have an obsession with Iraq's lack of weapons of mass destruction. What on earth does he expect? He built an edifice of propaganda round this subject for six months....
...The BBC's morning radio show, the Today programme, has become the parliament of the nation. It is both more thorough and more accessible than the Commons. Ministers flatter it with attendance and are put through their paces as never by MPs. Radio and television have thus become the true "official Opposition". This is a role which the British constitution has forced on broadcasters, like it or not. ...
...he is entitled to an assurance that Mr Gilligan's story was properly validated. Downing Street may abuse "single-sourced" material on Saddam's arsenals, but that does not excuse the BBC from higher standards. ...... But I still believe that the BBC should not run scared. As a news organisation it should remain big, rich and arrogant. It is a vital constitutional irritant and should be commended for making such powerful enemies. "June 26 ~"... it will now be, in part, up to this committee of MPs to decide who is telling the truth.."
"..If they back Mr Campbell then much of the wider criticism over the government's handling of the conflict will evaporate. The government's critics will find it hugely difficult to press ahead with their case. If, however, this committee suggests they do not believe Mr Campbell's account of events the consequences will be incalculable." See the articles from the BBC todayJune 22 ~ The madness of King Tony
"After the euro no-show, the botched Cabinet reshuffle and Blair's despotic displays, Westminster Editor (of the Sunday Herald) James Cusick asks if the prime minister's love of power has gone to his head......."Blair, without consultation, chose his summer reshuffle to abolish the office of the Lord Chancellor, axe both the Scottish and Welsh offices, and invent the new Constitutional Affairs Department putting his pal and former flatmate, Lord Charlie Falconer, at its head. ... none of this went to plan, cobbled together with parliamentary Elastoplast as it was -- and will now be the subject of wide ''consultation'' only after the decision has been taken ..."June 21 ~ Mr Giscard d'Estaing also said he is in favour of a referendum which some countries will have. "It is entirely legitimate," he said.
Guardian (external link) "Valery Giscard d'Estaing... handed over a symbolic copy of his 16 months worth of work - bound in blue leather - to the 25 EU heads of government who expect to be ruled by it soon. "
See also the Guardian's Beginner's Guide to the ConstitutionJune 21 ~ We're not going to change the mind of those men but it's important they know more and more people are resisting their policies
Encouraging words, more and more repeated - this time from a Norwegian history student surveying the gap between anti-summit protesters and the EU leaders installed along the road. See today's Guardian : "It's just a mile but one that divides our world, our views, from the very people who are changing the EU into a new imperialist superstate," said Erik Dokken.... For several hours Dokken and thousands of other anti-globalisation activists, communists, leftists, trade unionists had marshalled themselves in the resort of Neo Marmara to take the EU leadership to task.
To combat the protesters, Greece has launched the biggest ever security operation.
Heavily armed coastguard boats dotted the bay and on the beach, in front of sets of giant steel containers, stood hundreds of heavily armed police, with more hiding behind trees and bushes up on the road."June 21 ~ "if the al-Qaeda threat was as serious as is now implied, surely the Bill should have been raced through Parliament a year ago."
Be careful: too safe can too easily end up sorry Simon Jenkins in the Times. " What threatens the British way of life at present is not terrorism but the public response to it. The terrorist-security complex is driving forward a hyperbolic, risk-averse, "health-and-safety" culture that infuses every British home and workplace, every enterprise and relationship. It is dangerous. "June 21 ~"It seems driven by its authoritarian instincts to press ahead with the ID scheme while lacking the political courage to say so" "
There was a certain amount of scepticism last year when the Government launched one of its beloved consultation periods for "stakeholders" to express their views on "entitlement cards", the Home Office's preferred euphemism for ID cards." (Telegraph - Free Country) "There was no surprise, then, when the consultation turned into a cod referendum, and the Home Office declared that the 2,000 people who had responded were split two to one in favour of the cards. This alleged response led to artfully spun reports of overwhelming public support for the ID scheme, which was variously presented as a fix-all solution to global terrorism and bogus asylum seekers....But the Home Office had not counted on nine enterprising young people who work in the IT sector and who, in their spare time, run an unfunded website that encourages their peers to take part in such national debates. They posted a form on their site - www.stand.org.uk. This was not a petition, just a mechanism for readers to participate in the consultation procedure. They were gratified that more than 5,000 people used their service, of whom 4,856 were against the scheme....the Home Office dithers, refusing to say what it intends to do. It seems driven by its authoritarian instincts to press ahead with the ID scheme while lacking the political courage to say soJune 20 ~ "The new bill, when it is brought forward in the autumn, will confer sweeping authority on ministers to do almost anything that they like in an emergency."
The Guardian examines the Civil Contingencies Bill "... the second part is potentially the greatest threat to civil liberty that any parliament is ever likely to consider. That does not necessarily mean that it should not be passed. But it does mean that there is an absolute obligation on the press and on MPs to scrutinise it with an eagle eye. The consultation period that began yesterday is short. No one who cares about civil liberty should fail to take part in it. This is far more than just a legal tidying-up exercise. "June 19 2003 ~ Letter in The Times from Mr Tim Hammond
Sir, Some of your Europhile correspondents seem to think that in the phrase “European superstate” it is the Europe part that Eurosceptics resist. In fact, it is the superstate that I don't like. I would resist a North Atlantic superstate just as vigorously because I believe that bigger government (in every sense) is worse government, in terms of both efficiency and account-ability.
Just as I have no desire to tell my next-door neighbour what car to buy, I have no desire to tell Germans how they can buy their apples. This does not make me a xenophobe or a Little Englander. I welcome the free movement of goods, capital and people between EU countries and would happily see that extended to the US and other countries. I would also happily see power devolved from Westminster to local governments, local people and individuals.
Those who portray Eurosceptics as intolerant or nationalistic are deliberately inflaming the issue.
Yours faithfully,
TIM HAMMOND,
110 Gowan Avenue, SW6 6RG.June 19 ~ "1.7 million people cast their vote, 89.8% demand a voice on Europe, and the biggest ever ICM poll produces the SAME result"
Front page of Daily Mail on Tuesday:"The ECM poll consulted 55,000 people - more than 50 times the normal sample size- and found that 88% favoured a national referendum on the new constitution. "Nick Sparrow, managing director of ICM, said: 'Never before have we polled so many people and recorded such a clear-cut answer. The message for Tony Blair is clear.'..."
Not even mentioned on BBC radio or TV as far as we know.June 18 ~ Janet Daley in the Telegraph "I heard Jack Straw on the Today programme yesterday expressing sarcastic bemusement.."
".. at the fact that many Tory frontbenchers who are now demanding a referendum on the proposed European constitution had opposed a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, "even though that was more radical". Does he not realise that a treaty is a treaty and a constitution is something else altogether?...."
"......Labour spokesmen are getting themselves more and more tangled up in every broadcast interview about the status of the judiciary, the nature of democracy and its relationship to justice. I heard one of them say desperately that "democracy and justice are entirely separate things". Um, no - not entirely separate, surely.
Perhaps he was confusing democracy with "populist sentiment" and justice with the particular judgments of the courts. No one has yet figured out a flawless way to make the judicial system democratically accountable without turning it into a species of tawdry political life in which district attorneys run for office (as they do in many parts of America) on their record of successful convictions...."
Her article is well worth reading in fullJune 18 ~ the EU will be top-heavy with presidents, all trying to out-president each other.
David Heathcoat-Amory in today's Telegraph "No one in the convention doubts the scale of the undertaking or the huge implications for the way Europe is governed - except, apparently, the British Government, which is completely isolated in maintaining that the new constitution is just a "tidying-up exercise". In the convention, this caused bafflement and then some hilarity. Peter Hain, the government representative, belatedly declared a number of "red lines" on proposals that he wants removed, such as majority voting on foreign policy, social security harmonisation, and interference in criminal justice procedures. But if these issues are so important to the Government, how can it just be a "tidying-up exercise"?
The truth is that the European Constitution founds a new union, with a single unified structure and legal personality. The existing structure, which secures the rights of member states to make their own decisions and collective arrangements about foreign policy and criminal justice matters, will disappear. The EU will have "exclusive competence" over trade, competition rules, common commercial policy, fisheries conservation and the signing of all international agreements...."June 18 ~" The Home Secretary is facing a confrontation with chief constables over what they fear is a backdoor attempt to create a national police force."
Telegraph (external link) "....Chiefs are most disturbed by the proposed creation of national, centrally-controlled shortlists of candidates for chief officer jobs, with the Home Secretary and his officials dictating to police authorities which officers they should consider. They are also concerned by plans for more shorter, fixed-term contracts. ACPO sources believe the constant changes in posts would lead to instability in many forces. Officers would not stay long enough to face the consequences of their decisions...."June 18 ~ "We cannot destroy the existing world order until we have a better one with which to replace it."
Stimulating and inspiriting, George Monbiot in yesterday's Guardian (external link): "...The UN security council should be scrapped, and its powers vested in a reformulated UN general assembly. This would be democratised by means of weighted voting: nations' votes would increase according to both the size of their populations and their positions on a global democracy index. Perhaps most importantly, the people of the world would elect representatives to a global parliament, whose purpose would be to hold the other international bodies to account.
I have also suggested some cruel and unusual means by which these proposals might be implemented. Poor nations, for example, now owe so much that they own, in effect, the world's financial systems. The threat of a sudden collective default on their debts unless they get what they want would concentrate the minds of even the most obdurate global powers. "June 17 ~ Regional Assemblies: " they are pressing on with costly and likely fruitless referendums. The three regions, and ultimately all of England, will receive a referendum on this issue when there is no desire for one - but not on the EU constitution, where one is desperately wanted."
The Telegraph leader says" This is an idea that has long commanded support from the European Union, as it represents a progressive weakening of the nation state. The Government has been quite open in its view that the assemblies would fit into a model E U superstate better than the current borough, metropolitan and county council arrangements, and cites the example of the Länder in Germany. The analogy is misleading. The German Länder have, as it were, an organic claim to authority, and have represented their local communities for much longer. The English regions are, by comparison, ahistorical, nebulously conceived, arbitrarily imposed. ....in no sense will these bodies give greater autonomy to the regions.(Read in full)
The Times Leader:".... These assemblies are a personal project. The polls are taking place only because of the insistence of the Deputy Prime Minister. He wants them as a concrete monument of his period in office. It is an expensive retirement gift from the Prime Minister. Too expensive. ..."
BBC TV 'Look North' is doing a telephone poll, 'Do you want Regional Government?' 09001 800 322 calls at 10p maximum. Over 92% against at 10.30 this morning...June 16 ~ Blair on the rack over reshuffle chaos
Benedict Brogan, Political Correspondent of the Telegraph (external link)"Confusion over the constitutional implications of Tony Blair's reshuffle deepened last night amid claims that he committed a "gross discourtesy" by failing to warn the Queen of his plans to scrap the 1,400-year-old post of Lord Chancellor.
......the Queen was said to be "livid".
.... the Palace would not disclose whether Mr Blair had taken the Queen into his confidence about the contentious detail of his plans for overhauling the constitution. Ministers were busy defending themselves yesterday against the damaging fall-out of a reshuffle that had caused disquiet in the legal profession as well as at Westminster. ....... the Lord Chancellor's constitutional position was defined by law and could not be altered without primary legislation.
The sense of confusion was compounded on Friday morning when Lord Falconer was forced to sit on the Woolsack in the Lords after the Government discovered that the Lord Chancellor must by law be present at the start of each sitting.
Lord William of Mostyn, QC, the Leader of the Lords, is due to make a statement today on plans to appoint a new Speaker to replace the Lord Chancellor. He is expected to suggest an election."June 15 ~ "The British constitution is part statutory and part conventional; it allows the prime minister very wide powers, but even those powers are not unlimited. He is neither a president nor a dictator. "
William Rees Mogg in the Sunday Times:"... Blair is the temporary holder of a comparatively modern office which has been shaped by a succession of predecessors, from Sir Robert Walpole down to John Major. He holds his office only because he is the leader of the party which has a majority in the House of Commons.
(More from the Sunday Times on the redhuffle etc)
That party's majority does not come from its own special grace, but simply by the choice of the people. The British constitution is part statutory and part conventional; it allows the prime minister very wide powers, but even those powers are not unlimited. He is neither a president nor a dictator.
There has been an unjustified assumption behind this reshuffle that the prime minister has a free and capricious power to alter important parts of the constitution just because he decides to do so -- affecting Scotland, Wales, the judiciary, the lord chancellor, the House of Lords. He treats negotiations on the European constitution in the same arbitrary way.
This has to be stopped -- even if the prime minister has to be stopped at the same time. ."June 15 ~ The question is not 'whether' but 'which Europe?'
Booker's Notebook "....it was being urged on the Tory leadership behind the scenes last week, ... to seize the initiative. Asked the question "would you leave Europe?" their reply should be "which Europe do you mean?" - since there are at least three contradictory models locked in deadly rivalry.
The response might continue along these lines:"If you mean the supranational Europe on the classic Monnet model being pushed by Prodi, run by the Commission and the European Central Bank, we are opposed, because it is totally undemocratic and doesn't work. If you mean the semi-intergovernmental hotchpotch favoured by Chirac, essentially with himself in charge, we can't see how that helps anyone. If you mean a true 'Europe of Nations', based on full intergovernmental co-operation and the democratic wishes of national parliaments, then we are wholly in favour (and incidentally, we can scrap the Commission and that charade of a European Parliament, and forget the euro)."
Only with such a positive, wholly "pro-European" alternative can the Tories avoid being boxed into a corner. At the moment they look like the proverbial rabbit caught in the headlights, as the truck marked "Constitution", with Blair in the back, thunders down to run them over...."June 15 ~ "Were I a one-legged homosexual Afghan refugee/terrorist living on the welfare state, you and your ilk would not dare write in such a manner....
....for fear of having all the human rights lawyers in creation round your necks, but as you are speaking to an honest, hard-working and overstressed Englishman, you appear to think you can behave like all too many of the vast and ever-increasing army of totally useless, non-productive, arrogant and bloody-minded officialdom, who are now only too successfully doing more damage to this once great and free nation than was ever achieved by Adolf Hitler".
The ever-readable Booker's Notebook recounts how Geoff Bean, "a respected Yorkshire dairy farmer, last February bought a few lorryloads of builder's rubble to make repairs round his farm. He little realised that he was about to be drawn into a stand-off with officials of the Environment Agency which deserves to become a classic in the annals of the struggle between bureaucracy and the citizen."...June 15 ~ "Derry wanted to be the last Lord Chancellor. He was furious about the whole thing," said a Cabinet colleague.
Sunday Telegraph (external link) "....The row over the independence of the judiciary will erupt again tomorrow when Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, is threatening to lead criticism of the Home Secretary's Criminal Justice Bill on the second reading in the Lords.
Last Wednesday, Mr Blunkett privately met Lord Woolf and threatened to use the Parliament Act to force the measure on to the Statute Book...."June 15 ~ Police will run internet after terrorist attack
"Wide-ranging powers to enable the police to run the internet and the rest of Britain's information superhighway in the event of a terrorist attack will be unveiled this week. The Civil Contingencies Bill will seek to modernise (The Times' word) Britain's response to national emergencies by protecting (The Times' word) the country from attacks on the infrastructure including the "electronic network" and the water, electricity and telephone systems. Airlines, the transport network, town halls and the postal service could also come under police direction in the event of a national disaster. ..."
Our hearts sink even further when we read the words "wide-ranging powers" in conjuction with such words as "terrorist" and "protecting".As with the dubious concept of "health and safety", the nebulous threat of "terrorism" can be successfully used to justify the erosion of civil freedoms and silence the murmurs of dissent.June 15 ~ "Once upon a time we had local government which served the community, paid for by ratepayers who could call their councillors to account at election time.
Now we have galloping inflation of up to 22 per cent in council taxes to pay more and more for less and less, from councils run by officials accountable to no one. In Bradford thousands of council taxpayers are receiving letters threatening that, unless they pay up immediately, council bailiffs are already armed with distraint warrants entitling them to enter taxpayers' homes to seize any goods they wish, to be sold at knockdown prices until any debt is paid. These letters are going out from Bradford's "department of customer services". Apparently it cannot wait to inform its "customers" that it wishes to "serve" them by stealing their furniture." Booker's Notebook todayJune 12 -16 ~ If you are in favour of "Europe" therefore, the question is "Which one"?
Dr Richard North's guide to Understanding the ConventionJune 12-16 ~ Europhile bias at the BBC
".... The BBC have taken 96 Million Euros from the EU Investment Bank and a condition of the taking of this loan is to "further the objectives of EU Community Policies in the Construction of the European Union...."
From a report on the conference at Canterbury Hall, University of London on May 31st "BBC BIAS: HOW CAN WE STOP IT?" by Christine Constable.
One of our most respected emailers writes today:"What a business this all is with referendums, and no referendums, and GM etc. I have just rung the BBC re James Naughtie's interview with the Daily Mail about their campaign, and how derisory I thought James Naughtie was. Said I thought it served to confirm yet again the BBC bias towards HMG."
And we have also recently been directed to the following website: http://www.bbcbias.org/ - where former Soviet dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, has joined forces with Jonathan Miller, the Sunday Times journalist campaigning for an end to the anachronistic television licence.
See also http://www.globalbritain.org/BBC/BBC%20Front%20page.htm for speeches and letters on the subject of BBC "europhile" bias.
The House of Lords debated the question on March 11 2002.June 12 ~ "The things we share freely and enjoy in common -- our culture and public knowledge, public assets, public services, public spaces, public lands --
.... Slowly, deliberately, they are becoming private assets and services, private spaces, proprietary knowledge, and trademarked culture, to be marketed for corporate profit. The vibrant body politic is becoming a mundane body economic.
This sea change in our public life is primarily the result of the efforts of 12 archconservative philanthropic foundations that set out 40 years ago to advance an ideology known as "neoliberalism," or "free market theology." These foundations -- call them the Diligent Dozen -- chose to fund not humanitarian projects but ideological programs, and they were willing to do so decade after decade, spending hundreds of millions in the effort...."
From a review of : "Silent Theft: the Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth" David Bollier's book is about America - but we have few reasons for complacency.June 11 ~ I cannot see what is anti-European in an aversion to a supranational regime that fails to regulate its rotten apples and lacks any wider accountability.
Simon Jenkins today in the Times
"...Mr Brown's document is a masterpiece of modern politics. As critics have pointed out, its style is the nadir of the dismal science of economics. The fatuous equations and gobbledegook that could have been cut by two thirds was no more than Mr Brown jeering over the corpses of his victims. But I cannot recall any decision of British government that was the subject of so colossal a work of analysis, least of all a decision to do nothing. If only British entry to the Common Agricultural Policy in the 1970s had been approached with such rigour. If only the inanities that pour daily from the Home Office and the Education and Health Departments were so thoroughly pre-tested." (Her Majesty's Press provides a sterling service )June 10 ~"... their lack of democratic accountability is glaring."
Extract from an article by Adam Nicolson in the Telegraph Oh, how I long to live in the new superstate (external)".. . According to the new proposals, the Commission, run by long-term, appointee commissioners, will now take over justice and home affairs.
Having used the tired and irritating old argument that all who are unhappy about the proposed EU constitution are somehow "phobic" about European people, and held up the United States of America as "a continent in which I am freely and permanently and stimulatingly at home", Mr Nicolson's article, concludes: "...Only a European superstate, with a democratic structure and a deeply federated system of government, will be able to shake off the disenchantment with politics that the present half-redundant system engenders." This requires no comment. Does he really imagine that there can ever be democracy in a "superstate"?
The new European president will be appointed by the prime ministers of the member states. ....
As David Heathcoat-Amory, the Tory MP on the convention, has said: "Everybody in Brussels is going to get more power. We'll have a more powerful Council, a more powerful Commission and a more powerful Parliament, and where is this power coming from? It is coming from the nation states and the citizens."June 9 ~ Blair and Campbell to 'snub Iraq weapons inquiry'
Times
"... Michael Ancram, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that Mr Campbell's failure to appear would destroy Mr Blair's credibility. "The only way the Prime Minister can restore trust is by holding an independent inquiry," said Mr Ancram.
"It would be quite incredible if a genuine inquiry into Downing Street's handling of intelligence material did not take evidence from Alastair Campbell, whose name is associated with every allegation, especially the 'dodgy dossier', and whose hand is evident in all suggestions of manipulation.
"If Alastair Campbell doesn't give evidence, how can the Prime Minister's word last week, that the Government would be open with these inquiries, ever be trusted again?"June 9 ~"when one hears the Prime Minister once again parody the serious concerns of those who opposed the Iraq war, or of the Eurosceptics, in order to show that arguments they have never used are wrong, one's sympathy goes out to them, not to him. .. "
William Rees Mogg in the Times ".. It is not surprising that the public is increasingly suspicious of Tony Blair's style of advocacy. He repeatedly uses a rhetorical device which has become extremely irritating. He distorts and oversimplifies the case that is being made against him, and then knocks down the straw man he has constructed. Iain Duncan Smith and the majority of the public may be right to think this is misleading but not deliberately lying. But when one hears the Prime Minister once again parody the serious concerns of those who opposed the Iraq war, or of the Eurosceptics, in order to show that arguments they have never used are wrong, one's sympathy goes out to them, not to him. There have been periods in history when Prime Ministers were expected to be more scrupulous. This is cheap jury advocacy; it would not pass the scrutiny of a judge." (whole article)June 8 ~ it needed the prime minister's claims about the dangers posed by Saddam's weapons to persuade wavering voices. But the consequence is a serious blow -- trust, Mr Blair's most precious political commodity, is ebbing away fast.
Sunday Times Leader (external link) "The prime minister has conceded an investigation by the intelligence and security committee but it is unlikely to bite the Downing Street hand that appoints it. The foreign affairs select committee is to launch an investigation but it too falls short of the full independent committee of inquiry needed. Margaret Thatcher had such an inquiry under Lord Franks after the Falklands war two decades ago. Mr Blair should do the same, otherwise the electorate will form the understandable opinion that he has something to hide. Last September he insisted in the House of Commons that the existence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was "not American or British propaganda". The onus is on him to prove it."June 8 ~ "Word had gone around in the mid 90s that Hartlepool, the first of a new breed of pig, had had a strange dream the previous night and had wished to communicate it to the other animals..."
The Today Programme paraphrases George OrwellJune 8 ~ On a straight "in" or "out" choice, Iain Duncan Smith, Business for Sterling, even the Daily Mail would have to crawl shamefacedly back into Mr Blair's camp
and accept, as a result, the euro and everything else that they dislike. The only way for the Conservative Party to avoid being outflanked is to seize the initiative and put forward its own "positive" vision of Britain's relations with the EU, along the lines favoured by David Heathcoat-Amory, the Tory delegate to Giscard's convention.
By holding out the alternative of Britain continuing to trade freely with the EU but not travelling further down the road to political integration, the Tories could themselves make the running, in a way that might win overwhelming support. At the moment they seem to be reduced to such a state of jelly on "Europe" that they are just waiting to fall into Mr Blair's trap." Booker's Notebook - as readable and terrifying as ever.June 7 ~ NHS Gagging clause could limit freedom of speech, preventing doctors from exposing waiting list fiddles..
"Consultants in the South West appear to be widely rejecting a draft contract drawn up by the Government which they say contains a dangerous "gagging clause". Hospital doctors say the clause could prevent them from exposing waiting list fiddles and limit freedom of speech. But the Department of Health has accused the British Medical Association of scaremongering...
....Nizam Mamode, joint deputy chairman of the BMA's central consultants and specialists committee, said the extra conditions amounted to an attack on civil liberties.
"This goes way beyond patient confidentiality," he said. "It would mean, for example, that all the things we've been saying recently about managers fiddling figures and employing extra staff while surveys are taking place to meet targets, would not come out." ."
More from the Western Morning News (external link)June 6 ~ ".. the final goal of federalism which you and Hain are supposed to be stopping."
NATION ON BRINK OF LOSING IDENTITY This authoritative open letter to Mr Blair from Vice-admiral Louis Le Bailly and published in the Western Morning News must be read in full. He is, says the WMN, "better placed than most to comment on Britain's place in Europe. His wartime service, in which his ship was sunk by German bombs, and a career in international affairs and intelligence have given him an unrivalled view of world issues"."It is common ground that there was a major German (Nazi) input into the establishment of the EU from Albert Speer. In his massive correspondence smuggled from Spandau and his close friendship with George Ball and the latter's influence at Foggy Bottom (US State Department) through two United States presidencies, the EEC was well on the way to a federal union under German influence.
One of the paradoxes of the gestation period leading to Maastricht was the influence of Spinelli, a lifelong communist and federalist.
He was one of the main strategic thinkers devising the sum and substance of the European Union as it is today.
His successful confidence trick on John Major over the doctrine of "subsidiarity" was masterly. His vision still dominates the final goal of federalism which you and Hain are supposed to be stopping.
From the papers it seems that you and that ambitious young acolyte are seeking, as part of your strategy, to denigrate those many who disagree with you. You imply we are blind idiots with no experience, no evidence, of hopelessly outdated judgements and with no knowledge of what the majority who lent you power are thinking. You wrong that great majority of sceptics.
....We, the electorate have lent you power to govern us. I'm sure you do not wish history to record that it was Tony Blair of New Labour, putting his seal on a wholly misguided Conservative initiative, who finally terminated Britain's unique 1,000-year old Christian Democracy by immolating its monarch, its laws, its Parliament, its culture, its people, into a corrupt, fascistic, entirely secular, probably federal, largely hostile behemoth - thereby betraying what nearly half a million men and women of Britain and the Commonwealth died to prevent." (read in full)June 6 ~ NHS: James Strachan, the new chairman of the Audit Commission, has accused the Government of using "spin" and"distortion" to cover up NHS failures.
He said that too many piecemeal targets were diverting doctors' priorities away from treating patients most in need. But instead of addressing the real problems, Mr Blair has just tinkered again. The fat, drinkers and smokers may be told to sign a contract promising to behave if they want treatment.....
.... He's thrown money at schools, but he hasn't put any effort into working out why they're still being forced to sack teachers..... Since Christmas, he has made no attempt to introduce any serious domestic policy except to decide he wants the Olympics so he can invite all his high-flying foreign friends to a great party. He's not going to organise the party himself, of course - he's leaving that to his wife. He can't make his mind up about Crossrail, and he has postponed yet again any decision on GM crops. His Cabinet colleagues aren't allowed to concentrate on domestic issues,either. Instead, they've been working their way through 1,700 pages of economic analysis on the euro. Yesterday, they had to sit through a lengthy Cabinet meeting in the knowledge that Gordon Brown and Mr Blair had already decided to postpone the issue. If only Mr Blair would take transport, education and health that seriously, and leave the euro to Mr Brown and the constitution to a referendum....." Alice Thompson in the Telegraph (external link)June 5 ~ To take part in the Daily Mail National Referendum online
complete the ballot paper on this page and click Vote. "You can vote online up until midnight on June 12 - official polling day around the country. The results will be published in the Daily Mail and on femail.co.uk the following week and delivered to Tony Blair before the next EU summit in Thessaloniki.
For more details on the Referendum, call the Daily Mail hotline on 0870 3333 853 between 10am and 6pm. "
(You need a valid email address for your vote)June 5 ~ Lord Ashcroft was convinced that civil servants "had been guilty of undermining democracy" by collecting dirt on him and leaking it to the media - "a very grave matter indeed".
Ashcroft seeks access to 'dirt file' that blocked his peerage (external link to the Times) by Dominic Kennedy"... This case gave rise to a "large number of questions", not least the contents of the Foreign Office's "dirt file", whether it should be there at all, and who was responsible for the leaks.
"Does this all stem from a political vendetta?" Mr Warby asked. The party political system relied on private donations, the court was told. If there had been an attempt to discredit the treasurer of the opposition party, that created "serious questions which cry out for proper answers", counsel said, "and if someone was kept out of Parliament, that is itself an attack on the democratic system." The Government was described as having a "culture of secrecy". ..... When Lord Ashcroft was first nominated for a peerage in June 1999, the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee had refused to recommend him. "Gossipy" information had been leaked to The Times which Mr Warby claimed had been "running a campaign" against Lord Ashcroft. ...."June 5 ~ ID cards: ".. One of the key purposes of a card in Britain would be to identify "illegal" asylum-seekers and ethnic minority communities would be particularly vulnerable.."
Part of John Wadham's letter to the Times. He is Director, of Liberty"..Those EU states operating an ID system suffer from crime as much as we do -- often more so. One consequence of introducing cards would be the creation of a market for forged copies. The police don't seem to have many problems identifying suspects, only catching and convicting them, and terrorists rarely conceal their identity (as the September 11 outrage showed).
ID cards would make law-abiding citizens petty criminals. Failing to notify a change of address would be a criminal offence, as would failing to report the loss of a card.
As for the cost, it doesn't bear thinking about..."June 4 ~"Historians should note. At the turn of the 21st century Britain was ruled by two men, a lawyer and a tabloid journalist.
The first profession does not do whole truths, the second does not do long sentences. Both suffer occupational hyperbole. Neither likes being wrong.
Now a third and nobler calling has crossed the path of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, that of spy. The head of Whitehall's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), John Scarlett, was head of MI6's Moscow station and reputedly the last man in that city to wear spats. A person of some panache, he, or at least his "friends", were clearly driven beyond endurance by the antics of Messrs Blair and Campbell. ..." Simon Jenkins in today's Times.June 4 ~ Keep ballot boxes clean
Telegraph Opinion " Yesterday's proposals for the modernisation of elections, published by the Electoral Commission, were said to be all about tackling low turnout and widening choice. Like the Electoral Commission, politicians get very upset about low turnout, but it is fair to assume that it is not something that worries the voters - otherwise, presumably, they would turn out to vote. If electors cannot be bothered to cast their ballots, that is much more likely to be a reflection on the candidates than on the democratic process as a whole. What really does matter, in any election, is the integrity of the process......
Another commission suggestion for boosting turnout - the introduction of a national electoral register - has the drawback that it could very easily become a step towards a national identity card. ...... The electoral system has its limitations, but at least it is tried, tested and, most important of all, secure. The Electoral Commission, which is a new and untried quango, should tread with care.June 2 ~ "Authorisation of the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is decided in Brussels, on an EU-wide basis.."
today's Independent".. but the legislation governing it was very narrowly framed on questions of the immediate risk from individual GMOs to humans and the environment. Wider fears since expressed by large numbers of people - that they might not be able to avoid GM products even if they wished to, that the technology might make organic farming unviable because of contamination, that it is in essence unnatural and irresponsible - were not accommodated. These and other concerns can now be brought to the Government's attention in the debate, which is entitled "GM Nation". It will last six weeks and is based around a series of six main regional conferences, which start tomorrow at the NEC in Birmingham. The others will be in Swansea (5 June), Taunton (7 June), Belfast (9 June), Glasgow (11 June) and Harrogate (13 June).
Warmwell's GM page Pro and Anti GM arguments
They will be followed by smaller local meetings organised by county and local councils, pressure groups and individuals. A debate "tool kit" of a handbook, a videotape and a CD-Rom has been produced to enable anyone to organise their own version of the debate, wherever they choose, with a helpline number for advice (020-7261 8616)..."June 1 ~ Just Tidying Up
The Financial Times, 22 March 2002.'...Using rhetoric unthinkable from a British government even a year ago, Peter Hain, UK Europe minister, said: "Our task is nothing less than the creation of a new constitutional order for a new united Europe." Britain, Mr Hain said, wanted the EU to have stronger political leadership with radically reformed European summits giving strategic direction. "We want a stronger Commission too, perhaps with fewer, more focused commissioners with influential deputies to ensure each country is represented."....'
June 1 ~ The Fishery Limits Amendment Bill
empowers her Majesty's government to take back control of Britain's national waters and manage them in the interests of effective conservation, rather than see them looted and pillaged by other EU members. See press releaseJune 1 ~ what most fishermen want is temporary help that could enable them to stay in business through the crisis.
See Booker's Notebook "....The Scottish Executive has asked Brussels for permission to pay out a modest £10 million in "interim aid", but has had no reply. Similarly, there has been no reply from Mr Blair to the letters from the Cod Crusaders. For English and Welsh fishermen, our stony-faced fisheries minister, Elliott Morley, insists, there can be no money whatever. The reason for this heartless indifference is that the whole purpose of the restrictions, which have plunged Britain's fishermen into their worst-ever crisis, is to remove as many of them as possible. This will make room for the Spanish fishing fleet which, under the terms of Spain's accession treaty in 1985, was to be allowed "equal access" to UK and other northern European waters by January 1, 2003."May 28 ~ "Downing Street denied that Mr Hain had been rebuked by the Prime Minister..."
Telegraph today"A call by Peter Hain, the Prime Minister's chief negotiator on the convention drafting the constitution, for next year's European elections to be regarded as a referendum were disowned by Downing Street. Mr Hain was then forced to perform an embarrassing about-turn....
See full text of the European Convention document (pdf) (opens in new window)
... Mr Hain's earlier claim that the constitution was a "tidying-up exercise" was undermined when the latest sections of the document were unveiled in Brussels. It proposes a justice department known as Eurojust with powers to launch investigations and paves the way for a European Public Prosecutor to crack down on serious cross-border crimes.
The new articles, which bring the EU's justice policy under the full control of the European Court for the first time, establish a common policy on asylum and a common immigration policy.
The veto wielded by nation states, including Britain, would also be whittled down in the highly sensitive areas of social security, workers' rights and collective bargaining. ........... the latest text establishes majority voting in fighting tax fraud. A British official said it was the beginning of a "slippery slope" and would have to be removed"May 19 ~"Licences for growing genetically-modified crops in Britain may be approved despite public opposition
the Government has indicated. Environment Minister Michael Meacher said that refusing a licence for the GM crops might not be an option under European Union legislation. A public consultation exercise on GM crops is due to begin in a fortnight's time. Although trials have not come up with evidence that the crops are harmful, opinion polls suggest that fewer than 15% support GM. .." See reportMay 19 ~ Peter Hain.....said that those campaigning for a vote "might as well put away their placards and stop wasting their money because we are not going to do it".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/19/neu19.xml "....the Conservative MP David Heathcoat-Amory, who serves on the convention, said the new constitution would change the way Britain was governed. He told The Politics Show: "Foreign policy and defence policy will be decided increasingly by Brussels, by majority voting, so we lose our national veto - that is in the draft - and by a European foreign minister who will take over most of the powers on British foreign policy. "The same is true about domestic policy. Criminal justice policy, environment, transport, social policy - all are going to be decided more in Brussels than Westminster." He said Mr Hain's comments were "particularly outrageous" given that most other member states were planning referendums."May 19 ~ Can such words as these appear seriously in the Telegraph? Who - with even a modicum of knowledge about the war - could take them seriously?
Telegraph - Dick Morris' article Britain's future lies over the Atlantic - not the Channel "Neither America nor Britain is prepared to sit by while villains do their worst. Both nations have historically put promoting human rights ahead of making money as global priorities. The peoples on either side of the Atlantic share an affection, a warmth, and a feeling of responsibility that bind us tighter than any economic union ever can.
Britain should no longer act like a European fish swimming in the Atlantic Ocean out of its native water. The ties that bind George W Bush and Tony Blair are more than just a determination to topple Saddam Hussein. They run to a shared concept of global duty.
Has the mandate of the United Nations run its course? Is the veto of the fearful, appeasing and economically selfish French delegation as hobbling as was that of the Soviet Union in the Cold War?..."
Not laughable. Frightening.May 18 ~ "she was accused of "ripping into" Tony Blair, when she simply and coldly condemned his presidential style.
Above all Short was derided for not having resigned sooner. The Blairites smirked in triumph, knowing that when they had earlier dissuaded her from resigning, they had promised her everything and delivered nothing...
...Short's successor as Secretary of State, Valerie Ann Amos, a Blairite look-alike for Condoleezza Rice, was raised by Blair to the peerage in 1997, and subsequently appointed Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa, on the sole ground that he trusts her - a presidential move if ever there was one. If Blair's trustfulness is the criterion for high office we can confidently expect Carole Caplin in the Cabinet sometime soon. " Germaine Greer in the Sunday TelegraphMay 17 ~ Big Brother 'watches more of us every year'
Robert Uhlig, now "Technology Correspondent " of the Telegraph, writes "Police and government officials are demanding access to personal data on telephone calls and internet use of more than one million people every year, according to figures released yesterday. The information seized by authorities could total more than a billion items of data, Privacy International (website here), a pressure group that monitors internet and telecommunications snooping, said.
Among the information requested by Customs and Excise, the Financial Services Authority, police forces and the Radio Communications Agency were credit card numbers, telephone records and e-mail logs.
Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the estimate was "very much on the low side", adding: "We literally halved the Home Office estimate, just to be on the safe side."
According to records, Customs & Excise made 18,940 requests for access to personal records in the first three months of 2000 and the Metropolitan Police made 127,000 requests in 2001.
Mr Davies said that under powers given in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act ( The Act can be seen here) , Government departments and the police asked to see records detailing more than 100 million phone calls.
The Government wants to extend the number of public bodies authorised to have access to data."May 17 ~ We are with Ian Hislop on this...
One of the most riveting moments ever in "Have I got News for You" was last night's genuinely passionate - and funny - tirade by Ian Hislop against Mr Blair's refusal to hold a referendum ("because he will lose") over the European Constitution. It drew loud applause from the audience.
The situation makes for some strange bedfellows - but readers may be interested by the poll run by The Sun:"EU THE JURY
http://europa.eu.int/futurum/documents/offtext/const051202_06_en.pdf
YOU can have your say and show Tony Blair what you really think by taking part in our phone poll.
Do you want a referendum before Tony Blair signs up to the European Constitution?
To vote YES call: 09063 670 551 -
To vote NO call: 09063 670 552
Calls cost no more than 10p. Tell your friends. Please forward this message on to your address book. Do not be one who says I can only do a little so I did nothing. You can make a difference."May 16 ~ "Frankly, if this Constitution goes through, we might just as well sell off Parliament to the Japanese and they can turn it into a hotel, because it won't have a job to do."
Nigel Farage of United Kindom Independence Party was on the Today Programme this morning. "We've got those 46 Articles. We know what it means. It is now clear that, if we sign up to the Constitution, the British Government will effectively be allowed to run our Secondary schools - and that's just about it!
....Look at the draft. Even areas like Justice and Home Affairs will come under the EU's competency. Public Health will come under the EU's competency. Small business, fishing, farming - every aspect of our national life will be under the direction of Brussels. .....It's absolutely clear in this Constitution that the European Union shall have the primacy of law over those vast areas of our national life. Frankly, if this Constitution goes through, we might just as well sell off Parliament to the Japanese and they can turn it into a hotel, because it won't have a job to do."May 15 ~ The government is due to announce by 7 June whether or not it will hold a referendum on the single European currency.
Boris Johnson in the Telegraph Our freedom costs less than a Mars bar "Giscard himself has called for a referendum on the question; Alain Jupp , the former French prime minister, has said it would be unthinkable not to consult the people on a question of this magnitude. We cannot take no for ananswer.We need to shame the Prime Minister, and show him that even if he doesn't care about our liberties and constitution, we do. That is why agreat magazine (whose name I will spare you) three weeks ago launched acampaign for an independent referendum. It would take organisation. I twould take money. The Electoral Reform Society says that to canvass all 40 million electors would cost about £ 20 million. But that is only 50p per head, as I say. And it would be worth it, just to show Tony that he cannot count on our apathy. And on this issue, he will neither receive nor deserve our trust."
"We need a referendum, even if Blair won't give us one."May 14 ~"While Clare Short has had some pertinent things to say about TB let's not forget that she is not snow white herself. Vision 2020 for instance...."
An emailer directs us to the article in today's Guardian by George Monbiot: Don't cry for Clare ".....Clare Short's approach to overseas development was more authoritarian than that of her Tory predecessor, Lynda Chalker. "Who represents the people of the world?"....
There is, in other words, no such thing as society, unrepresented by government. The people's organisations that seek to question governmental decisions - the trade unions, peasant syndicates, associations of shanty dwellers or indigenous people - are an irrelevant nuisance.... If a government, however corrupt and unrepresentative it may be, says it wants a particular kind of development, then the people are deemed to want it too...... Last year, a group of peasant farmers from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh travelled to Britain to ask the department for international development not to fund the state government's Vision 2020 programme. Its purpose was to replace small-scale farming with agro-industry. While a few very wealthy farmers, seed and chemical companies, some of them closely connected to the government, would make a great deal of money from the scheme, some 20 million people would be thrown out of work. A leaked memo from Short's own department revealed that the project suffered from "major failings", threatened the food security of the poor, and offered no plans for "providing alternative income for those displaced". A citizens' jury drawn from the social groups that the scheme is supposed to help rejected it unanimously. Yet Short ignored their concerns and instructed her department to give the state government £65m."May 13/14 ~"...the centralisation of power into the hands of the Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion."
The text of Clare Short's statement "In our first term, the problem was spin: endless announcements, exaggerations and manipulation of the media that undermined people's respect for the Government and trust in what we said. It was accompanied by a control-freak style that has created many of the problems of excessive bureaucracy and centralised targets that are undermining the success of our public sector reforms.
In the second term, the problem is the centralisation of power into the hands of the Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion. It is increasingly clear, I am afraid, that the Cabinet has become, in Bagehot's phrase, a dignified part of the constitution-joining the Privy Council. There is no real collective responsibility because there is no collective; just diktats in favour of increasingly badly thought through policy initiatives that come from on high..."May 13 ~ Clare Short raises very serious question of the legality of the war and the presidential style of Mr Blair
She accused the Prime Minister of "ruling by diktat", sidelining the Cabinet and centralising power in his hands and those of a few advisers who made decisions in private without consultation. Telegraph (external) "She accused Mr Blair and Mr Straw of secretly negotiating a Security Council resolution that breached promises she had given to MPs that the United Nations would have a proper role in creating a legitimate interim Iraqi authority and alleged that Britain and America had ignored advice from Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, and were acting illegally in post-war Iraq in seeking to make major economic and constitutional changes. She said the coalition did not have the authority to create an interim government; only the Security Council had that legal authority..." ........ Lord Goldsmith said he was satisfied that the Government had acted in accordance with international law and would continue to do so."12 May ~ "This is it: the moment that we have repeatedly been told would never come about. The EU is about to transform itself, de jure and de facto, into a single state."
The European Convention, which has been meeting this past year under the chairmanship of the former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, will issue its final text in June. That draft will be adopted by the EU's leaders next year, and a new polity will be born. Europe: the wolf is here Daily Telegraph editorial 12/5 2003May 12 ~ two official speakers, both clearly in favour of "regional governance", had already taken up over half an hour spouting carefully-prepared waffle which did nothing but waste time and crowd out genuine debate
- the region "shaping its future" (how on earth does a region "shape its future"?), "a better quality of life"(for whom?), "addressing the needs of all the community" (what, ALL of them? Are you God?).....any well-known and competent speakers among the opposition (notably Neil Herron) were scrupulously ignored by the "chair", however hard they tried to gain his (its?) attention . And on the very day the Newcastle Journal had reported that the auditor backed Herron's complaint against the NEA for unlawful use of ratepayers' money.." A real person's (Gillian Swanson) account of The North East Regional Assembly: Making a Difference? meeting on May 6th.
"....Jack Cunningham said that it was not true that the European Union was behind moves towards regional government (I had only said that it was behind thousands of unnecessary regulations). He then refused to allow any further discussion of this point from the floor, although a lot of people were anxious to speak. Dissenters in the audience were not happy about this suppression of any real debate, and were gradually gaining confidence. Perhaps this was why, soon afterwards, Cunningham decided to bring the proceedings to a close nearly a quarter of an hour early...."May 11/12 ~".. though we cannot compel people to go to church or maintain the empty churches of England, we can compel public servants to guard the beauty that they have inherited.
Ordnance Survey proposes to diminish that legacy, a priceless legacy of England: and I pray England shall have none of it." Rise up, England, and save the map churchesMay 11/ 12 ~ "This Constitution," reads Article 9, "shall have primacy over the law of the Member States."
Sunday Telegraph Leader ".....the areas in which Brussels is to have competence: foreign affairs, economic policy, trade, agriculture, fisheries, immigration and asylum, employment policy, industrial policy, research and development, defence, environmental protection, justice and home affairs, civil emergencies, even space exploration.
No wonder Tony Blair keeps talking about "schools'n'hospitals": under these plans, they are all he will have left..
....a friendly suggestion. If Labour will not grant a referendum, the Conservatives should organise one themselves, rather as Brian Souter did in Scotland on the question of Section 28. They should time it to coincide with the referendum in France, for nothing will so enrage British voters as the notion that the French are voting on our future. It will be expensive, to be sure. But what better way to focus people's attention on the enormity of what Labour is accepting? The tactic might even sweep them to power in time to stop the wretched thing coming into force." ."May 11 ~ "There should be an elected House. What we don't want to see is an appointed House with no safeguards against the abuse of prime ministerial patronage."
(Lord Strathclyde talking about the news that Tony Blair is to abolish the rights of 92 remaining hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, prompting allegations that he has reneged on pledges over reform of the Upper House.)
Telegraph(external link) "Half of the Labour Party don't want the hereditary peers replaced by New Labour's crony aristocracy, such as Lord Birt, Lord Bragg, and Lord Sainsbury, who is a donor to the Labour Party." The axeing of hereditaries would clear out 10 of the Tory front bench including Earl Howe, a shadow health spokesman and Viscount Bridgeman, a home affairs spokesman."
Warmwell, which has watched with relief and gratitude the House of Lords' attempts to slow or stop so much bad legislation from this government, feels a great sense of foreboding.May 11 ~ There are now whole departments in Whitehall - for example, those that run trade, industry, employment law, the environment, agriculture, and fisheries - that do almost nothing but administer policies and laws decided in Brussels by men such as Prodi, Chirac and Berlusconi.
Yet one of the European Union's most brilliant achievements is the extent to which it has taken over the governing of our country without it being noticed. The Daily Mail last week devoted the whole of its front page and two more inside to a huge "shock horror" expose of the "Blueprint for Tyranny" which it claimed is being drawn up in Brussels by the convention drafting an EU constitution, reducing Britain to just a small, comparatively powerless part of a United States of Europe. It was fascinating to work out just how much of the coup d'etat that the Daily Mail was warning of has in fact already come about. Booker's Notebook which also asks why are our regulatory agencies "so fanatical in their wish to outlaw harmless herbal remedies and vitamin supplements safely used by millions of people, when they seem happy to allow the continued sale of licensed drugs made by pharmaceutical companies which kill thousands of people every year?" and tells us that John Prescott's hopes that the North-East would lead the way in fulfilling his flagship policy to set up elected assemblies for the eight English "Euro-regions" have received a highly embarrassing rebuff.May 11 ~ "Within six months, Mr Blair plans to set his seal on the new European constitution which would strip Britain of independent control
over whole swathes of the economy, foreign policy, defence, social policy, health, energy, transport and virtually every aspect of free nationhood. Make no mistake. It would change our whole way of life. Once the deal is ratified there could be no going back either. Self-determination would be at an end. The real government of Britain would be in Brussels. Our only democratic influence would be in the European parliament, where we would occupy just 13% of the seats. Yet our Prime Minister "does not see the need" for a referendum though other European leaders show more respect for democracy. France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, Italy, Holland and Denmark are all planning to put the new EU constitution to the vote...." Opinion column of the Daily Mail which has mounted a campaign to force Mr Blair to carry out a referendum on the EU constitution. To take part in the campaign:)May 10 ~ "We've got Left and Right united in this noble cause of creating a democratic Europe answerable to its people,"
The Telegraph article today: Abolish EU says Tory
" The European Union should be abolished and replaced with a "Europe of Democracies" based on free trade rather than shared sovereignty, say opponents of the European constitution being drawn up in Brussels.
A group of members of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the body writing the constitution, plans to publish a minority report opposing most of the main proposals..."
(The Daily Mail, Britain's second leading newspaper in sales, has mounted a campaign to force Mr Blair to carry out a referendum on the EU constitution. To take part in the campaign:)May 9 ~ "No French or US cartographer would dare eliminate the boundaries of a local commune or township as this Government is doing..."
Simon Jenkins today on the news that Ordnance Survey wishes that no significance any longer attaches to a "place of worship" or to a parish boundary.".... Eighty thousand people serve on 9,500 councils in England and Wales. This number is expanding and embraces by far the largest "independent" element in British politics. Parishes may seem distant and medieval to Whitehall and its mapmakers. Yet the extent of their remit has far more meaning locally than Mr Prescott's precious parliamentary and European constituency boundaries.
Maps are always political. War, goes the saying, is "principally a question of maps". The vaults of the British Library are stuffed with examples of statesmen putting maps to devious purpose. No French or US cartographer would dare eliminate the boundaries of a local commune or township as this Government is doing. There would be riots.
This attempt to depoliticise provincial Britain by manipulating its maps is reminiscent of Stalinism. It would strip local people of their collective identity and inherited culture. I am told that the shires are rising, the pews are in turmoil and even the Ordnance Survey is debating whether to side with its public or with Mr Prescott."May 9 ~ "...yesterday's newspapers brought lurid headlines reflecting the fears of the Home Affairs Select Committee, which gave warning of "social unrest" if the influx of asylum seekers was not stemmed.
So Beverley Hughes, the Home Office minister whose knee jerks reflexively in salute to the latest negative headline, was quick to change the subject. Suddenly the smart passport to guard against terrorism was put on the back burner; what was really needed, she told the committee yesterday, was a national identity card to fend off asylum seekers. "It would make a significant difference in the sense that it is the only thing really that can help us to be rigorous about illegal working," she said.
By casting the problems of asylum in terms of illegal working, Ms Hughes is pandering to the basest popular notion that "they're after our jobs", a sentiment that would not be out of place at a BNP rally in Burnley..." Free Country - TelegraphMay 6 ~ Anti-terror drive poses risk to civil liberties, says EU study
Stephen Castle in the Independent "Civil liberties across Europe are under threat from electronic surveillance, under-cover operations and tough anti-terror laws put in place after the 11 September terror attacks, an EU report by independent experts alleges. The document, which singles out the United Kingdom in several areas, criticises the rush to implement anti-terrorism legislation and argues that it might not be proportionate to the threat. Compiled by experts in all member states, the report says anti-terrorist measures can "result in interference with private life or with the secrecy of communications, due to increased possibilities of using undercover agents", restrict the rights of defendants, and lead to "exceptional forms of detention".
It also says specifically that legislation giving the British Government the right to extend arrest and detention powers over foreign nationals might be inconsistent with the UK's international obligations. ...... The report is also concerned at the imprecise definition of terrorist offences, used to justify "special methods of inquiry" resulting in a "major interference in private life". And the dossier expresses deep concern over increased collaboration with America on security issues. "There are doubts at this time as to whether the protection offered by the US is adequate." ....." the response of EU governments has been to propose measures that place the population, or sections of it, under wholesale surveillance." .......See the Independent article and also theMay 6 ~ articles in today's Telegraph about biometric recognition in travel documentation
"...Britain has already carried out trials of the technology, checking details of frequent travellers between the UK and US against a database, and there are plans to launch passports carrying facial recognition data such as the distance between points on the face. The UK Passport Agency is taking forward work on the inclusion of a biometric chip in passports by 2004-05. Today's talks were also set to deal with the use and exchange of DNA samples of suspected criminals, joint efforts to combat international terror groups, the protection of computer networks, child pornography and freezing criminals' assets."
The timely EU report by the team of independent experts (above) is rightly "concerned at the imprecise definition of terrorist offences" and right too to express "deep concern over increased collaboration with America on security issues." In through the backdoor comes more and more legislation- all in the name of security - and out of the window fly our hard won liberties. They will not return.May 4 ~ Prescott puts paid to parish councils
Christopher Booker's Notebook "Dr John Bishop, a 78-year-old former deputy director of the Atomic Energy Authority, who has spent his 20 years of retirement in the tiny village of Brockhampton, near Hereford, is the sort of retired resident any English village might welcome. He has thrown himself into every kind of voluntary activity, from raising money for lifeboats to serving on the village hall committee. ....
Dr Bishop is no longer on the five-member council... Like thousands of other parish councillors across the country, they regarded as unnecessarily intrusive the obligation publicly to register any kind of "interest" that might theoretically influence their council duties, including all shareholdings and any gift, including a meal, worth more than £25. Dr Bishop's plight is even worse. He was recently summoned to Leominster, 20 miles away, where he was questioned for two hours by two "Ethical Standards Officers" from a body known as the Standards Board for England, on two charges of "misconduct"......(read in full) "..Nobody knows how many members of England's 10,000 town and parish councils were similarly disbarred from standing again last Thursday. The Standards Board website lists only one such councillor. But the total certainly runs into thousands. Some councils have been forced to disband altogether. So much paperwork has been generated by this new bureaucratic monster that a number of councils have had to take on paid clerks, at salaries greater than their existing budgets. The Standards Board proclaims as its motto "Confidence in Local Democracy". As they see how Mr Prescott's new body is asserting its presence, the thoughts of villagers may well stray to the writings of the late George Orwell. (Booker's Notebook in full))April 30 ~ Police investigate door-to-door collection of postal votes
Vikram Dodd in today's Guardian "Police are investigating the collection of postal votes by Labour party activists in Leicester, including the cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt, the Guardian has learned. In signed statements of complaint, voters say the trade and industry secretary joined two councillors from a Leicester ward, who were asking voters to hand over the council election ballots last Wednesday. Politicians should not handle postal votes according to the electoral commission - although there is no law preventing them from doing so. ..." MoreApril 29 ~ Death of the secret ballot
"Postal voting does not revitalise interest in elections - but it does encourage electoral fraud.." George Monbiot in the Guardian today
" ......The emerging rule of British politics appears to be that the bigger the issues at stake, the smaller the choice. The Liberal Democrats' pathetic capitulation ensures that no major party in England now represents the people who may have wished to use their vote to protest against the war with Iraq. The smaller parties, in most constituencies, are locked, by first-past-the-post elections and the lack of state funding, into electoral insignificance.
The second is a question seldom asked of a British election: will it be free and fair? While British people may regard the process of choosing between almost identical candidates as unspeakably dull, we retain an affecting faith in its deportment. After all, we invented the idea, and we send election monitors all over the world to ensure that lesser beings are implementing it properly. Our complacency is beginning to look ill-founded. ...."April 28 ~ The NHS has 210,000 managerial and clerical staff....it has only 199,000 beds.
Telegraph today on bureaucrats and the state of Britain".. some bureaucrats are now so unproductive, they can't even waste money properly.."
"...bureaucracy is one of the absurd features of 21st-century Britain. We have so many bureaucrats, nobody can count them. Bureaucracy is not so much a growth industry as a virus, stifling initiative and suffocating creativity. It has become the chosen profession of the nosy-parker and the second-rater, elevating timidity, form-filling and bossiness above enterprise and endeavour....bureaucracy is a hidden cost. The outputs of state organisations such as the NHS and the state schools are free at the point of use. We have to rely on the likes of Mr Seaton, burrowing through the Government's accounts, to find the true cost of the invisible disease....April 23 ~ 162 Arrests at Faslane Naval Base
162 people were arrested yesterday during a blockade of Faslane naval base on the Clyde, home to Britain's Trident nuclear weapon system.
"Three of Britain's four Trident submarines are currently based at Faslane. Each of them carries 48 nuclear warheads every one of which is 8 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 people and destroyed a city. In the last year UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon has three times threatened to use Trident against Iraq. Among the 500 or so present at today's blockade were Scottish party leaders John Swinney, Robin Harper and Tommy Sheridan. Among those arrested were former CND chair Bruce Kent, two Church of Scotland ministers ..." See "Trident Ploughshares" siteApril 20 ~ Supposed benefits of EU
Booker's Notebook (external link)
"....Fresh from its triumphant mis-reporting of the Iraq war, the BBC last week trumpeted the signing of the treaty admitting 10 new members to the European Union as the moment when Europe was "reunited" in the name of "freedom and democracy". (This "reunion" bit is always a puzzle, since the previous times when Europe could be said to be "united" were under those champions of freedom and democracy, Napoleon and Hitler.)
Evidence is mounting, however, that this latest EU "enlargement" may turn out to be another case of "they now ring the bells but they will soon wring their hands". The Maltese, who last week confirmed their wish to join by re-electing their pro-EU Nationalist government, were subject to a massive, largely EU-funded propaganda campaign, centred on the claim that they would be receiving 30 million Maltese lira (£50 million) a year from their Brussels Big Brother. Closer study shows that, when all costs of membership are added in, including the need to employ 3,000 officials, and compensation for farmers and fishermen likely to be put out of business, Malta will end up paying out £82 million a year to get back that £50 million in supposed benefits...."April 18 ~ new technology that is strengthening the hand of companies that want to spy on their customers.
"...The generic name for the system is RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags are minuscule microchips, smaller than a grain of sand, that can be sewn in to clothing or attached to almost any object. The chips respond to a radio signal by transmitting back their own unique ID code, allowing the controller of the chip to know precisely where the object is. Retailers love the technology, for it greatly assists in inventory control and security. But increasingly companies are looking ahead to more ambitious applications that will provide information about consumers long after they have left the shop." Telegraph's "Free Country" (external link)April 15 ~ ... the oil, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries and real estate developers now wield tremendous influence with this (US) government.
See Bush Fighting 'Secret War' On Green Laws - Kennedy by Stephen Leahy IPSNews.net
There is an imbalance of power when a large multinational corporation comes into a very poor country and makes behind-the-doors sweetheart deals with government officials that end up enriching a few people while impoverishing an entire nation. This is the worst face of globalisation. ...
....President Bush has a secret war against the environment. It is a stealth attack. He's now eviscerating America's environmental laws. He has 100 proposed rollbacks of environmental regulations that even if just a portion go through, by this time next year we will have no federal environmental laws..
That's not an exaggeration. These laws are being passed below the radar screen. They're being attached to large budget bills that must be passed so there's no public debate in Congress or elsewhere.
If you talk to the American people - and all the polling shows this - around 75 percent, Democrats and Republicans alike, support stronger environmental laws. Only seven percent say we need the laws weakened.
But it's those seven percent that have influence with this administration. Those are the people from the oil, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries and real estate developers who now wield tremendous influence with this government. President Bush is the worst environmental president in the past 100 years."April 13 ~ 'Democracy' defies the people
Booker's Notebook
Alas, it seems that the only people who will publicly take an interest in the battle over John Prescott's bid to give elected assemblies to England's "Euro-regions" are the House of Lords and myself. This is a shame, since the struggle grows more confused by the day.
Last week Lord Waddington, a former home secretary, raised in the House the odd way that the North-West Assembly had responded to a QC's opinion given to Lancashire county council. The QC had advised that it was unlawful for ratepayers' money to be spent on a political campaign to establish an elected assembly.
The council was told in return that the Assembly had passed a resolution that "we, the North-West Assembly, declare our intention to become an elected Regional government", and that it was actively campaigning for a referendum to bring this about. In other words, we don't give a fig for any QC's opinion, and if you want to take us to law we shall be happy to spend even more ratepayers' money defending our position...."April 13 ~".. a grave suspicion that public money from council tax payers has been used to support one side of the argument " said Lord Stoddart of Swindon
See extract from Lords Hansard (external link), April 8thLord Waddington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, was right to draw attention to what is happening in the North East. However, jiggery-pokery is also being practised in the North West. I had occasion earlier to draw attention to a letter addressed by the chief executive of the North West Regional Assembly to Lancashire County Council. The council had told the assembly that it had reason to believe that money that it had given the assembly was being wrongly spent on campaigning. The assembly had the effrontery to write back to the council, admitting that it had passed a resolution, saying,
"we, the North West Regional Assembly declare our intention to become an elected Regional Government",
and had immediately afterwards issued a press release saying that it was campaigning,"for a referendum in the Region at the earliest opportunity to give people in the North West their say on whether they want directly elected Regional Government".
Rather unconvincingly, when it was pointed out to the assembly that if it was so campaigning it would be acting illegally, the assembly tried to go back on what it had said in the press release. That was hardly convincing, given the plain wording of the press release. Obviously, therefore, we need to be very watchful. We must learn from that unfortunate experience. .." ..."April 13 ~ "...the Government would not under any circumstances use money to favour one side over another .."
In his reply to Lord Waddington (above)Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: ...... I should respond to the interventions made by the noble Lords, Lord Waddington and Lord Stoddart of Swindon. The amendment relates to Clause 7, which is solely about the role of the Electoral Commission. It has nothing to do with the activities of other bodies. During proceedings on the Bill, both in Committee and on Report, we have heard many stories about the activities of the North East and of the North West, but, so far, there is no evidence in that respect. However, I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that the Government would not under any circumstances use money to favour one side over another .
April 12/14 ~ Sir Tom Blundell, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, condemns ministerial efforts to have an independent scientific review of GM technology as 'artificial'.
Observer "... ... He warns that this will be completed before a public debate has even started. ..... In a strongly-worded letter to Professor David King, the government's chief scientific adviser who is heading the scientific review, Blundell, professor of biochemistry at Cambridge University, casts doubt on the whole process.
'The national public debate is only just about to start and will hold its conferences, debates and meetings around the country between May and July and is not due to report until the autumn,' .... Blundell concludes: 'Without a clearer mechanism and better prospects for a fully integrated process, this opportunity will be wasted and an artificial result will be all that is achieved.'
.. farm trials - designed to discover whether GM crops affect the environment - has been delayed, and potentially controversial findings cannot now be discussed in the debate. The Science Review has been attacked as too pro-GM. At least a third of its 25 experts have strong pro-GM views, including consultants to a biotech firm owned by Science Minister Lord Sainsbury, a major Labour Party donor. But it is the criticism of the Royal Commission chairman that is likely to embarrass Ministers most. .."April 12 ~ " those who choose to stay outside the American cage will need to unite, however loosely, for their own protection. They will have to keep their wits about them."
Matthew Parris in today's Times ".....Yesterday the leaders of Russia, Germany and France met in St Petersburg to talk about the future. They carried with them worries about America shared by many other nations, large and small: Canada, China, New Zealand, Sweden, India, South Africa ... I could make a list that included most of the rest of the world. That meeting, and others to come, could mark the beginnings of some sense of commonality between those civilised nations that have not chosen to fly with the great eagle, and some sense of the need for collective action in clipping its wings. To call this "The US versus the Rest of the World" oversimplifies, but conveys the spirit. To put it more modestly, those nations that do not choose to take Washington's whip are going to need to coordinate their positions and keep in touch. The balance of power needs rebalancing. For want of a better term, I shall call the grouping of which Russia, Germany and France now form a putative core, the Rest of the World.
For Iraq may not be the last American adventure...."April 8 ~"The Ministry of Defence yesterday admitted it had ignored internal rules that could have saved the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds.."
"..when it awarded the contract to refit Britain's Trident nuclear submarines to Devonport Management Limited. Giving evidence to MPs, the MoD's top civil servant Sir Kevin Tebbit ....said that the rule "must have slipped through my fingers".
Sir Kevin also admitted that the Government had been forced to abandon the prospect of legal action against DML when costs spiralled out of control because of the danger it would have "broken" the Plymouth company, threatening the vital work to keep Britain's independent nuclear deterrent afloat.
.....DML is owned by the American defence giant Halliburton
Sir Kevin's evidence came as the Commons Public Accounts Committee launched an inquiry into why the cost of building facilities at Devonport to refit the Trident fleet had risen from an original bid of £237 million to almost £1 billion. Alan Williams, the deputy chairman of the committee, said the decision to award a contract to DML that was 28 times over the limit suggested by MoD rules, had left the Government "massively exposed" to extra costs when things went wrong. ...... Anthony Pryor, executive chairman of DML, defended the handling of the project...." Western Morning NewsApril 8 ~".. a textbook example of bad government"
Sue Cameron in yesterday's Financial Times Advisers have corroded trust in Whitehall
Extract:"... political advisers are there generally because of who they know.
... Over the past six years it has sometimes seemed like amateur night in Whitehall as party political advisers, inexperienced in government, have put aspirations before realistic programmes and slogans before solid planning. The culture of spin has not been limited to presentation; it has infected the policymaking process itself.
The results have been apparent in the handling of the foot-and-mouth epidemic - surely a textbook example of bad government - and in the government's failure to convince the public that it has the vision and the competence to reform any of the public services..... Whitehall can bungle with the best of them and often has. But at least senior officials recognise the need to think things through and to look further ahead than tomorrow morning's headlines.
.... Those who believe Tony Blair will consider sacking some of his political advisers or neutering the powers of people such as Alastair Campbell, his chief spinner, may need a reality check. ..."April 8 ~ "The small trader in Swindon wants the same freedoms as the shopkeeper of Umm Qasr;
the schoolteacher or doctor in Basildon should be respected as much as the professionals of Basra. As the proverb implies, you can probably kill a cat by choking it with cream. We should be aware that there is more than one kind of tyranny. ..." Libby Purves today in the Times under the headline: Why should the Iraqis trust Blair if we can't?April 8 ~ Friends of the Earth has condemned Food Standards Agency for "biased propaganda"
Western Morning News article (external link) Outrage at verdict on GM products "... The Food Standards Agency has come under fire from Westcountry campaigners after a jury in a debate shown on the Internet decided yesterday that genetically modified products should be available to buy in the United Kingdom..... "These people were asked whether they agreed to have GM products in the UK. The result of the debate is no surprise given the question asked. The Food Standards Agency has been hell-bent on promoting GM food, but despite this, a significant proportion of the jury voted against. "If the jury had been asked whether they thought GM food should be grown in our countryside we are confident they would have said no. If they had been asked if they wanted GM food labelled, we are confident they would have said yes."....
April 8 ~ Scottish National Heritage, who began killing the hedgehogs of Uist last night,
has also now started to claim that it has the backing of all the Scottish political parties. However, when UHR contacted their head offices this morning (April 7 ), the key political parties were astonished to learn of this claim. (See press release from Advocates for Animals, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Hessilhead Animal Rescue Centre, International Animal Rescue, the Mammals Society and St Tiggywinkles) "....comments like those made today by SNH spokesperson, George Anderson, that they are "raring to go" with the killing will dismay a very large section of the Scottish public who have no wish to be associated with this mindless slaughter of wildlife."April 7 ~ "..the Home Secretary accused me of being a man looking for a cause. Sorry, wrong again. As long as David Blunkett is Home Secretary, I'll always have a cause. .."
Bill Morris, Secretary General of the Transport and General Workers Union wrote in yesterday's Observer. (external link)
"...The proposal last week to snatch back British passports and deport those the Home Secretary doesn't like, represents the latest installment of the continuous assaults on those who seek refuge here. ... The Home Secretary will, of course, point to the radical cleric from the Finsbury Park mosque who will have the honour of being the first to be thrown out under David's law, but do we have to get rid of the barrel for the sake of one bad apple? ........ Frankly, we cannot go around the world pushing a policy of displacement and moral subcontracting. So rather than eye up Albania or the Ukraine as anterooms for the dispossessed, we should be bringing to bear the solutions failing nations need to provide their people with a life free from fear. The West has the resources and skills to tackle the reasons people leave the communities they love to seek a better life. What is needed now is the political will. Perhaps I should not hold my breath. Perhaps I should keep my bag packed in case the knock comes at my door to reclaim my British passport if the Home Secretary decides that this article is against the national interest."April 6 ~ "council officials had no understanding of the area and had not done their homework"
Prescott endorses plan to kill a community (Booker's Notebook)
"Prince Charles is personally following a remarkable battle being waged by a happily-integrated English and Asian community in a Lancashire mill town against its destruction by a huge council "renewal plan". This would result in the demolition of 400 terrace houses and their replacement by "yuppie" homes which none of the residents could afford.
Although last year a ministry inspector came down firmly in support of the residents, backed by an impressive phalanx of conservation bodies, including the Prince's Foundation, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, ordered the inquiry to be re-opened because the inspector had not come up with the findings that he and Pendle council wanted...... the council's claim that there was no demand for houses in the Whitefield area was comprehensively demolished by the residents and their expert witnesses, who showed that council officials had no understanding of the area and had not done their homework...."April 6 ~ As Iain Duncan Smith tries to wriggle out of his bafflingly maladroit efforts to keep the explosive issue of "Europe" under wraps, the politics of the next 18 months could be very interesting.
Christopher Booker's Notebook todayApril 5 ~ "The collusion between the High Court and the government really needs a public airing"
Janet Hughes writes today about further bizarre goings on in connection with DEFRA's demands for £17,000 costs. It was Defra's legal department that insisted, following Lord Justice Latham's ruling, that Miss Hughes must pay the ministry's costs, even though it was not against Defra she had brought her case. (See article by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph on February 2.
"... They are now informing me that it is possible to amend the court order so that it orders me to pay Defra's costs. The court officials are lying about what they have said to me on the telephone. One official, as I believe I mentioned to you, has told me they have no record of the writ having been issued and that a copy was sent to the Court at a later date. Now he is denying saying such a thing "...." I was telephoned the other day by one of the Sheriff's Officers for Powys and Glamorgan, and his rudeness quite took me aback. He informed me of the White Paper (external link to Lord Chancellor's Dept website) , which I already knew about, and said that I would be able to see "where the government is going on this". It felt like a veiled threat that they would be able to return and force entry to our home."
The unfolding events of this strange and, as we are not alone in thinking, deplorable case can be read here.April 4 ~ "Total neglect greeted this week's gargantuan forecast of the State of the Countryside, 2020..."
The State of the Countryside, 2020, (external link)"..from the government Countryside Agency. The report is a mess, a consultants' mish-mash of Blairite clichés, glib scenarios and top-down projections. It confuses prediction and prescription and is full of politically correct babble about social sustainability and globalisation. It reads like an undergraduate spoof of a "Middle Way" tract of the early 1990s. But at least it addresses a topic of importance. ..
...Terror of being thought pro-rich or anti-growth has neutered the supposed defenders of the countryside. The greens take money for wind turbines. Local lobbies concede planning permissions for "key-worker housing". Nobody dares defend rural beauty for its own sake. All take refuge in such weasel words as sustainable, affordable and holistic, code for "we surrender". At this rate it is goodbye countryside Britain .... ." Simon Jenkins in the TimesApril 4 ~ we must all agree to "forgo some of our personal sovereignty and to combine our individualism in order to achieve a particular collective goal"
Telegraph (external link) Stephen Robinson on Blunkett in the US - ".... Sniffing the post-September 11 breeze, Mr Blunkett has presented himself to Americans as the voice of common sense against feeble folk at home who won't accept the state knows best. First he attacked "liberal and progressive" journalists in Baghdad for toeing the Iraqi line, a pointless fight to pick, given that the war seems to be going well for the allies.
Then Mr Blunkett lectured New Yorkers on the necessity of engaging in "collective governance". To achieve this happy state, he said we must all agree to "forgo some of our personal sovereignty and to combine our individualism in order to achieve a particular collective goal". He told Americans he was working to make the British courts more responsive to "consumer demands", though he didn't say if he had criminals or victims in mind as consumers of the justice system. He also articulated a new freedom "to be involved in formal politics", by which he presumably means voting.
It is perfectly harmless for Mr Blunkett to go on his travels to propound his views on individual liberty and the prerogatives of the state, but it is a bit cheeky of him to suggest to Americans that his rhetoric is matched by his action. Our preparations for a biological or chemical terrorist attack are feeble compared with those in America. Americans have a department of Homeland Security; we have security policy divided between numerous departments, including the Home Office, Defence, Transport and Health. As he ridicules our traditional freedoms, Mr Blunkett does not make us feel any more secure, collectively or individually."April 4 ~ Mr Blunkett: reactionary, illiberal and wrong
Independent (external link)"Tony Blair's authoritarian attack dog has let himself down again. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has criticised "those who are of a progressive and liberal bent" for treating Allied and Iraqi propaganda as if they were "moral equivalents". ........... If the Home Secretary was again trying to ingratiate himself with the Daily Mail, that newspaper's man in Baghdad was not impressed. "I find it rather offensive," Ross Benson said yesterday.
He is not the only one. Most British people are media-literate enough to understand the biases on information coming from this war zone and to make their own judgements. And if an enterprising small business started to produce badges saying "Progressive and liberal", we suspect many Independent readers would wear them with pride."April 1 ~ Sainsbury gives another £2.5m to Labour bringing his contributions to the party since 1999 to £8.5m. ......
Mark Seddon, a member of the party's national executive, said the donation was a kind of "corruption" of the political process and urged the party to return the billionaire's gift. In a statement, Lord Sainsbury said: "In our democracy political parties have to raise funds to campaign and put their policies to the electorate. "As a proud supporter of the Labour Party I am happy to be in a position where I can make a contribution to its ongoing work." However, Mr Seddon. told Radio 4's Today programme: "In any other country I think a government minister donating such vast amounts of money and effectively buying a political party would be seen for what it is, a form of corruption of the political process. . This was a criticism of the Conservatives when they were in government and increasingly people are looking in at the political parties and saying 'Why don't they have more members?'" Mr Seddon said accepting the money was "quite extraordinary" when the party was finding it difficult to get trade union funding. "It should be sent back straight away," he added.
Conservative chairman Theresa May said Lord Sainsbury's position as a minister appointed by Tony Blair and whose decisions could have commercial consequences raised real questions about the gift. ....... The Labour party has a £6m overdraft and a £4.5m mortgage on its London headquarters. (See BBC report and Independent) From April 14 2002 on warmwell
April 14 ~ Dr David Barling, of the Centre for Food Policy at Thames Valley University, has studied the way government grants are awarded for science..."
Extract from Observer today under the headline: Sainsbury's pet GM project hits grants jackpot "MPs query 300 per cent rise for laboratory since Labour donor became a Minister Lord Sainsbury, the billionaire Science Minister and the Labour Party's biggest donor, has overseen a massive 300 per cent increase in his department's funding for the Sainsbury Laboratory which he helped to found" (warmell note: We have noticed David Barling's concerns about GM safety and scientific funding before. e.g.http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/health_consumer/library/pub/cv/cv994/cv994-02_en.html)
"Intensive agricultural production in Europe has accelerated biodiversity loss in the countryside over recent decades. The current commercial applications of GM crops seem to reflect a continuation of these trends, despite rhetoric that the applications of GM to agriculture would decrease chemical use and lead to greater sustainability." (In this article he says,) 'While vast sums are channelled into GM technology through institutes like the Sainsbury Laboratory, a much smaller amount is put into studying issues like food safety.'March 30 ~ Much of Britain's metal finishing business will go abroad; and once again our officials will think they have done their duty by the nation.
Christopher Booker today writes about the fate of the metal-plating industry as a result of the "gold-plating" of a EU pollution directive, when " not even the normally sheep-like MEPs could agree a common line over Iraq. Of six resolutions proposed by each of the groups in the Brussels Parliament, a publication called Press Watch "which is regularly recycled by gullible newspapers such as The Guardian" and "A recruitment advertisement for the Meat Hygiene Service, part of Sir John Krebs's Food Standards Agency, boasts that lucky applicants will become part of the team of "2,250 officials" whose job is to enforce EU hygiene regulations on Britain's "1,300 licensed meat premises"......March 30 ~ Householders to be fined for not recycling rubbish
Telegraph(external link) "Ministers have approved plans to fine householders more than £500 a year if they do not prove that they are recycling enough of their rubbish. The proposals have been agreed after John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, has dropped his opposition to what some ministers have dubbed the "poll tax on rubbish". ....... some ministers are still wary of opposition to the plan, which comes in a week that will see householders hit by two sets of tax rises: the "double whammy" of national insurance increases and higher council taxes. The one per cent rise in NI and the freezing of allowances will take effect next week and will cost the average wage earner on an annual salary of £22,000 more than £200 extra a year. Householders, meanwhile, face average council tax bill rises of around 13 per cent, with some local authorities hiking rates by as much as 45 per cent. The increase in council taxes has led to a nationwide campaign of defiance by householders who are refusing to pay the increases and vowing to go to jail if necessary. Ministers will seek to limit the political fall-out from the rubbish tax by presenting the new levy as a discount that rewards good behaviour. ........ The proposal was first raised in a Downing Street policy paper last year but was initially shelved amid concerns at the growing burden of taxation on middle England."March 27 ~ Police to keep DNA files of innocent
Telegraph (external link) "Police powers to retain DNA samples and fingerprints taken from innocent people are to be extended, the Home Office announced yesterday. For the first time, they will be able to test people they arrest but do not charge and keep the DNA and the prints indefinitely. The move - which will add thousands of samples each year to a growing national database - was condemned by civil liberties campaigners last night. But the Government and police said the additional power was needed to verify the identities of suspects and to ensure that wanted criminals arrested for another offence cannot evade capture. Ministers have tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill now before parliament that will mark the second significant extension of police powers in two years."March 27 ~ Bailiffs allowed to break into homes
Telegraph (external link) Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor "Licensed enforcement agents will be authorised to break into people's homes and seize property from debtors under new Government plans announced yesterday. They will also be given powers of arrest. A White Paper from the Lord Chancellor's Department proposes improved methods of recovering civil debts and stricter controls on enforcement agents.
Under a case decided 400 years ago, an Englishman's home is "his castle and fortress". Bailiffs have been unable to gain access to homes if the householder has refused to let them in, except in very limited circumstances. But the White Paper says that "forcible entry in domestic premises will be permitted" with prior judicial authority. "We seek to establish the principle that refusing to open a door or a gate will not stop legitimate enforcement action, nor should superior technology to protect the entrance to a property prevent enforcement from taking place. "For example, currently there is little scope for entering private homes that are protected by video cameras and electronic gates."
Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, believes that "the seizure and sale of a debtor's goods to settle a judgment debt may always be necessary". But, he adds, this should be done in a reformed and regulated system. Enforcement agents will have to be licensed and those who operate without a licence will face imprisonment. Licences will allow enforcement agents to "arrest an offender or a debtor under an order of the court and to take him or her into custody". Agents will also be licensed to take possession of land and to apply for a partial "data disclosure order" to assist with enforcement. ..... a Bill might go through the Lords' fast-track procedure."March 25 ~ Peace protesters, some Quakers, many middle-aged or older, were stopped, searched and forced to return to London on Saturday
(One of several reports of this incident can be found on the IndyMedia website) "In a most worrying development, three coaches carrying protesters from London, were turned away from the protest and escorted back to the city, with several police forces carrying out escort duties from region to region. Amongst the passengers was the 64-year old aunt of one of those killed in New York on 11 September 2001. On arrival in London a number of police vehicles were waiting at Euston.
This is yet another restriction on the right to protest at Fairford. Over the past few weeks hundreds of people have been stopped and searched in the vicinity on the base by police using powers under the 2000 Terrorism Act.
Protesters are also extremely concerned at notices fixed to the fence at Fairford stating the "the use of deadly force is authorised", and are calling for questions to be asked in the House of Commons, about who has authorised this and in what circumstances such force might be used and by whom."March 24 ~ The National Union of Journalists in the UK has issued a news release challenging Tindle to a debate on free speech "and all those other rights which our forefathers fought to establish and which Sir Ray Tindle seeks to demolish at the stroke of a pen"
See NUJ website (external link) and English regional newspapers start war censorshipSir Ray Tindle, the editor in chief of over 100 weekly newspapers across Britain has informed all his editors that they can no longer report any anti-war stories in their newspapers. Sir Ray, who has been knighted for his services to the newspaper industry, wrote: "Everyone knows that Tindle family newspapers have no political bias. Our columns are free. When British troops come under fire, however, as now seems probable, I ask you to ensure that nothing appears in the columns if your newspapers which attacks the decision to conduct the war in which those men are involved, nor, of course, anything which attacks the troops themselves". "I ask it", wrote Tindle, "not just as a proprietor of the newspapers, but as someone who served as a British soldier from 1944 to 1947 in the Far East". .
....The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has "condemned this act of overt censorship at a time when the UK needs open debate about this controversial issue. It is an example of the invidious power that proprietors have over the content of the press. Barry White, National Officer for the CPBF comments: "Sir Ray Tindle has denied to the readers of his 130 titles access to vital information needed to understand the war".March 23 ~ Elliot Morley, has turned Newlyn into "a police state".
Booker's Notebook "Cornish fishermen are up in arms over what seems to be a flagrant example of double standards, following draconian restrictions on cod-fishing imposed by Brussels to conserve supposedly vanishing cod stocks.
The seas around Cornwall are swarming with more cod than fishermen can remember for 30 years. Whenever a net is put down it comes up brimming with them. But so minuscule are their quotas that Cornish boats must dump hundreds of tonnes of cod dead back into the sea.
They can do nothing else because of the "reign of terror" by which the regulations are being enforced. In the words of the local fishermen's leader, Phil Trebilcock, the district's senior fisheries official, Colin George, backed by the fisheries minister, Elliot Morley, has turned Newlyn into "a police state".
Twelve boats have already had their licences suspended. When another skipper, Jonathan Turtle, suggested that a catch of £3,000-worth of cod that he and his crew could not avoid netting should be sold for Comic Relief, he was told that they must be chucked back.
What enrages the Newlyn fishermen even more, however, is the sight of a dozen French trawlers "filling their boots" with cod in the same Cornish waters and taking them back home without fear of reprisal, where they are openly advertised for sale. But no doubt Mr Morley is proud to think he and his officials are doing their bit for "conservation" by ensuring that hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of fish are being destroyed, along with the livelihoods of the Cornish fishermen."March 23 ~ Promoting an elected assembly "would be overtly political"
"..the North-East Assembly's director, Stephen Barber, has assured Sunderland council that no ratepayers' money is being used to fund its promotion of an elected assembly. This money comes from central government. But, as Neil Herron of the North-East Against A Regional Assembly has now explained to Sunderland, last July the local government minister, Nick Raynsford, specifically ruled that government funding must not be used for this purpose. Promoting an elected assembly, Mr Raynsford wrote, "would be overtly political and is thus expressly excluded by the funding agreement". It looks like game, set and match to Mr Herron." Booker's NotebookMarch 23 ~"I smelt a rat" - Pharmaceutical cover-up
From Booker's notebook this week.(Sunday Telegraph) "For several years Dr Karran sought answers - from Bayer, from the MCA and from the hospital - to what should have been simple questions, but he met only obfuscation. He even visited Germany to raise the issue before 4,000 Bayer shareholders at their annual meeting. Eventually he went to his MP, Sandra Gidley, whose experience as a pharmacist qualified her better than most to understand the problem. But, she told the Commons, her own repeated letters to Bayer and the MCA met such "a complete wall of silence" that, as she put it: "I smelt a rat."
As Mrs Gidley explained, there seems to be clear evidence of a complete failure of the system designed to protect patients. Not only were lives endangered; the false information given patients before their operations was in specific breach of their human rights. And the refusal of David Lammy, a health minister, to answer any of her questions raises another, yet wider question: why has our system now become so unaccountable that a minister cannot tell the truth to the House of Commons, even when the implications for public safety are as grave as those revealed by Dr Karran?..."March 21 ~ If news is the first casualty of war, the first victor is government.
writes Simon Jenkins in the Times today. "It is ironic that every war fought by Britain in the past century, justly in the cause of freedom, has led directly to a curtailment of freedom in favour of state control. The history of war runs in tandem with that of higher taxes, greater regulation and more government. ..."March 20 ~ John Prescott to use the war to end fire dispute
This headline in the Guardian was later changed to Prescott threatens to force fire deal (external link) "John Prescott told MPs today that he will introduce an emergency law allowing him to impose a pay settlement on the fire service and direct its operations. The deputy prime minister described it as "unacceptable" that 19,000 members of the armed forces had to be held back from military duties to provide emergency cover because of the continuing fire dispute.....A resolution calling for the latest offer to be rejected in the strongest possible terms was overwhelmingly passed by the delegates.
The proposed deal will now be discussed by firefighters across the country over the next fortnight. The national conference will then be held to decide whether to accept it or continue with a campaign of industrial action.
Mr Prescott's move today is clearly aimed at pre-empting that decision."
From John Prescott's statement in the House of Commons: "I am therefore giving notice today that I will introduce and publish a new two clause Fire Services Bill tomorrow. The Bill will give me the power to impose terms and conditions within the Fire Service and direct the use of Fire Service assets and facilities. I will start immediate discussions through the usual channels about how quickly we can make progress on this Bill...."March 19 ~ Blunkett defies appeal ruling on asylum benefits
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor Telegraph (external link)
"Asylum seekers who fail to apply when they arrive in the country or soon after will continue to be denied food and shelter despite a defeat for the Government in the Court of Appeal yesterday. Three judges, led by Lord Phillips, the Master of the Rolls, upheld a High Court ruling that new benefit restrictions have "serious defects" and have been applied unfairly. But David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said the procedures had been redrawn to meet the criticism - even though he had previously indicated that to do so would make them "unworkable"...."March 19 ~ Wiretapping Found at French, German EU Offices
(Reuters) -"Telephone tapping systems have been found at offices used by France and Germany in the building where European Union leaders are due to hold a summit from Thursday, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday. He said other delegations were also affected at the EU Council Justus Lipsius building and it was not known who was behind the espionage. ..... The French newspaper Le Figaro accused the United States of being behind the wiretapping, but Marro said: "We do not know who is behind it. I don't know who was on the other end of the line." ......"March 19 ~ Tory peers move to block snoopers' bill
The Guardian yesterday by Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
"Conservative peers are considering blocking a plan to give more government agencies access to sensitive communications data. Lord Strathcylde, the Tory leader in the Lords, is prepared to obstruct government secondary legislation to stop what is seen as an infringe ment of civil liberties. The government plans that every local authority and a number of other public bodies and quangos will have access to phone, email and internet data, though not the content of these communications.
At present only the police, MI5, MI6, the government listening post GCHQ, customs and excise, and the Inland Revenue have access.
Under the plan, 24 government agencies and hundreds of local government officials are to be given powers to demand the personal details of citizens. In the main compromise put forward by the government, the organisations' access to the information will be granted only if a judicial third party, such as the interception of communications commissioner, considers that it is needed to investigate crimes.
The revised plans have been condemned by both Liberty and Privacy International. Liberty said authorities accessing this data should need a warrant from a judge, calling this the only truly independent safeguard. "March 18 ~ Blunkett loses asylum appeal
Ananova "The Court of Appeal has rejected David Blunkett's attempt to overturn a decision threatening his new policy of denying food and shelter to late asylum applicants. David Blunkett had challenged Mr Justice Collins's controversial conclusion in six test cases that the new rules had resulted in breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. In each case, would-be refugees were refused state help while their claims were being processed because they had failed to apply for asylum at the port of entry, or as soon as reasonably practicable." (© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2003, all rights reserved)March 17 ~ Sign of the Times - America
From yesterday's Observer (external link)"On the check-out desk at Santa Cruz public library, beside the usual signs asking people to keep quiet and to return their books on time, there is what might be called a sign of the times. 'Warning: although Santa Cruz public library makes every effort to protect your privacy, under the federal USA Patriot Act records of books you obtain from this library may be obtained by federal agents,' it reads. 'Questions about this policy should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft.' ...." Book Burning next?March 17 ~ Snoopers charter - "Have your say.."
suggests Channel 4 : "Scaled-back plans to give state agencies powers to access the public's telephone, Internet and e-mail records have been revealed. The government wants feed-back on the consultation paper, the thrust of which is laid out below. Several agencies will have full access, and another batch will have limited access to information. " From the Home Office site (external link): "On 18 June 2002, in response to widespread public concern, the Home Secretary withdrew a draft Order laid before Parliament adding public authorities to the access to communications data provisions of Chapter II of Part I of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The Home Secretary announced that public discussion would take place before new proposals would brought before Parliament. He also called for a broader public debate about how to strike the balance between the privacy of the citizen and society's legitimate need for measures to support the investigation of crime and to protect the public.." (Text of "RIPA" - external link))March 16 ~ Prescott's way with figures
(Booker's Notebook) "John Prescott's campaign to set up elected governments in the eight "Euro-regions" of England becomes ever more "Soviet". Mr Prescott tells us that there is "a hunger for regional government" and, as evidence, he recently assured the Commons that: "In the south-west the indications are that well over 60 per cent want to have a referendum on the issue."
Typical of the way Mr Prescott arrived at this evidence was a recent "soundings" meeting advertised in Weymouth by the South West Constitutional Convention, one of eight identical front organisations set up to campaign for elected regional governments - five of which, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, are chaired by Church of England bishops. On the appointed evening, the tiny Labour Club in Weymouth was besieged by campaigners against a regional assembly, who were initially told that only those who had signed a paper in favour of an assembly would be admitted.
When some were eventually allowed in, outnumbering the pro-assembly faction by eight to one, Tim Pearce, the convention's national organiser, ruled that only those who had already pledged support for an assembly could vote. After the motion had, not surprisingly, been won, there was discussion of the response to 550 "soundings" forms, which had been sent by the convention to those who had registered interest in a referendum.
Of these, it emerged, only 71 had been returned. Only eight recorded "strong" or "very strong" support for a referendum. The remaining 63 expressed either "weak interest" or none. Thus, even of those expressing interest, barely one per cent had been strongly in favour.
Elsewhere, the East Midlands Assembly last week voted against an elected regional government and Lancashire County Council, after reading here that district auditors were investigating claims that the North East Assembly had made unlawful use of ratepayers' money by campaigning for an assembly withdrew its funding from the assembly. "March 14 ~ "a police state without the police"
Telegraph (external link) "the Home Office has produced no fewer than 100 initiatives, proposals and schemes of one sort or another, over the past 18 months. The problem with such hyperactivity, they argue, is that it may look impressive, but it has yet to yield many results on the ground. Yesterday, David Blunkett was again on his feet in the Commons, unveiling a new White Paper which promised to take "a stand against anti-social behaviour". .......The shadow home secretary, Oliver Letwin, remarked yesterday that Mr Blunkett is in danger of creating "a police state without the police", and he had a point. Whether the police and other authorities use their new powers, collect the fines and issue the orders, as Mr Blunkett envisages, will depend crucially on whether they have the manpower.
The danger otherwise is that they will conclude that it is all too much trouble, as they have before, and continue with business as usual. If the police cannot deploy enough beat officers to control the streets, nothing else will make much difference..."March 12 ~ Still a charter to snoop
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. See Telegraph
"The Act has always been controversial. When the Home Office proposed extending it so that a huge range of government agencies and other public bodies, including local authorities, would be able to monitor our internet, email and telephone records with virtually no judicial control, all hell broke loose.
It was, by any standards, an outrageous plan and there was general relief when the Government conceded that it would have to be reconsidered. Or at least there was until yesterday, when the Home Office produced the results of its rethink and it turned out that version two differs very little from the original.
In essence, the same range of bodies as before will be able to get access to virtually the same range of records as before. The only difference of any significance is that before an agency or authority can find out whom we have been talking to or e-mailing, it will have to be approved by a gentleman with the Orwellian title of the Interception of Communications Commissioner..."March 12 ~ This is a staggering situation," she said. "The minister is acting with unbelievable smugness and arrogance.
He has also called into question the committee system in the Scottish Parliament, which was always hailed as one of its great strengths.".......The Telegraph report Ministers reject report into GM food trials (external link) Ross Finnie has dismissed an investigation into GM crops by the Scottish Parliament's health committee.March 10 ~ Harash Narang has been head-hunted by Case University in America
The Journal (external link)
"....a financial backer of Dr Narang's work, claimed he had been forced to go abroad because he cannot get laboratory time in the UK.
He said: "Harash has been blackballed in the UK because he told the public the truth.
"The establishment will try anything to stop him working here. It's a disgrace."
Noel Baldwin, of the CJD Foundation charity, said: "He has been proved right about so many things . . . that CJD can be transmitted through blood, that BSE can cause both variant and sporadic CJD and that you can test for the disease through urine samples."
Dr Narang starts work at Case University later this month. Shu Chen, one of his future colleagues, said: "He will be a great asset to our CJD research."March 9~ Last week a powerful coalition ranging from The Women's Institute to Greenpeace and Unison wrote to the FSA board claiming its spin on GM foods was virtually indistinguishable from that of the pro-GM lobby.
See Observer article Fury over spin on GM crops
We anote the comment from DEFRA quoted in the article ..."Although an unnamed Minister has warned that a decision on GM has already been taken, this was denied by a spokesman for the Department for Food Environment and Rural Affairs.
'There will not be any growing of [GM] crops in this country until the results of the farm-scale trials have been considered,' he said."
( He might have added "Comrades" and whisked his tail.)March 9 ~".. He sued, and that jurisprudential wizard, Mr Justice Harrison of Huddersfield County Court - upon whose noble brow may God rest a garland of frangipani, and before his feet, a brace of naked Nubian handmaidens -
- agreed with the plaintiff. He awarded him 39,408 in damages and costs. More than that: he finally put a barrier in the way of the rule of law being replaced by the rule of ease."
At last. Some good news ( Sunday Telegraph - external link) about randomly administrative fines.
"Motorists are not the only people who should rejoice at the ruling by Mr Justice Harrison that the clamping and seizure of a car parked without authorisation was "oppressive and arbitrary". Libertarians should also rejoice. For increasingly, many countries have allowed the due process of law to be replaced by the random application of administratively-convenient non-judicial fines..."March 9 ~ Christopher Booker's Notebook
Sunday Telegraph: Read in full here. Agency soft soaps its way to a crafty conclusion - good news for small soap makers
That'll be the day - (Brussels's right to dictate how regional funding should be handed out is not just a matter of "regulations", but a central pillar of EU government, enshrined in article 160 of the treaty. It is a key part of the acquis communautaire, that ever-growing body of EU powers which, under treaty law, can never be challenged or reduced...so what was Gordon Brown up to?)
'Soundings' sound suspicious - (Tony Flynn, the leader of Newcastle council, claimed that "soundings" across the region had shown "87 per cent in favour of an elected assembly"....spectacularly not true)
Cash for care homes 'diverted' - ..(maltreatment of the city's fast disappearing independent care homes, by starving them of funds at a time when council spending otherwise appears to be spiralling out of control.)March 9 ~ North East Assembly in Council Funding Scandal
by Neil Herron "...We trust that the press and media will be aware of the gravity of what has been exposed. We trust that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will begin a full and thorough investigation. The Electoral Commission is being kept fully informed - as misuse of public funds prior to a referendum may affect the validity of any result. "March 8 ~ Clear as mud?
European water directive (Guardian) "The government denied that a European Union directive on water quality could force up consumers' bills by up to 10%. Junior environment minister Elliot Morley said he did not accept the figure. Challenged by Tories, he added: "At this stage it really is premature in terms of having an accurate projection in relation to costs."March 7 ~ "Should London be struck by a terrorist attack, we are told, the Prime Minister will be removed to a secure base
outside London where he will continue to be 'visible'. Other senior ministers and their civil servants will be relocated to their own departmental headquarters at undisclosed locations throughout the country.
It would be reassuring to believe that these provisions were all part of normal planning for national emergencies. But coming from a government which responded to the foot-and-mouth outbreak by sealing off every turnip field..."The SpectatorMarch 7 ~ "Counties matter, because the Government is about to abolish them"
Simon Jenkins (external link) today..."...Upland England will one day be the only place safe from the Government's nightmare vision of shed parks and executive estates. The most tolerable parts will be the inland combes of Dorset and the secret dales round Bradford in Wiltshire. It will be the lost villages of the Berkshire Downs and the hidden glades of Chiltern Buckinghamshire, where the Blairs' Chequers will keep the wind turbines at bay....."March 6 ~ "Democracy is in danger when we can't recognise ourselves in our rulers"
writes Jackie Ashley in the Guardian
"Why are they so out of touch? On Iraq, there is a gaping gulf between the views of most people and the views of the political elite. We protest, they smile and nod; but they don't really listen. Polling has consistently shown the majority of the country opposed to a war on Iraq: only around 25% would back war without much stronger evidence from Hans Blix and a second UN resolution. Yet, the government insists, if necessary, Britain will join the United States in going it alone.
...... a kind of cocoon. The shouts in the street have bounced off those walls for centuries.
..... British politicians are very susceptible to Washington thinking generally. They follow American politics. They read American speeches. They are flattered and feel at home when visiting Congress. ......
....naked power politics, explained with impressive bluntness by Jack Straw to the Commons foreign affairs committee this week. We live in a "unipolar" world, he told the MPs: you either worked with the giant superpower, and tried to keep it inside international law, or you let it rampage unchecked. Many of us would say that the British position is that we have decided to work with the superpower outside international law, and simply rampage alongside it.......
... The British public is like the French public and the German public. We are a mixed, liberal, sceptical lot, who don't take to Bush and flinch from Christian fundamentalism almost as much as from the Islamic variety. That is why there is such turmoil, such enthusiasm for mass marches and protests. We look at our ruling elite and we do not recognise ourselves in them. In any democracy, that is a dangerous moment.March 4 ~ GM licensing gets go ahead
Scots and Welsh furious as crop trials are sidelined Paul Brown, environment correspondent The Guardian
Government plans to press ahead with licensing commercial use of genetically modified crops, before the results of trials are known and a public debate on the issue has been held, yesterday angered both the Scottish executive and the Welsh assembly.
Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, has decided that 18 applications to the EU for growing and importing crops such as GM maize, oil seed rape, sugar beet and cotton are unstoppable and the British government has no alternative but to process them. In the past few weeks Bayer has applied directly to Mrs Beckett to plant and market GM oil seed rape, and Monsanto has applied to import GM maize.March 4 ~ Public meeting on the review of the Over Thirty Months Rule for cattle All welcome
The Food Standards Agency will be holding a public consultation meeting as part of its review of the Over Thirty Months (OTM) Rule. It will be held on Friday 7 March, between 10.00am - 1.00pm at the New Connaught Rooms, 61-65 Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5DA. See http://www.food.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/otm_meetingMarch 3 ~ The law is an ass
"Entertainment has been provided in my part of the West Country by the instruction from Defra that, under EU Commission Decision 2000/68, Rosa Drohan from the Somerset village of Marksbury must pay £44 for "passports" for her two ageing donkeys, Popsy, 25, and Dillon, 11. Brussels officials have ruled that by the end of the year all horses and donkeys must join cattle in having passports, to aid disease control. Rosa wonders why her donkeys should need "passports" when their only experience of foreign travel is walking a few yards down the road to graze the village churchyard. This was why, when she saw the voluminous form she must fill in to apply for the passport asking to what "use" she puts her donkeys, she was tempted to put 'organic lawn mower'. It is unlikely that Brussels would be amused."Christopher Booker's Notebook Sunday TelegraphFeb 27 ~ José Bové faces a 10-month prison term for destroying GM crops
The Guardian reports today:"....The appeals court in this southern city ruled Bové must serve four months in prison for destroying maize crops. That sentence will be added to a six-month sentence handed down for ripping up genetically modified rice. "By the decision the president takes, he will say very clearly if the place of union leaders is in prison ... or if, today, the combat against GM crops is a legitimate combat,'' ...."Bové's lawyer, Francois Roux, said he would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. He also suggested that Chirac should pardon Bove.
"The justice system decided that a nonviolent action done in the open was worth 10 months imprisonment. The decision from now on belongs to Jacques Chirac," Roux said. The sheep farmer, visiting the annual Agriculture Salon fair in Paris, said the ruling made the issue political, not judicial. ....."Feb 27 ~ They're bleeding us dry to buy mountains of red tape
Boris Johnson today in the Telegraph: "......Wherever you look, there are vexatious pieces of central government legislation, which cost the council money, and which end up costing you money. Over the past two years, Oxfordshire has been forced to conduct a massive "job evaluation" of every council worker, in order to avoid being taken to industrial tribunals. The cost this year? A cool £1.9 million. Then there is the inflation-busting pay settlement of £1.7 million. The cost of the landfill tax is £300,000 and the cost of disposing of the fridge mountain is £600,000.
Then there is the £500,000 fine the council has been ordered to pay to the NHS, for "blocking beds" in the sense that the council has failed to find enough care-home places for elderly people. This fine is doubly absurd. The shortage of care-home places is caused entirely by the Government's demented Care Standards Act; and, in any case, the council was given a large sum by the Government to buy care-home beds; which it is now returning in the form of fines.
And then there is Gordon's big April fool, the £2.5 million the council will have to pay for the extra cost of NI contributions for its staff. That's right, folks: you are not only going to be stung for your own NI; you will also pay, via your council tax bill, for the NI contributions of the growing army of public sector workers.
What people don't sufficiently understand, and what I never tire of pointing out, is that regulation has a fiscal impact on everyone, as well as being a bother for those who have to comply. If you have a regulation about sheep carcasses, you need a dead sheep collector. If you have a regulation about windows, you need a window inspector; and these characters will all have their salaries and pensions and NI contributions funded out of council tax.Feb 26 ~ The editor of the Daily Mail on (further) threats to the freedom of the press
Today's Times - "Politically inspired privacy law would destroy freedom of the press and send Britain on the slippery slope to becoming like Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe, the Editor of the Daily Mail told MPs yesterday. Paul Dacre told the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee that a privacy law, replacing self-regulation of the press, would be a "law for the rich" since only the powerful could afford the legal fees required to take a case to court. He said that editors needed to take no lectures on regulating the press from MPs, when they had effectively kicked out Elizabeth Filkin...."Feb 26 ~ The Church of England is like the Conservative Party and the BBC, overcentralised, overwrought and losing market share.
All three are institutionally "top down". Read Simon Jenkins todayFeb 23 ~ "Short of miraculous intervention by a politician who can see just how insane is the situation that these decent, desperate people are faced with
it seems a world-beating British industry is about to be wiped out, for no reason whatever...."Booker's Notebook today.Feb 23 ~101,811 regulations imposed on us - without discussion - since we joined the European Community
Booker's Notebook today "Too many laws to tell us about
Last month Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked the Government how many regulations Brussels had issued since Britain joined the European Community in 1973. This means diktats which, unlike directives, are immediately binding. Lady Symons, the deputy leader of the Lords, gave year-by-year figures showing the total as 101,811. In answer to Lord Stoddart's request that details of these laws be made available, she said "given the volumes of regulations involved, it would incur disproportionate cost" to inform members of the British Parliament what laws have been imposed by a higher level of government.
Curiously, President Prodi in Brussels has also just come up with a figure for the amount of space these regulations occupy in the EU's official journal (again this excludes the thousands of directives which must be put into national law by means of statutory instruments). Regulations alone, he says, cover 97,000 pages. At an average of 1,000 words a page, this makes nearly 100 million words of law, all of which have to be translated into 11 languages, totalling some 1.1 billion words or 1,466 times the length of the Bible. It is not surprising the Government claims it would be too expensive even to supply a list of these laws. But we still have to obey them...."Feb 22 ~ UKIP gains former Conservative minister as three Dukes become patrons
The U.K. Independence Party today announced that the Duke of Devonshire was amongst three Dukes who had agreed to act as patrons for the Party. He was a Conservative minister under Harold Macmillan in the 1960's. The Dukes of Devonshire, Rutland and Somerset have all agreed to act as patrons of the party's fund raising drive ahead of next years elections to the European Parliament. The Party, which already holds 3 European seats, expects to make significant gains. U.K. Independence Party leader Roger Knapman said, "I am delighted to welcome their Graces to the only party which sees a free, independent future for the United Kingdom outside of the European Union. "It is increasingly clear that the U.K. Independence Party is the only party to represent the views of all British citizens, whether dukes or dustmen." ENDSFeb 21 ~" The scientific review is one of three strands of the GM debate being conducted in parallel." David King
"The other strands are the public debate and the study of economic costs and benefits. All three were requested by Margaret Beckett in May, in response to the recommendations of the AEBC
The scientific topics being looked at will include:These issues will be added to, and refined, as a result of information emerging from all sources, particularly from the public debate to ensure that the interest and concerns raised are addressed. http://www.gmsciencedebate.org.uk/background/pn291102a.htm Guess who's on the Science Panel. Independently chaired by David King, with Chris Leaver of course.... We wonder what percentage of his, and the others', funding is GM.
- GM food safety;
- gene flow and detection;
- environmental impacts of GM crops;
- future developments; and
- the regulatory process.
Feb 21 ~ Chronicle of An Ecological Disaster Foretold
The GM oil seed rape varieties in UK's farm scale evaluations are terminator crops with in-built sterility to protect patented crop genes. Terminator crops like these had been vigorously rejected by farmers all over the world as it goes against their right to save and replant seeds. These crops are now being considered for commercial release in Europe. Dr.Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins tell us why these crops carry unique risks for health and biodiversity, and should on no account be approved. The complete document with diagram and references is posted on ISIS members site. Full details hereFeb 21 ~ More time for public say on GM crops
Yesterday's Guardian Paul Brown, environment correspondent
"The government has extended by three months the period for a public debate on genetically modified crops and whether they should be grown in Britain. The budget for the consultation process is also being doubled, to £500,000, and the Department of Environment will pay for staff time at the central office of information.
Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, at first refused to allow more time or money, despite a letter before Christmas from Malcolm Grant, the chairman of the commission the government set up to organise the debate. Professor Grant said he had not been given enough time or resources to complete the task by the end of June. The agriculture ministers of Scotland and Wales, Ross Finnie and Mike German, joined Prof Grant's protests and, last month, all three lobbied again for an extension. The ministers face elections in May and wanted the debate postponed so that it would not interfere with the polls.
Environment groups have claimed that the government wanted to stifle debate by completing the discussion before three years of results from the farm-scale trials of GM crops were known in July. A study will be released that month showing whether GM crops attract more weeds and wildlife than conventional alternatives. Yesterday, in a letter to Prof Grant, Mrs Beckett accepted that "it would now be impracticable for the steering board to deliver its report by the end of June", and extended the consultation time until the end of September, with funding increased to £500,000. Sue Mayer, of the pressure group Genewatch, said: "Mrs Beckett's u-turn is good news ... We will at last be able to have an informed debate." Feb 20 ~ Tube bans animal welfare poster which might "offend".... BBC report (external link) London Underground has refused to display an advert for an animal welfare charity.
"The poster, for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), featured scantily-clad models huddled together on one side of a poster and chickens packed in a farm on the other. Underneath the shots is the legend: "Thousands of big-breasted birds packed together for your pleasure."
The CIWF said the advert was designed to raise awareness of "appalling conditions in which meat chickens are reared". But London Underground decided it could not be displayed because it was likely to offend." What? Whose logic was this?Feb 18 ~ Once again, the Lords defend the country...and will this government defeat too be overturned by yet another Parliament Act?
"The Government was beaten in the Lords last night over its plans to tackle hospital bed blocking, after the peers succeeded in forcing a one-year delay to the scheme by voting 152 to 133 against it....The Community Care (Delayed Discharges) Bill, announced by Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn, aims to "fine" local authorities which fail to get elderly patients out of hospital quickly enough, and was due to come into force from April 2003 - but is now postponed until 12 months later. " See report in the Western Morning NewsFeb 17 ~ A very unpopular form of democracy
Booker's Notebook Feb 16 "..Following my revelation last week that 25 district auditors across the North-East are to investigate the improper use of ratepayers' funds to finance the North-East Assembly's campaign for an elected regional government, it seems that John Prescott's scheme to set up elected assemblies across England has hit another set of buffers.
His department has just released on its website a summary of responses to last year's White Paper on regional government. Of 459 organisations responding, including local authorities, only 28 per cent supported his plan, 28 per cent are against, and the rest "undecided". Of individual responses, only 7 per cent were in favour and an overwhelming 72 per cent against.
Meanwhile key historical documents only made available to MEPs last week confirm just why the plan to install regional governments throughout the European Union has been central to Brussels's long-term planning since the 1970s. A series of internal reports on the proposals for monetary union made clear that a single currency could not work without setting up regional administrations which would allow Brussels to control the transfer of funds from richer to poorer regions.
These documents, to be raised in the Lords on Thursday by Lord Stoddart of Swindon, explain the dramatic conversion to the cause of regional government of that champion of the single currency, Jacques Delors, as he laid plans for economic and monetary union in the run-up to Maastricht in the late 1980s. It was he who in 1988 put in place the rule which forced Britain to set up regional "government offices" in 1994, the foundation of Mr Prescott's subsequent plan for elected regional governments.
The only snag, as with Mr Blair and the euro, is that Mr Prescott cannot achieve this without referendums, which he seems increasingly likely to lose."Feb 14 ~ Dolly, created in 1996, was put to sleep this afternoon at the Roslin Institute, suffering from acute respiratory disease.
Results of the post mortem are to be made public. See also Janet Hain writes to say," Just wanted to say a few words in memory of Dolly the Sheep even though there are more serious and dire things happening in the world. People may have been concerned or even horrified at the manner of Dolly's creation but she became an individual, a personality. If she did nothing else, she showed a lot of folks that sheep are not just moronic creatures grazing in fields but are sentient creatures. I am sorry that she has gone and can only hope science will heed lessons from her life.
Janet "Feb 14 ~ "Yield Effects of Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries" (Science, Feb 7, 2003, Vol. 299) a paper jointly written by Matin Qaim of the University of California, Berkeley, USA and David Zilberman of the University of Bonn, Germany
........We will perhaps have many more such papers being doled out by dozen, all thanking the seed company Mahyco (clearly avoiding to mention its partner - Monsanto) for its research support. Nevertheless, what is interesting is that the paper begins with the wrong premise that Bt cotton increases crop yields.
See A Scientific Fairytale Providing a Cover-Up to the Bt Cotton Fiasco in India By Devinder SharmaFeb 14 ~ "..the human rights watchdog Privacy International this week launched a competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, annoying and self-serving security measures:
the "Stupid Security" award. Nominations to stupidsecurity@privacy.org are welcome. See today's TelegraphFeb 13 ~ GM COMPENSATION NOT ENOUGH, SAY FARMERS
See Western Morning News (external link)"Plans by the Government to change the law so that organic farmers can claim compensation if their crops are contaminated by genetically modified organisms have been slammed as "window dressing" by critics. Environment Minister Michael Meacher has revealed that organic and conventional farmers should have the right to seek financial redress if their crops are damaged or made unsellable by cross-pollination from neighbouring GM fields.
But last night anti-GM protesters fired back, saying the proposal was not enough and a complete ban on the commercialisation of GM was needed.
"It's never going to recompense the cost of destruction of our markets," said Oliver Dowding, an organic farmer from south-east Somerset.
"I would be amazed if they knew what the potential budget is. We're talking millions of pounds."Feb 8 ~genes introduced into the DNA of a chloroplast can indeed jump into the chromosome of the cell's nucleus
Scientists have found that genes can jump from one region of a plant cell to another, making more likely the prospect of an introduced gene contaminating the plant's pollen and escaping into the wild. Independent (external link) "...Scientists have found that genes can jump from one region of a plant cell to another, making more likely the prospect of an introduced gene contaminating the plant's pollen and escaping into the wild...... Dr Timmis has shown in a study published in the journal Nature that genes introduced into the DNA of a chloroplast can indeed jump into the chromosome of the cell's nucleus. By modifying the genes of chloroplasts, therefore, the theoretical possibility exists to generate GM pollen that could cross-fertilise with related species of plants, producing GM wild flowers or "superweeds" resistant to weedkiller.
Dr Timmis's team used a gene that confers resistance to an antibiotic as a "marker", to see how frequently this alien DNA could move from the chloroplast to the nucleus of a tobacco plant. They found DNA is transferred at a frequency of one in approximately 16,000 tobacco pollen grains.
Peter Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said: "This research suggests that this is a bit of a shock to scientists. They didn't expect the genes to jump from chloroplast to nucleus so readily. It underlines the fact that we must know more about plant genetics before we start manipulating the DNA of crops."Feb 8 ~ US trade and agriculture officials are close to launching a legal challenge in the World Trade Organisation to the EU's moratorium on genetically modified crops.
FWi (external link)"The challenge is an attempt to regain access to a market worth £200m/year. "We have been patient, yet our patience is running out," said US agriculture secretary Ann Veneman. "The EU's position on biotechnology is plain wrong."........
.The EU moratorium on new GM licences has been in place since mid-1999 and has effectively blocked trade in GM crops until tougher regulations are in place. Late last year, farm and environment ministers agreed new systems for labelling and tracking GMs, though the European parliament has yet to endorse the rules. While these discussions are in progress, the USA would be unwise to raise a legal challenge, said EU farm commissioner Franz Fischler. As well as triggering a possible consumer backlash in Europe, it could undermine commission attempts to get the moratorium lifted."Feb 8 ~ Scottish organic bill fails - but not by much.
From The Times (external link)"Scottish Executive yesterday rejected a Bill from Robin Harper, the Green MSP, to convert 20 per cent of all farmland to organic farming within 10 years. Ross Finnie, the Environment Minister, said that the Executive would not back the proposed legislation during a debate in the Scottish Parliament. Mr Harper made a vigorous defence of his "small and beautiful" Bill and pleaded with MSPs to back it after insisting that the target was not binding.
The Bill was defeated by 61 votes to 39 with 18 MSPs abstaining.
Mr Finnie said that he could not support the Bill because it contained statutory targets and the Executive had no control over the sector....."Feb 8 ~ "We are not the doctors; we are the disease"
From Harold Pinter's speech in Turin last November ".....The planned war against Iraq is in fact a plan for premeditated murder of thousands of civilians in order, apparently, to rescue them from their dictator.
The United States and Britain are pursuing a course which can lead only to an escalation of violence throughout the world and finally to catastrophe.
It is obvious, however, that the United States is bursting at the seams to attack Iraq. I believe that it will do this not just to take control of Iraqi oil but because the US administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary. Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless.
Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage and will to challenge and resist US power Europe itself will deserve Alexander Herzen's definition (as quoted in the Guardian newspaper in London recently) "We are not the doctors. We are the disease". Read Harold Pinter's speech and weep.Feb 8 ~ "I was an aid worker in Bosnia; I know some wars are worth fighting. This isn't one of them,"
said Martin Summers, 43. Lois Atherden, 84, who grew up "in the shadow of the first world war", disagreed. "Weaponry has developed to a state where any war for any reason makes no sense at all. We have to find another answer," she said. There were anarchists and pacifists there; Quakers and Catholics; students and pensioners. The latter have formed the backbone of the vigils; this week, ages ranged from 21 to 84, but most were over 40. ..." See today's Guardian (external link)
( Hoping to see many of my fellow over 40s on Feb 15. )Feb 8 ~ The mother of all inventions
Times today (external link) "The note of panic is palpable. "What do you mean, there's no smoking gun? Haven't MI6 got anything? No photographs? No defectors? TB is expecting a dossier next week. We promised. He said the Americans liked the last one - quoted everywhere, robust stuff, saved the CIA from having to go public with any sources. So they want another one - Colin Powell's thinking of a spot of show and tell at the UN, and wants to point to independent work by the Brits. So, we better get something - and quick
There was a nervous silence. With so many spokesmen off on crash courses in war briefing, the communications unit was understaffed. Apart from a former foot-and-mouth specialist from the old Min of Ag (chosen because he once worked on botulism), two work-experience students from Keele and a filing clerk, doubling as a liaison officer, spin was thin on the ground. "Well, one of you had better put something together. Get on the internet. Just type in ricin and Iraq and see what you find on Google. 20 pages, at least. By tomorrow "....Feb 8 ~ Mystery over death of cloned sheep
See Independent (external link) story by Steve Connor Science Editor "Australia's first cloned sheep has died unexpectedly, raising concerns that the animal may have suffered a fatal disorder related to the same technique used to create Dolly, the world's first adult clone.
Matilda died last week and a post-mortem examination over the weekend failed to find the cause of death, said Rob Lewis, who heads the South Australian Research Institute near Adelaide."
They cremated the body before tests could be properly done. We remember the very low proportion of cloned animals that survive - and the fate of poor Dolly. The only motive for cloning is huge profit. We have always been astonished that more outrage has not been voiced.Feb 8 ~ ".. the intelligence equivalent of being caught stealing the spoons" (Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman )
A piece of plagiarism (BBC external link) The Directorate of Military Intelligence Government dossier
"These shifting appointments are part of Saddam's policy of balancing security positions. "By constantly shifting the directors of these agencies, no one can establish a base in a security organisation for a substantial period of time. No one becomes powerful enough to challenge the President. " Ibrahim al-Marashi's work
"These shifting appointments are part of Saddam's policy of balancing security positions between Tikritis and non-Tikritis, in the belief that the two factions would not unite to overthrow him. "Not only that, but by constantly shifting the directors of these agencies, no one can establish a base in a security organization for a substantial period of time, that would challenge the President."Feb 8 ~ "A prime minister who condemned his country to puppet status would be unworthy of his office"
Today's Telegraph
"The superstate is here" (external link)
".....The weasel word in this treaty, however, is not "federalism", but a phrase that sounds more innocuous: "shared competence". This, its guiding constitutional doctrine, states that, while the EU and the nation states may share competence in domestic and foreign policy, the EU's policies and laws must always have primacy. National governments and legislatures may act only where the EU has chosen not to "exercise its competence". Shared competence extends to foreign and defence policy; to the economy, including monetary and fiscal policy; to health, social security, transport, justice, agriculture, energy, the environment and trade. The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which Tony Blair said would never be binding, is "an integral part of the Constitution".
This treaty amounts to a coup d'etat by a clique of a coterie of a cabal. The text was drafted by a triumvirate of arch-federalists: two commissioners, Michel Barnier of France and Antonio Vitorino of Portugal, with the former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato. The other members of the praesidium - including its chairman, Valery Giscard D'Estaing, and the British representative, Gisela Stuart MP - agreed to it, ignoring the rest of the convention.
Mr Blair now has a choice. He could veto the treaty, in which case Britain could face exclusion from full EU membership. Or he could put it to a referendum. The third possibility - that he might sign it, even in a diluted form - sounds unthinkable, yet it appears to be being thought. A prime minister who condemned his country to puppet status would be unworthy of his office."Feb 8 ~ Protection of Freedoms Bill
"Mark Prisk, the Conservative MP for Hertford and Stortford ...alarmed by the torrent of regulation affecting the private sector, ... is bringing a 10-Minute Rule Bill before the Commons on February 25, to be known as the Protection of Freedoms Bill. It would require that every new piece of legislation be subject to a test as to how "it affects the freedom of expression, assembly, conscience and association; and why the benefits of the measure outweigh any loss of freedom". Back-bench Bills rarely make their way on to the statute book, but Mr Prisk deserves support for seeking to hold back the torrent of bad laws that do get passed. He invites readers to send him comments and suggestions about how he should proceed, and to review what he is hoping to achieve at www.markprisk.com..."
A Free Country - today's Telegraph (external link).Feb 8 ~ World politics according to Bush
This is a map of Bush's World View. It is well worth a wry grimace...but may be a little slow to load. We are sorry if we are breaking copyright - but they arrived on an email without attribution. (Later: we now have the URL http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/lodrion/Pictures/Fun/world_us.jpg )Feb 8 ~ INES Appeal to the International Academic Community
Paris, 1 February 2003
"We oppose a US-led war against Iraq and support all non-violent opposition to the planned war. We appeal to scientists, engineers and academics throughout the world to work in solidarity to prevent this war in both their personal and professional capacities. We call for teach-ins, hearings and other meetings to take place at all universities. These should consider the consequences of the planned war on the people of Iraq; the stability of the Middle East; the future of the United Nations and international law; international relations and the dialogue among cultures; the global economy and the environment; and the development, proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction.
We call upon universities throughout the world to engage in all forms of peaceful protest. We call upon universities in those countries supporting the war to go on strike should a war begin and to announce their intention to do so in advance."
The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) is an international non-governmental organization affiliated with the UN and the UNESCO. INES works for peace, sustainability and the constructive uses of science and technology. See http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Feb 8 ~ Downing Street stands by Iraq dossier
LONDON (Reuters) - The government says it stands by an intelligence dossier on Iraq, after academics said whole passages had been lifted from magazine articles, complete with spelling mistakes.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell drew attention to a British dossier on Iraq during his presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. The British dossier says it is compiled from intelligence material "and other sources".
Several academics came forward on Thursday saying they recognised most of the dossier as lifted, verbatim, from articles published in the U.S. journal the Middle East Review of International Affairs and in Jane's Intelligence Review.
In some cases the dossier included punctuation and spelling mistakes copied from the original articles....."Feb 7 ~ Your second chance for... Between Iraq and a Hard Place
BREMNER BIRD AND FORTUNE - XMAS SPECIAL The comedy trio Bremner Bird and Fortune bring their viewpoint on the Iraqi crisis in their own unique way.
We're about to invade Iraq. Again. We invaded in 1917... and 1941 ... and 1991. This time though, we're dealing with Saddam Hussein.
But then, we've been dealing with Saddam for years. Why now? The Americans see the chance to bring traditional Western values to the Middle East (aka the guys with the diapers on their heads): democracy (from the people who brought you George W Bush); freedom (from the people who brought you Guantanamo Bay) and economic prosperity (from the people who bought you Enron).
Starring George W Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and a cast of… well, Rory Bremner, flanked by John Bird and John Fortune as Foreign Office mandarins, convinced that this time they have got it right, and that above all the one thing this is not about is oil… Read the transcript of the show
(external liks to Channel Four) (Part One)
(Part Two)
(Part Three)
(Part Four)Feb 7 ~ Downing Street's "Iraq" intelligence dossier released on Monday was copied from three different articles
"It gives the impression of being an up to the minute intelligence-based analysis - and Mr (Colin) Powell was fulsome in his praise. ... Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student. Published on the Number 10 web site, called "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation", it outlines the structure of Saddam's intelligence organisations. But it made familiar reading to Cambridge academic Glen Ranwala. It was copied from an article last September in a small journal: the Middle East Review of International Affairs. ...." See Channel 4 news reportFeb 6/7 ~ We know more about killing than we know about living
emailer:"There was a good letter in the Times yesterday on the futility of war with Iraq and the final quotation from General Omar Bradley in 1948 is relevant.
"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount...Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants...We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living".Feb 5 ~ Mr Blair has been as shameless as James I.
"He was personally committed to a "fully elected House of Lords" He signed the manifesto pledge of "a democratic and representative" second chamber. Yet no sooner does he sniff the trough of power than he plunges straight in. He packs the Lords with friends, sycophants and bought peerages. By and large this has worked. At present a House stuffed with statesmen and soldiers dare not even discuss the impending war. ..." Simon Jenkins in today's Times on Monkey business in the House of BaboonsFeb 5 ~ Robert Fisk: Don't mention the war in Afghanistan
See Independent today " The near collapse of peace in this savage land is a narrative erased from the mind of Americans....
"There's one sure bet about the statement to be made to the UN Security Council today by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell - or by General Colin Powell as he has now been mysteriously reassigned by the American press: he won't be talking about Afghanistan. For since the Afghan war is the "successful" role model for America's forthcoming imperial adventure across the Middle East, the near-collapse of peace in this savage land and the steady erosion of US forces in Afghanistan - the nightly attacks on American and other international troops, the anarchy in the cities outside Kabul, the warlordism and drug trafficking and steadily increasing toll of murders - are unmentionables, a narrative constantly erased from the consciousness of Americans who are now sending their young men and women by the tens of thousands to stage another "success" story.....An American killed by a newly placed landmine in Khost; 16 civilians blown up by another newly placed mine outside Kandahar; grenades tossed at Americans or international troops in Kabul; further reports of rape and female classroom burnings in the north of Afghanistan - all these events are now acquiring the stale status of yesterday's war....."Feb 4/5 ~ Radio 4 "A Strain on the System"
Wed Feb 5th at 9.00pm. The second in a three-part series assessing our preparedness in the face of national crises. Sue Broom looks at the lessons learned from the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic.Feb 4 ~ Britain must not go to war without UN's backing, say senior officers
Times (external link)"... Serving officers are not allowed to give their personal views about an imminent operation. However, senior retired officers who keep in regular touch with the Ministry of Defence about upcoming operations are not barred from making public comments."
"..... General Sir Roger Wheeler, who was Chief of the General Staff from 1997 to 2000, said yesterday that he and many other recently retired officers would find a war without a second resolution from the UN Security Council, unaccceptable. "If we are going to war, we need the backing of the international community and the country and that means a second resolution," he said. ...Sir Roger said that he backed the view expressed by General Sir Jack Deverell, Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Northern Europe, who told BBC radio last week that he would not like to go to war without the country's support. ..."Feb 4 ~ Yet another confused Minister
Telegraph today (external link) "Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, was in confused retreat yesterday over her attempt to ban an anti-war rally from assembling in Hyde Park because the marchers might damage the grass.
The Stop the War Coalition, organisers of the demonstration, said Miss Jowell's intervention had prompted a flood of pledges of support and predicted that up to 500,000 people would attend the protest on February 15. A spokesman for the Royal Parks said the concern over the use of Hyde Park was for the safety of those attending the march and not necessarily the damage to the grass. In a letter to Miss Jowell, Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, said Hyde Park was the only suitable venue. A culture department spokesman said: "Hyde Park is still, in our view, an unsuitable venue for safety reasons. No final decisions have been made. We are trying to find somewhere suitable where the march can go ahead. There is no hidden agenda."
• America's desire for oil, rather than concern over weapons of mass destruction, was the main reason for a possible war with Iraq, Tony Benn, the veteran Left-winger, said yesterday after returning from talks with Saddam Hussein. "This is about regime change to give the US control of the oil," said Mr Benn, on his arrival at Heathrow Airport."Feb 4 ~ Blair: I will risk my political future over Iraq
PM admits he has failed to convince Britons of need for military action Today's Independent ".....The Prime Minister faced hostile questions from Labour MPs. Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, said: "There are many people who feel, like me, that we are being led by the nose into war." Derek Foster, MP for Bishop Auckland and a former chief whip, said: "There will be profound implications for the long-term security of the world if the United States was to take international law into its own hands." The former Labour MP Tony Benn, back in Britain after meeting President Saddam Hussein on Sunday, said Mr Blair held "an effective veto" on war. "If he says to Bush, 'I'm sorry, I can't go along with you', Bush would find it very difficult to go," he said. ......"Feb 3 ~ "Vaclav Havel Takes His Leave
New York Times " ..when Vaclav Havel left Prague Castle on Sunday after 13 years as president, he took with him something quite different an exceptional individual moral authority. Mr. Havel leaves no clearly defined political legacy. What he leaves is the sense that in the life of a nation the character of its leaders matters. He showed us that speaking honestly and deeply when you are expected merely to express platitudes brings its own political authority. Czechs and the rest of us are better off because of him..Parliament has failed twice to choose his successor. The parties bicker and the press reports it. For those freedoms and many more besides, Czechs have Vaclav Havel to thank"Feb 3 ~ Tony Benn has filmed an interview with Saddam Hussein
See Reuters He said he had asked Saddam "very simple and very short questions" during the interview that dealt with weapons of mass destruction, links to al-Qaeda terror network and oil....Benn said he did not want to reveal Saddam's answers in the interview earlier in the day "because I am hoping that within the next day or two, the whole interview will be broadcast in its entirety". He did not say when or where the interview would be broadcast. He was leaving for London via Amman late on Sunday.....He said the reason for his current visit to Baghdad was "to explore possibilities of a peaceful solution to a problem, that otherwise might lead to the most catastrophic war in which innocent people will be killed with long-term consequences".Feb 2 ~ America - one company can now own all the radio stations, television stations, newspapers and cable systems in any given area.
Extract from article in the Boulder Daily Camera "....The Federal Communications Commission, led by Michael ("my religions is the market") Powell, is fixing to remove the last remaining barriers against concentration of media. This means one company can own all the radio stations, television stations, newspapers and cable systems in any given area. Presently, 10 companies own over 90 percent of the media outlets. Bill Kovach of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism say these are the most sweeping changes in the rules that govern ownership of American media since the 1940s. The ownership rules were put in place after we had seen how totalitarian governments use domination of the media to goad their countries into war."
Reporters without borders can be found at http://www.rsf.org/ A visit strongly recommended..Feb 2 ~ Some of the Prime Minister's highest-ranking former colleagues add their voices to the chorus calling for restraint over Iraq
Independent on Sunday
"Former Labour ministers who served under Tony Blair have added their voices to the growing calls on the Prime Minister to draw back from military action against Iraq. All are influential figures in the Labour movement, some having served as Cabinet ministers, others in the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence. Most are still sitting MPs. They have spoken out against the threatened war on Saddam Hussein, warning Mr Blair not to proceed without the backing of the international community through a second UN resolution.
Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Ireland secretary, has even cautioned that with public and political opinion stacked against a war, a prolonged and difficult conflict could spell the end of Mr Blair's premiership. "If the war is not quick and successful, he could suffer considerable political damage. He may even have to resign as Prime Minister," she said. Chris Smith, the former Culture secretary, branded military action without a second UN mandate "unacceptable". Frank Dobson, Mr Blair's first Health secretary, said war without UN backing would be "disastrous worldwide" and "politically disastrous here". Mr Blair's support for US President George Bush and his proposed invasion of Iraq has also been condemned by generals and military strategists, including General Sir Michael Rose, Major General Julian Thompson and Major General Patrick Cordingley..." (Read what they said in the full article)Feb 2 ~ Labour MPs have remarked on the "warped sense of priorities"
that led the Government to back the ban on the grounds that the central London park's grass might be damaged, or that protesters could be injured, when a real threat to human life in the war on Iraq was at issue. Ms Short said: "I welcome the fact that so many people in Britain are troubled by the prospects of war." She was glad she "lived in a country that did not relish war" and that people were "willing to make their views felt". She added: "That is important in a democracy."
Organisers of the rally, who will meet the Royal Parks Agency tomorrow, said Hyde Park was the only realistic venue for a rally likely to attract half a million people. A spokeswoman for the Stop the War Coalition, which is organising various marches, pointed out the irony of a ban because of safety concerns: "You have to ask about the health and safety of thousands of people in Baghdad when 800 cruise missiles are targeted at them."...." From today's Independent (external link)Feb 2 ~" I am a democrat" says Robin Cook
Are true Labourites about to stand up and be counted? See Telegraph today on Robin Cook's assertion that the principle of electing a proportion of Lords was "non-negotiable"
".....In what appeared to be an attack on Mr Blair's reputation for cronyism, Mr Cook said: "If we exclude the public from the process of selection, we should not be surprised if the public is then cynical about who is appointed."
The speech, delivered at Imperial College, London, led Cabinet colleagues and other ministers to predict that Mr Cook will shortly either resign or be sacked.
"It is getting very difficult to see how Robin can possibly stay in that job if Tuesday's vote goes against him. He would ultimately be responsible for seeing through legislation he clearly opposes," said one minister.
Challenged yesterday over what he would do if MPs come out in favour of an all-appointed chamber, the Leader of the House would only say: "I am a democrat."...."Feb 2 ~ Content with ignoring the church, Bush has also decided to play with dynamite by ignoring some of America's top military minds.
An article in the interesting "Counterpunch" site ".....One of them is retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the military commander of Desert Storm. He told The Washington Post that he has yet to be fully convinced that war with Iraq is necessary. Schwarzkopf's comments mirror those of other retired top generals, including Anthony Zinni, Wesley Clark, John Shalikashvili, Brent Scowcroft, Joseph Hoar, and Merrill McPeak. Pentagon sources report that the obviously mentally ill Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire some members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff for not supporting the war against Iraq. These included former Marine Corps Commandant and now NATO commander General James Jones and Army Chief of Staff General Erik Shinseki. Another recipient of Rumsfeld's wrath is the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command General Charles Holland who Rumsfeld accused of having a "case of the slows" in carrying out Bush's war plans.
Pentagon sources report that morale among senior military commanders is at an all time low. Rumsfeld rubbed salt into open wounds when he ordered his "CINCs" (Commander-in-Chief) to drop that title, declaring that there is only one "commander-in-chief" and that is Bush. ....."Feb 2 ~ "America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades - not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water..."
Fascinating article by the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, Stephen C. Pelletiere . Friday's New York Times "....In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.
We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.
Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.
Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades - not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water.Feb 1 ~ "..Typically, Mr Blair uses words that pretend the issue has not already been decided,
and then tries to tilt the debate in favour of the conclusion to which he has, in truth, already committed his premiership and his nation." See today's Independent (external link) " He made it clear some time ago that, if the US went to war in Iraq, Britain would fight alongside.
His gamble is that he will win British public opinion round, but his dishonesty is in pretending that the outcome could be altered by a vote in either the House of Commons or the UN Security Council. Of course, he would prefer to have those votes behind him, but Britain is locked into conflict anyway if George Bush decides upon it..."Feb 1 ~ We are talking about the death of community performance.
WMN today reminds us of the extraordinarily interfering new bill - the new Licensing Bill - which may become law as early as next year. It will force pubs, community centres, village and school halls to pay for licences to stage any musical event at which there is an entrance fee - even for charity. See article (external link):"We need to stand up and fight for the countless amateur players and musicians whose performances have ensured the continuity of our traditions in the Westcountry." The Bill will also abolish a century-old law which allows one or two musicians to play in a pub without the landlord needing an entertainments licence. Even private performances which raise money for charity would have to be licensed if there was an admission fee. Landlords across the Westcountry say the legislation could signal the end of traditional pub entertainment. Adrian Collis, landlord of the Bridport Arms Hotel in West Bay, Dorset, said: "It is a nail in the coffin for live music. We need to lobby for changes before it is too late."
The (external) link below gives some idea of what could happen (and appears to already be happening in some places). On the day the Bill was published, the Arts Council received a legal opinion from one of the UK's leading licensing lawyers confirming that corporate hospitality events where performers are paid were licensable under the Bill as published. This contradicted the government's own statement published in the Explanatory Notes that accompany the Bill. http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/fizgig-tom/law.htmArchive from January 2003