Are we actually interested?

Ever since the Tories broke away from the EPP group in the EU parliament and formed their own, critics inside and outside the party have been seeking to exploit apparent inconsistencies between them and their "partners".

So tedious are these little scraps that we have avoided reporting on them – who really cares about the internal politics of the EU parliament, much less the machinations of a fringe group like the Tories?

The latest twist, however, has a certain amusement value. As reported by The Independent, the president of the new group, Law and Justice Party MEP Michael Kaminski (pictured), has expressed support for both the Lisbon Treaty and the Common Agricultural Policy.

This, says The Independent, "would appear to put him seriously at odds with David Cameron who is strongly opposed to the treaty which he wants to put to a referendum in the UK."

Actually, it doesn't – which goes to show how little the British media understands EU parliamentary politics.

The political groups – including the one which the Tories have formed – are little more than "marriages of convenience" between disparate national parties, with very little in common. They come together at the EU level in order to milk the system, enabling them to maximise their drawings from parliamentary funds and to bid for key positions in the parliamentary structures.

Look at any of the political parties forming any of the EU groups and you will see huge national differences in policies, to the extent that you could play endless games pointing up the anomalies and inconsistencies. They matter not though.

All the group members sign up to a set of common principles, in order to satisfy the parliamentary rules, carefully drafted so as not to interfere with national sensibilities. Each national delegation then tends to run its own affairs.

Since the EU parliament has absolutely no control over EU policy, which is determined by the commission and the European Council, national policy differences between group members are of very little importance.

However, playing up the differences in order to score political points on a national stage is fair game. Thus, Baroness Kinnock is doing her own"milking", declaring that: "David Cameron needs to get a grip. The fringe is coming apart at the seams." She goes on to say: "Cameron and Hague must say where they stand. Do they agree with the leader of their group or do they oppose him and move further from reality?"

Outside the foetid bubble of micro-EU politics though, one suspects no one actually cares. After all, Kaminski is a foreigner, and who cares what they say anyway? For goodness sake, just look at him. He cannot even wear his tie correctly.

COMMENT THREAD

Private poverty, public profligacy

Gerald Warner makes the op-ed page today, in a quintessentially silly season story, taking on Stryker McGuire, the American journalist who first gave currency to the concept of "Cool Britannia".

McGuire has run his eye over Britain in a more critical mood, writes Warner, and what he sees is decline. Post-imperial debility has finally caught up with this sceptr'd isle: our public debt is soaring towards a record high; we are about to be eclipsed by "giant emerging economies like China and India"; our defence budget is unsustainable; we cannot afford to renew Trident; and the engine of our "soft power" – the financial sector – will not recover its former pre-eminence.

Always a good read, Warner has nevertheless missed the point, as indeed has McGuire. What we are reading is not a Britain in decline, but the emergence of two nations, the private sector and the public-supported sector.

One is in decline, with people cutting back and looking to a gloomy future, as against an increasingly profligate and expanding public sector. This sector is draining money from the real economy while delivering less and less, with greater inefficiency and bureaucracy, its ambitions unrestrained as it puts out its hand for more and more money to feed its spending habit.

In a tiny way, that is what the MPs expenses row was about – a privileged few, feeding of the state, spending more on their expenses than many people earn – those people who have learned again the virtue of prayer, uttering silent invocations to their own personal deities as they tap their PIN numbers into the hole in the wall in the hope that it will deliver money instead of a curt, impersonal refusal.

That is the sense of the divided nation – a cynical disillusioned rump who watch their masters piss money against the wall, talking glibly about billions and spending millions as if they were small change, while the average Joe is counting up the "shrapnel" at the end of the week to see if he can afford a packet of fags and a lottery ticket – not that he is allowed to smoke the fags down at the increasingly empty boozer that he used to frequent.

This is not, therefore, about whether Britain is "great" any more. It is about seeing your own country being taken over by an alien breed that seems to regard our money as their own, to be handed over to them as of right, to feed their profligate, wasteful lifestyles – a country that is not ours any more but which belongs to our gilded masters to use as their own plaything. In that respect, the "great" is neither here nor there. It isn't even Britain anymore. We are strangers in an alien country that was once our own.

COMMENT THREAD

Now that's serious

Forget about global warming, swine 'flu and the rest. An outbreak of pneumonic plague has been reported in China.

So far it is only one man, in Ziketan, in the Tibetan area of Qinghai province (pictured), a remote region of north-west China. Eleven others have been infected and the Chinese health authorities are taking it seriously enough to quarantine the 10,000 inhabitants of Ziketan.

And well they might. This is the one – along with Lassa Fever, Green Monkey Disease and other such "exotics" – that has public health professionals really scared.

Passed by direct transmission – person-to-person – mortality rate is between 90-100 percent for untreated victims. Early diagnosis is essential as antibiotics must be given within 24 hours of first symptoms to be effective.

But the stuff of nightmares is that, with an incubation period of one to three days - during which the victim is infective – one person could climb on board a packed Jumbo at some exotic location. Shortly after the jet reached Heathrow, you could have 700 or more infected but asymptomatic persons wandering through London.

Before the epidemic had been identified for what it was (not many GPs would recognise pneumonic plague if presented to them), the incidence could be in the hundreds of thousands, and completely out of control.

It is a nightmare scenario, but it has never happened. There are reasons for that – not least because it the disease is confined to very remote areas. Fortunately for us – the victims usually die before they travel any distances.

The man in Ziketan was a local shepherd, an occupation not normally known for its globe-trotting propensities. But it need not always be so. Theoretically at least, we are always on the edge of a wildfire epidemic. The one consolation, should it happen, is that very few people would then be shouting about the perils of runaway global warming.

What is particularly interesting though, it that with such very real – if remote – threats which could strike us at any time, some sections of mankind feel it necessary to invent spurious threats such as global warming. Perhaps there is something in our psyche which prefers the imaginary Armageddon to the real thing.

COMMENT THREAD

I suppose we should be interested ...

... in the machinations of "Tory" MEPs, like wot the propper media is.

Actually, McMillan Scott never was a Tory, and now he's been kicked out of the not-the-Tory group in Brussels, for something or other, leaving the Poles in er ... pole position. UKIP are wetting themselves with mirth. First day back at school and the Tories have lost one of their number. This time five years ago, UKIP had just lost its first MEP, when they had to ditch Ashley Mote.

It is rather funny in a way, I suppose ... doesn't compare with Moldavian gun-runners flying dodgy choppers for the British Army, but you can see why the "colleagues" are all a-twitter.

COMMENT THREAD

At the heart of the evil

Offered by Watts up with that, this telling passage:

The problem with climate prediction and projections going out to 2030 and 2050 is that we don't anticipate that they can be tested in the way you can test a weather forecast. It takes about 20 years to evaluate because there is so much unforced variability in the system which we can’t predict — the chaotic component of the climate system — which is not predictable beyond two weeks, even theoretically. That is something that we can't really get a handle on.

The problem though is that climate "predictions" derived from computer models are not so much predictions as mechanisms of control – a means by which pre-existing agendas, such as global governance, can be realised.

"Climate change" is not a matter of science – it is one hundred percent politics, dressed up as science. Which is why, of course, the politicians (in the UK and elsewhere) do not want to talk about it.

Meanwhile, Andrew Alexander in The Daily Mail offers his own "take" on the issue, referring to the "warmists' semi-religious fervour," likening them to "medieval preachers, proclaiming to baying crowds that the end of the word is nigh." Hysteria is the real threat, not global warming, he says.

As we sit here in unseasonable cold weather, succumbing to the temptation to switch the central heating back on, we reflect that this is only "weather" and the cooling trend must be a figment of our imagination.

But we are slightly cheered by the difficulty being experienced
by G8 leaders at their summit today in central Italy. Hoping to stitch up a deal which can be presented triumphantly to the Copenhagen climate fest at the end of the year, they are also having to deal with the realities of a recession and the massive cost of climate "control" measures, which are set to drive us back into the economic dark ages.

Representatives from China and India, we are told, are creating the blockage, refusing to agree to a draft statement agreeing that global temperatures should not be permitted to rise more than 2°C. Given that the global average is actually declining, that should not present a problem but, such is the fantasy world in which our politicians live, that the idea that mankind can control the climate still holds sway in their feeble brains.

Then, however, they are only the front men. Behind the scenes, as always, there are darker forces at play, and they will have their way. It is getting warmer ... that is what you have been told. You shall believe it!

COMMENT THREAD

That road to starvation

Earlier this month we were reporting on the coming grain harvest, observing that while overall production was down, there was at least a bright spot with wheat.

That happy situation arose, in part, because of a bigger than expected yield from India which for the past two years has been prohibiting wheat exports to stave of shortages at home.

However, only a few later the prospects are no longer looking so rosy. The Indian Met Office is predicting that the 2009 monsoon may fail, delivering only 93 percent of the normal 19 inches of rain which falls during the season.

More worryingly, the grain bank of the country - north-west India, including Punjab and Haryana – is predicted to suffer the most, getting only 81 percent of the long-term average for the region. Add a possible error of eight percent and the rainfall for north-west India could be as low as 73 percent of normal, leading to drought conditions.

Most Indian farmers depend on the monsoon as only 40 percent of farmland is irrigated. They tend, therefore, to plant summer-sown crops such as wheat, rice, soybeans and sugarcane in the monsoon months of June and July.

Demonstrating how slender a thread on which we all rely, this current forecast is a significant "correction" from the mid-April statement when "near normal" rainfall was expected. At least this is an improvement on 2004 though, when drought conditions were last experienced. Then the Met Office missed the signals early enough to put out a warning.

Currently, up to yesterday, the country had received only 53 percent of normal rainfall, with central India getting only 25 percent. The government is shying away from declaring an emergency but the situation is undoubtedly of concern.

The Times of India notes that nearly 70 per cent of Indians depend on agriculture, which represents around 17 percent of India's GDP. It has averaged nearly 4 percent growth over five years. The sector was expected to buoy India's overall growth, hit by the global crisis so a fall in farm production could not happen at a worse time.

With food prices are already high, they could hit the roof if the rains do not come, while food security could become an even more pressing issue.

And then, just to add to the well of human happiness, scientists in Canada and around the world are racing to find a way to stop a destructive fungus that threatens to wipe out 80 percent of the world's wheat crop.

Officials say that the airborne fungus, known as Ug99, has so far proved unstoppable, making its way out of eastern Africa and into the Middle East and Central Asia. It is now threatening areas that account for more than one-third of the world's wheat production and scientists in North America say it's only a matter of time before the pest hits the breadbasket regions of North America, Russia and China.

Global warming, under the circumstances, is the least of our problems.

COMMENT THREAD

Clouded reason

One of the most dangerous phenomena of modern times is how the irrational greenies have hijacked the environmental agenda and suborned it in pursuit of their own political aims. No better example of this is offered than in a piece by Peter Schwerdtfeger, emeritus professor of meteorology at Flinders University in Adelaide, writing in The Australian.

Schwerdtfeger is reviewing the work of internationally acclaimed cloud physicist Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who asserts that the most awful consequence of the burning of carboniferous fuels is not the release of CO2 but the large-scale injection of minute particulate pollutants into the atmosphere.

Detailed studies carried out by his research group have revealed that the minute water vapour droplets that form around some carbon particles are so small as to be almost incapable of being subsequently coalesced into larger precipitable drops. In short, the particulates prevent rainfall. Thus, humans are changing the climate in a much more direct way than through the release of CO2.

What seems to be happening is that pollution is seriously inhibiting rain over mountains in semi-arid regions, a phenomenon with dire consequences for water resources in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, including China and Australia.

This and other work is now showing that the average precipitation on Mt Hua near Xi'an in central China has decreased by 20 percent, but rather than "climate change" this is attributable to man-made air pollution during the past 50 years.

The precipitation loss was doubled on days that had the poorest visibility because of pollution particles in the air. This explains the widely observed trends of decrease in mountain precipitation relative to the rainfall in nearby densely populated lowlands, which until now had not been directly ascribed to air pollution.

The work also shows the "frightening persistence and longevity of pollutant trails across vast areas", not least in the Australian Snowy Mountains catchments, where a phalanx of brown coal-burning power stations may have substantially wrecked the natural precipitation processes over the once hydrologically rich Australian Alps.

If Rosenfeld's scientific interpretations are correct, then southern Australia would greatly benefit from the application of his discoveries. At the very least, Rosenfeld's conclusions should be accorded appropriate evaluation and testing by an unprejudiced panel of peers.

The issue here is that targeted measures to limit specific pollution is a common good, and far from being objectionable, is economically as well as ecologically sound. And, by virtue of their very specificity, not only are such measures cheaper than the scatter-gun approach of trying to reduce CO2 measures, their effects are more immediately measurable and there is a true cost-benefit.

However, Schwerdtfeger remarks that the work has so far has been ignored in Australia (and elsewhere) because it does not fit in with the dominant paradigm that holds CO2 responsible for reduced rainfall in semi-arid regions. And thus do the greenies, far from improving the environment, hold back sensible measures and lock us into the tunnel vision of group obsession, perpetuating the very problems they purport to be solving.

Booker and I had a phrase for this ... "the sledgehammer to miss the nut". Perhaps we should take the sledgehammer to the nut(s).

COMMENT THREAD

Ceremonies and traditions

Slithering into The Times today, without so much as a blush, are two of the men who collectively have done more damage to the authority of parliament – and the Conservative Party – than any men alive: John Major and Douglas Hurd.

Writing together – presumably one holding the quill and the other moving his lips – they have the unmitigated gall to offer their collective "wisdom" on how parliament should be reformed, pleading for an end to "frivolous reshuffles and trivia" and calling for "outside talent" to be brought to the dispatch box.

Fortified by collective myopia over their role in the neutering of parliament, having rammed the Maastricht treaty through an unwilling House, amazing they fix only on Gordon Brown's machinations, complaining that his and Labour's activities have weakened parliament. As is common with the Tory tribe, history begins in 1997 and all ills are attributed to the period since.

With the arrogance typical of their tribe, they then make the sweeping assertion that "no one has been speaking up for change to improve the quality of government as a whole," meaning, of course, that they many calls for precisely that have not percolated into their limited, close-minded circle and, because they have only just started thinking in these terms, such a discourse only now exists.

For sure, they are right to complain of the treadmill of ever-changing ministers and the low grade of the same – which indeed they do – condemning the rapid turnover as "frivolous government". But this is from one of the men who, in the dying days of his government launched the "cones hotline".

Perhaps though, Major has noticed the similarity between traffic cones and ministers in that they are both proliferating at an equal rate. Since he complains of there being too many ministers, he might consider calling for a "ministers' hotline" allwoing members of the public to up when they detect an unnecessary minister and have it removed.

That would certainly clear the air for what Major and Hurd regard as an "adventurous experiment" – having the prime minister appoint a small number of unelected ministers of state, who would be answerable to Parliament without being members of either House.

This is, they declare is "a device borrowed from the United States, France and other democracies that practise the separation of powers." It could deepen, they say, the quality of ministerial government without undermining the principle of accountability to Parliament.

Good in principle, needless to say this is only an Elastoplast solution – perhaps the Conservative Party has shares in adhesive bandages, just as it has in wind farms. To make a fist of proper reform, we need to separate ministers – and thus government – from parliament, going the whole hog, rather than trimming round the edges.

But no one could ever accuse either Major or Hurd of thinking things though. Thus we have the usual witless mantra about the Commons re-establishing the ability to scrutinise legislation, both domestic and European. What is the point of scrutinising EU legislation when it cannot be changed and, given that so much is implemented through QMV, cannot even be blocked?

Failing to address this fundamental point, therefore, any other changes are nice, but like this pair – useless. We would agree, for instance, with their ideas on select committees, creating a parliamentary career structure in parallel to the structure of government so that chairmen emerge as nationally known figures. But without addressing the fundamentals, this is only of limited value.

What really then puts the cap on this self-serving tosh, therefore, is the peroration, where they roundly declare: "Those of us who have been privileged to serve Parliament, in both Houses, have a duty to breathe new life back into the ceremonies, traditions and magnificent buildings of which we have been so proud in the past."

Neither were so proud that they were deterred from handing over a huge tranche of powers to the EU, and setting the scene for the further betrayals which have largely been responsible of the neutering of the institution that that the pair claim to have been "privileged to serve".

But, if they are that concerned about "ceremonies" and "traditions", maybe we should bring back another one – the firing squad. Hurd and Major could do no greater service to this country than in allowing us to test it out on them.

COMMENT THREAD

On the brink

At the beginning of last month, the body responsible for tracking global grain production, the International Grains Council (IGC), was comfortably forecasting that increase in global wheat stocks to 171 million tons, bringing them to an eight year high - nine million tons above this year's figure of 162 million tons.

With world wheat consumption for the 2009/10 harvest estimated at 642 million tons and an expected production of 651 million tons, the global food situation looked assured, even if the harvest will be 37 million tonnes below the 2008 record.

However, a mere month later, after a run of bad weather in North America, and prolonged droughts elsewhere in the world, international investors are scenting blood. Even on the current IGC forecasts, this represents a five percent fall in production. Supplies are tight and look to get tighter.

This, though, might be seen as a longer term crisis although, contrasted with the apparent certainty of last month's IGC forecast, one expert was reporting yesterday that "grain markets seem about as clear as mud".

Wheat supplies, currently, are still seen as comfortable, buoyed as they are by expectations of a bumper crop in India and higher than expected forecasts from China, the world's two biggest wheat producers. But the fate of other crops, particularly corn (maize), is already very different.

Here, almost entirely as a result of the late spring and the cool summer, US production is set to fall to 771 down from the peak of three years ago when 788 million tons was produced. Against this, demand driven by biofuel production is soaring, leading to an expected drop in stocks of 21 percent after the 2009/10 harvest period. Significant falls are also expected in other crops, leading to a drop in total grain stocks on the year by about 15 percent.

Another vital crop is soya, where US reserves are likely to fall to a 32-year low, despite rising demand. Here, there is little excess supply to protect against possible crop losses and any hiccup in production in the Northern Hemisphere will be a major problem.

Then there is oilseed rape and adverse weather in the US and Canada is significantly affecting yields, with Canada alone forecasting a drop from 12.6 to 10.2 million tons on the year. Its oat production is expected nearly to halve.

On this basis, although we are not yet faced with a crisis, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation is predicting that food costs will be driven higher by market pressure, exacerbated by the stresses in the energy, financial and currency markets, which makes food commodities "increasingly vulnerable to external shocks."

Moreover, the expert opinion seems to be that current harvest projections are "highly tentative". Given how much the situation has already changed within the space of one month, everything – as always – depends on the weather, which is showing unusual volatility. As a result, global production forecasts for a wide range of crops are being revised monthly and, in many cases, downwards. The soya estimates, for instance, stood at 212.8 million tons a month ago but have now been reduced to 210.9 million tons.

The volatility is especially an issue with with China – the world's biggest wheat producer, which was reporting production problems and a serious winter drought and is even now experiencing extreme weather conditions with less than 60 percent of the wheat harvest in.

Thus do we get Steve Nicholson, a commodity procurement specialist at International Food Products Corp in St Louis. He notes that trend the last several years has been for demand to outstrip global production capacity. He warns that prices will have to stay high to keep farmers planting more to prevent shortages from developing – but that is before even we see weather effects.

Against this obvious fragility of the global food production and supply system, a continuation of the current cooling trend could have catastrophic implications. We are very much on the brink, and only the slightest lurch will send us hurtling over the precipice.

COMMENT THREAD

Being vague

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, lives up to that rhyme again. Before the ending of this parliamentary session he will make a major speech about the changes in foreign policy we are likely to see when he is in place. He does make speeches once every year or so, none of them memorable and all rather vague on matters of reality.

He has given ConHome a taster of what he will say and answered a few questions. Three main changes are being promised:

First, we would create a fully fledged National Security Council, comprising all relevant senior ministers and chaired by the Prime Minister. This would be a decisive break from the sofa style decision making of the last twelve years, which has often led to decisions being made without all the necessary information being considered or understood. Second, we would be firmly opposed to the greater centralisation of power in EU institutions, which reduces democratic accountability in Britain. Third, we would give a greater emphasis than in recent years to the role of the Commonwealth, a unique network covering a quarter of the world's population. These are a few examples but I will be making a major speech defining our whole approach to foreign policy before Parliament rises for the summer recess.

Hmmm. Why do I feel underwhelmed by these ideas? Well, let us have a closer look at them.

Number one is not precisely a policy, more of an administrative arrangement. Creating a National Security Council for no particular reason that I can see is something any Prime Minister and any Foreign Secretary can do at any time without changing or even announcing policies. The two take decisions about foreign policy and whom they consult is entirely up to them.

What of number two? Another Conservative prevarication about the EU, I am afraid. Being “firmly opposed to the greater centralisation of power in EU institutions” is very nice, indeed, but what will they do? Policy implies some action or attempted action and some commitment to a course of those actions.

What will the Conservative government and its Foreign Secretary do to prevent further centralisation of power and what methods will they use to reverse that trend? That is the question Mr Hague ought to be answering; that is the problem he ought to be working on if he wants to be taken seriously as a real Foreign Secretary rather than just a man who will say anything that comes into his head.

Number three may resound with some Conservative core voters but ever fewer, I suspect. What on earth does he mean by giving "a greater emphasis than in recent years to the role of the Commonwealth"? Greater emphasis in what way?

Does he mean that the Commonwealth will put pressure on certain members, such as Zimbabwe to clean up their political act and actually succeed? Because if he believes that I have a very nice bridge I can sell him.

Does he mean some kind of preferential agreements? Apart from the sheer stupidity of that and the unlikelihood of Commonwealth countries changing their trading patterns to suit us (especially as those memories of Britain changing her patterns in the seventies still rankle), there is the minor problem that international trade is EU competence and has been since Britain's accession.

If he is thinking about a defence network then he had better remember that there is this little problem called the United States. At least two important Commonwealth countries, India and Australia, are now major regional powers and have their own agreements and arrangements with the United States. Their interests are in the Pacific Ocean and South-East Asia; their worry is China and its client state, North Korea; their view of the world has little to do with Britain or Europe. Are they really going to change all that and start tugging their forelocks to the British government? I think not.

Does this mean that our future Foreign Secretary really has no idea what foreign policy is or what is going on in the world? I am afraid the rest of the interview, which gives plenty of opportunity for Mr Hague to make rather hackneyed and extremely vague comments about slavery and NATO as well as show his misunderstanding of China merely confirm that. Can't wait for the speech itself.

COMMENT THREAD

The dash for gas …

The BBC reports that a former coal-fired power station in south Derbyshire which closed 10 years ago may be brought back to life. RWE npower is proposing to turn Willington, which originally opened in 1959, into a gas-fired power station.

There had been plans to build up to 1,000 homes on the site, but these have been turned down after seven years of arguments and two public inquiries. Now RWE npower is to hold a series of meetings in the area to see whether residents favour the new proposals.

Behind this is an important but scarcely discussed story. In the absence of a coherent energy policy, and the scandalous waste of resources (and our money) on renewables such as wind-generated electricity, power companies are taking matters into their own hands, and going for the "quick fix" of ramping up gas-powered generation.

As we have reported before, there are serious reservations as to whether a supply of gas can be maintained and, even if it can, there will be a very significant price penalty as more and more nations compete for available supplies, exacerbated by the failure of our plans to increase gas storage. A marker of the gathering crisis comes with reports of massive expansions of natural gas applications in the China market, spurring increased demand for LNG cryogenic storage.

Collectively, over term, the failure of our energy policy is set to cost more than the credit crunch, amounting to as much as £300 billion.

Nevertheless, the additional capacity may be enough to stave off the worst effects of the expected generation shortfall – enough to keep the (domestic) lights burning and thus avoiding the political crisis that would surely arise if the nation was subjected to prolonged power cuts. Not least, helping to contain demand will be the huge number of people on pre-payment meters who drop out of the system because they smply cannot afford to pay, thus saving the energy companies the embarrassment of cutting them off for non-payment.

If we had an adult media, these developments would be subject to intense scrutiny and debate, as the economic cost to the nation will be massive – not least in having to fund the useless network of wind turbines as well as having to provide a parallel system of generation for when the wind does not blow. Equally, our politicians should be raising the alarm.

As always though, such vital issues have been "parked" while the political classes indulge in their never-ending soap operas. Too late will we realise just how badly we are being governed.

COMMENT THREAD

A balanced Booker …

… looks at the EU's unbalanced books through the saga of Marta Andreasen.

But before he gets there, he remarks that "evidence mounts on all sides as to how Britain's standing in the world is in sad decline." Thus, Booker writes:

After 10 years as the world's fourth largest economy, we have now slipped to sixth place behind China and France. In Wednesday's Daily Telegraph, under the heading "The UK will be missed on the world stage", Irwin Stelzer wrote about the failure of our military missions to Iraq and Afghanistan, and lamented Britain's retreat from an effective role alongside our US partners. On the same day, Max Hastings reported a similar story from America itself, where he was shocked to find how far we have lost the respect earned in the days of Mrs Thatcher.

So we come to the Andreasen saga, familiar to most readers of this blog, and for those who need a refresher, Booker's narrative serves as a fresh reminder, trailing the publication of her "shocking new book, published tomorrow, entitled Brussels Laid Bare."

The strap-line, however, for once accurately sums up the message of the column. "EU's former chief accountant has laid bare endemic corruption," it says, "but our own politicians are too emasculated to care."

And that really is the point. Andreasen describes events which started in 2002, with her involvement in the continuing scandal of the EU's unaccountable accounting system. When she began looking at the EU's accounting system, she saw that it was a shambles. Between the 2000 and 2001 accounts, €200 million had gone missing without explanation. She was told these were "loans" which had been "written off". Senior officials were authorised to hand out huge sums without any proper records being kept. Accounts were kept on spreadsheets which could be accessed and changed without leaving any trace of who made the changes.

But, after all these years, nothing has changed, and nothing will change. Andreasen dismisses the EU as "irredeemably corrupt and unreformable." The tragedy is, writes Booker, "that our own politicians are so emasculated, reduced to expenses-fiddling zombies by this strange form of government we now live under, that most neither know nor care."

The expenses controversy is the wrong issue. Even when it is sorted, and a new intake of MPs joins the gravy-train, all nicely house-trained as they line up each Monday to present their chitties in triplicate to the form monitor, so that they can collect their pocket money, we will still be members of an organisation that is "irredeemably corrupt and unreformable" – and we will remain so because our MPs permit it.

The issue is not why are we paying their expenses. The issue is why are we paying their salaries.

COMMENT THREAD

Every silver lining has a cloud

The Daily Mail is in outraged mode at the news that power firms are " handing out energy-saving lightbulbs to dodge their obligation to help families cut carbon emissions."

Local councils, we are told, say the free distribution is part of an "outrageous" attempt by the businesses to shirk their responsibility to install more meaningful energy saving measures in homes.

Thus does Paul Bettison, chairman of the LGA's environment board, say: "The failure of energy companies to really help householders cut their fuel bills is an outrage. Energy suppliers should be filling our lofts and walls with insulation, not filling our cupboards with light bulbs."

That last bit has a personal resonance as we have received so many free lightbulbs under various schemes that we have more than we can possibly use for the next ten years, even supposing we wanted to use the damn things.

But what the Mail doesn't make clear is that this is in response to the government's Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT), part of the deal whereby the energy companies avoided a windfall tax, accepting instead a statutory scheme requiring them to fund domestic energy reductions.

As the Defra website helpfully explains, the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) is a statutory obligation on energy suppliers to achieve carbon targets by encouraging households to take up energy efficiency and low carbon measures.

It is the Government's principal driver of household energy efficiency and carbon reduction. It is open to suppliers how they meet their targets, but they will typically promote subsidised offers on loft and cavity wall insulation, as well as a wide range of high-efficiency lighting, heating systems, appliances and energy saving devices.

But the canny suppliers have found that, simply by putting seemingly endless quantities of lightbulbs in the post to their hapless consumers (who have to pay for them through their bills), they can achieve their notional targets, even though most of the lightbulbs – as we have found – cannot be used and therefore will not deliver any real energy savings.

However, what these bulbs are doing, according to The Times is far from wholesome. In China, it reports, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of "green" lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.

So, one "environmental" policy here leads to an environmental disaster elsewhere. The "silver lining" of largely mythical energy saving creates a dark cloud in China. But, no doubt, the greenies feel that poisoning a few thousand Chinese workers is but a small price to pay for their obsession. Since they are going to end up killing us all, they might as well start with the Chinese.

COMMENT THREAD

Another day … another GBU

On our uniquely "ill-informed" and "out-of-date" blog, we are unable to deal with the real political issues that are so important. Instead, we fritter away our life energy on trivial and inconsequential tat that the media quite rightly discards.

Thus today, we looked at the latest instalment of the venture that is set to cost the British taxpayer some £3 billion this year, fully appreciating that this is of absolutely no interest compared with the pressing issue of today.

Nevertheless, even we raised our eyebrows slightly at the latest available airpower summary from the USAF, which told us of the events in that haven of security and peace that is Lashkar Gah, in Helmand province, Afghanistan, where our blood and treasure are so freely expended.

From this source, we are told that, on 30 April a US Navy F/A-18C Hornet responded during firefights between anti-Afghan forces and combined Afghan national army-coalition units in the vicinity of Lashkar Gah. The jets employed GBU-12s to hit enemy positions in response to their mortar, RPG and automatic weapons fire.

In the same area, a coalition aircraft strafed an enemy improvised explosive device team. The aircraft engaged after detecting anti-Afghan personnel setting up a "daisy-chained," multiple-explosive IED. The aircraft used guns rather than a precision bomb to prevent damage to the roadway.

A Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet executed a show of force over anti-Afghan forces shooting at a coalition unit in order to suppress their fire. When the enemy shooters were not deterred, the jet hit their position using a GBU-38. Some surviving enemy personnel continued firing, but fled after the jet performed an additional show of force.

Of course, "the problem with all information that the military releases to the public, like the US Air Power Summary, is that it does not contain the context necessary to interpret its information appropriately."

For that, one presumes, one must imbibe the latest MoD press releases telling us how wonderful things really are (if there were any). After all, we get Super Hornets screaming up the High Street in Wibsey virtually every day, dropping GBUs and strafing the pub-goers as they spill out onto the road after closing time – so we should not take much notice of these "out of context" reports.

Alternatively, we could rely on another "ill-informed" and "out-of-date" journalist, this one James Palmer writing for the New Jersey Star Ledger newspaper.

Palmer, in fact, is writing what could be taken as an upbeat piece, charting the construction boom in Lashkar Gah. He finds "dozens of sprawling new villas" springing up, each with "gleaming glass windows, wraparound balconies and gabled rooftops that sit behind tiled walls." Then there are, "towering hotels and vast commercial centres, sturdy piles of fresh brick sealed with thick slabs of mortar."

The headline to the piece, however, gives the game away: "In Afghan construction boom, reflections of corruption", it reads. Palmer tells us that town residents and local officials offer two reasons for the boom: drug trafficking and government corruption.

"Many of these new big houses and commercial buildings belong to high-ranking government officials and drug smugglers," says Mohammed Enwar Khan, who heads a group of elders acting as liaisons between residents and the government, commonly known as the provincial council. Khan says the link between their illegal activities and their wealth is an open secret here, saying simply, "Everybody knows this."

Another local, Ramazan, a 48-year-old mechanic, who adds that the drug traffickers and crooked politicians are enriching one another. "Everything here depends on money and power," he says. "The smugglers have the money and the officials have power."

Then we get Sadar Wali, a 30-year-old poppy farmer from Helmand's Nawa district. He offers a sobering explanation of how the Taleban now work: "They tax our crops however much they want by sending notes to the houses," Wali says. "If you don't pay, they will accuse you of spying for or working with government and kill you."

That much and more from Palmer tells you that the glowing picture of "peace and stability" in the so-called "security zones" is an illusion. The Taleban move freely within the town, running extortion rackets, intimidation, murder and kidnap, many of the incidents not crossing the radar of the coalition forces safely ensconced in their fortress on the edge of town.

And of course, as long as the farmers pay their "taxes" to the Taleban, and the drug lords building their new palaces in the town pay their homage, the Taleban do not trouble them. They do not foul their own nest, indulging in their violence out of town where, occasionally, they meet Navy F/A-18E Super Hornets in full flight.

One wonders, incidentally, whether the author is the same James Palmer who last October wrote a piece for The Guardian describing how the once showcase project, the $190m Kandahar to Kabul highway had become the most dangerous stretch of road on the planet.

Government and military officials, recorded Palmer, say insurgents and bandits regularly pull travellers from their vehicles, murdering or kidnapping them for ransoms. Corrupt government security forces seek bribes and collaborate with insurgents and robbers. Roadside bombs frequently target Afghan police and military patrols, along with Nato convoys. No one in an official capacity can even quantify the violence.

Thus, what started as the road to recovery has turned into a highway of terror in Afghanistan. A project that was to bring economic prosperity has become a symbol of failure. The road is littered with burned-out green police pick-up trucks, 4x4 vehicles, Nato supply trucks and demolished bridges.

No doubt Palmer is "ill-informed". His piece is undoubtedly now "out-of-date" and, in any case, to draw any conclusions from his information is to take it "out of context".

Those three descriptors seem to be the layered defence adopted by the military and officialdom. Either the information is wrong in one or other detail, in which case the writer is "ill-informed" and can be ignored. If the information is correct, it can be dismissed as "out-of-date". The situation has moved on, so the information is no longer relevant. Or, failing that, where the information is both correct and relevant, it is "out of context". Then too, it can be ignored.

However, what is interesting about Palmer's road experience is that we have been there before. In a number of remarkable studies of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, one in 1988 and the other in 1995, produced by the US Army, graphic accounts were offered of what the Russians called the "highway war" - dorozhnaia voina.

In these studies, it was reported that the favourite tactic of the Mujahedeen guerrillas was to interdict the movement of troops and supplies of all types over the limited road network throughout Afghanistan. Interestingly, that was also a favourite tactic of the Viet Minh in French Indo-China during the 1950s, with epic convoy battles on the infamous RC4, with accounts chillingly similar to those written by Russian troops twenty years later.

Unsurprisingly, this carried over into the Vietnam conflict with both the Viet Cong and the NVA adopting the same tactics. In 1968, however, after a major loss, it was then realised that, far from being a drag on operations, convoy and route protection should be used as an opportunity to bring the enemy to battle on favourable terms, defeating them in detail in the war of attrition that characterises counterinsurgency operations.

As was later recounted in the current counterinsurgency doctrine, "A change in thinking about a logistic problem converted the perception of convoy operations from an unglamorous defensive activity into a valuable opportunity to offensively engage elusive insurgents."

What is staggering, therefore, is that in 2008, thirty years after the Russian experience, and forty years after US tactics were adjusted to deal with similar threats, our modern, technological, "superbly equipped" coalition forces are still getting caught out.

It is not that the Taleban have suddenly adopted new, especially effective tactics. They are simply doing what the Mujahedeen did before them and, before that, the Viet Cong and the Vietminh. What has changed is that our own forces have forgotten the lessons of their own history, and ignored the lessons and experiences of others, even to the extent – with the Americans – of their ignoring their own doctrine manual.

So it is with the "take and hold" strategy which the British so proudly proclaim and hold up as an example of progress in Lashkah Gar. The Taleban simply move in, in "mufti", change their tactics and prepare to wait for the day when some anonymous bean counter decides that the level of troops is no longer needed. Then, the Taleban, who never left and never changed, simply pick up their weapons and takeover … again.

As we write in our latest response to the troubled "Praetorian", success in dealing with insurgencies comes when people begin to see the balance of advantage in supporting the government as greater than in supporting (or tolerating) the insurgency.

If on the one hand, the people see the coalition forces creating their "security bubbles" in the towns, which merely create the conditions for the drug lords to flaunt their wealth, while the Taleban range freely, practising their extortion, kidnap and intimidation under the noses of the authorities; if the people see that the coalition cannot even protect the main transport routes; and if the people see the rural hinterland become the playground for free-range F/A-18C Hornets and the like, this is not an insurgency which is going to be defeated.

Such is the situation though that any "debate" requires us to agree wholeheartedly with the authorities, otherwise you are branded "negative" and "defeatist". On the other hand, we see political and public disengagement, media indifference, and MoD concealment, plus criminally inept strategy and procurement.

Meanwhile, we have allowed ourselves to become a bit player in our own destiny and our national security is now entirely in the hands of the United States. And their answer is, another day, another GBU – with, all too often, dire results.

COMMENT THREAD

The risk of failure

By linking the final stage of our ignominious retreat from Iraq with a memorial service, honouring the British troops who were killed, the military and government both thereby achieve the effect of blunting criticism of the war.

Any such criticism, especially of the military, can easily be dismissed as heartless or insensitive, given that so many have put themselves in harm's way and many have paid the ultimate price.

Given also that this current government is in a terminal stage of decay, it is thus easier to focus attention on the political failures – of which there were many – staying any criticisms of the military, for fear of offending the sensibilities of those who knew or were related to the fallen.

There is also a strong political element here as well. The manifest failures in Iraq serve as a useful stick to beat the current government and to enjoin the military as partners in a collective failure dilutes the attack on the politicians. It is thus tactically advantageous the position the military as innocent "victims" of political machinations, rather than clinically to apportion blame where it lies.

The fact is though, however much it is spun, the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq was a British failure and the responsibility for that failure lies both with the politicians and the military.

Where exactly that dividing line lies has yet to be determined and it will be many years and take much study and argument before all the issues have been rehearsed and the final resolution reached – if ever. I have made an attempt at an analysis in my book, Ministry of Defeat, due out in June.

In it, I readily acknowledge that, as a second draft of history, it will have flaws, but it is an honest and so far the only attempt to chart the complete history of the British occupation of Iraq.

Of the coverage in the media today, the Evening Standard best cuts through the cant, with a comment piece headed "Our inglorious retreat from Iraq", noting that, even allowing for the professionalism of British forces, innumerable acts of courage on the part of individuals and high aspirations from their commanders, the reputation of the Army has been diminished, not enhanced, in southern Iraq.

This supports a piece by Andrew Gilligan under the title: "The lessons of Basra are: do something properly or not at all". In this piece, however his focus is on the events of Basra, and thus lacks the historical context of the campaign as a whole, where the seeds of defeat were not sown in Iraq's second city but earlier in al Amarah.

Thus does Gilligan aver that Basra was a historic humiliation for the British Army a shaming contrast to the behaviour of the Americans, who also suffered reverses in their sector of Iraq but reinforced, fought back strongly and eventually prevailed.

In this blinkered fashion, he then argues "It wasn't the Army's fault: our soldiers are no cowards. It was the politicians in London who gave up, not the frustrated troops on the ground. Where there is, however, fault on the military side is in their current attempts, publicly at least, to deny the reality of the operation that ended today."

Gilligan is wrong in one sense. It was the Army's fault – in part at least. Although the politicians seen the framework for defeat, the situation up to mid-2006, with inspired leadership and more intelligence and flexibility than was shown, was recoverable.

But where Gilligan is right is in pinpointing the attempts of the military to spin the operation as a success. That denies the opportunity of conducting a frank, open and searching post mortem and thus limits the ability of the military to learn the lessons from its own mistakes – some of which it is currently repeating in Afghanistan.

Acknowledging failure, as Aaron Wildavsky once wrote, allows for the concept of "useful" failure. Citing the engineer Henry Petrovski in his support, in the context of civil engineering disasters, he noted:

...the lessons learned from (those) disasters can do more to advance engineering knowledge than all the successful structures in the world. Indeed, failures appear to be inevitable in the wake of prolonged success, which encourages lower margins of safety. Failure in turn leads to greater margins of safety and, hence, new periods of success.

What applies to engineering applies to the military, as it does all other walks of life. The absence of information on failure leads, in the long run, to increased risk of failure. The risk of failure in the future is too high for us not to acknowledge and learn from the failures of our past.

COMMENT THREAD

A little more detail?

Although the hurly-burly of daily political events dominate the media, as each day passes and the general election comes nearer – with a very good chance that we will see a Conservative administration elected – the views of the various Tory shadow spokespersons become increasingly important.

Thus when on Tuesday last, Liam Fox, our current shadow secretary of state for defence, gave the 2009 "Spring Address" to the Politeia think-tank, it was of some importance. This was also something of a coup for what is one of the lesser known think-tanks, and one for which it should be congratulated.

For Dr Fox, the occasion was an opportunity to set the agenda, with a good platform and a chance to speak on a subject of his choosing, with no interruptions and an attentive audience. And, according to the "label on the tin", Fox chose to address "the problems which politicians must confront when in office",

He thus "singled out the intellectual and cultural trends which often pervade and shape political action," stating that: "even relatively trivial trends can shape law and policy, though they may be contrary to the wishes of the electorate." Then, we are told, Fox put these views in the context of his own portfolio, considering "how such trends currently shape the defence and security policy of the UK and how they can be changed."

It is not a bad theme, although not one I would have chosen or have wished to have heard but, to give it its due, Tory Boy Blog made the best of it and gave a fair summary.

Aspects of the speech were also reported by The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail, these two picking up on a specific point – that the "culture of celebrity" in the UK was one of the several forces "weakening Britain's fortitude".

The general thrust, however, was better summed up by the Tory Boy Blog, which headlined the speech as telling us that "A Britain obsessed with celebrity, indifferent to serious learning and unsure of its values and history risks being unable to defend itself.

Within that context, Fox isolates three "threats" which he believes particularly need addressing, against which we must defend ourselves. One is a resurgent Russia, spending over $200 billion in the next five years upgrading its forces. The next is the world's greatest exporter of terrorism - Iran - which is inching ever closer to becoming a nuclear power. And the third is the ideology of the Islamic fundamentalist, which continues to be spread across the globe.

You can take a view of the importance of these threats. For instance, you could argue that about the threat of Russia $200 billion over five years is actually a relatively small amount of money – less, for instance, than our annual defence budget. Given the very low base from which the Russian military starts, it would not be difficult to maintain that it is vastly overstated.

What might be a little churlish to point out though, is that while the three issues identified may or may not be credible threats, we are a nation at war, fighting (and possibly losing) a vicious counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, a conflict in which Pakistan plays a considerable part.

Strangely though there is absolutely no mention of either country in Fox's speech, even though the prospect of losing in Afghanistan might be considered (or not) to be of some significance. One might also think that this posed something of a threat to the UK – not least in terms of its effect on our standing in the world and our relations with the United States.

One might also expect some mention of the not inconsiderable threat represented by the ambitions of the EU in terms of defence integration, and its steady, insidious subversion of Nato, the latter being the bedrock of our defence strategy. Nevertheless, such considerations evade Dr Fox. And so, it seems, does China.

If one can live with those omissions, however, the measure of the speech should be most fairly judged on how well the author fulfils his own promise, bearing in that he offered not only an analysis of the problems confronting a Conservative defence secretary but also a prescription of "how they can be changed."

Taking Fox at his own valuation, we see that he tells us that, "Immersing ourselves as a society in celebrity headlines and trivia and pretending the dangers don't exist would be irresponsible." That is fine, as far as it goes, even if one might raise that little quibble about whether the key threats have been identified.

Then we get the injunction that, "Politicians need to be frank with themselves and with the public about the risks we face." That too is fine, a rounding declaration of "motherhood and apple pie". And then … Fox offers us the view that:

Both politicians and the media need to get away from the bad habit of saying what people want to hear and tell people what they need to hear because they are going to have to confront the inevitable. As a society we have to find the resilience to deal with the challenges of our generation as previous generations dealt with theirs.

This brings us to his finale, on a subject of his choice, where Fox had complete discretion as to what he said. And so we get:

We can begin by understanding who we are and what brought us to where we are before we lose our hard won gains. To shape the world or be shaped by it? That, indeed, is our question.

So, if we look at the "label on the tin", which did promise us an analysis of "how such trends currently shape the defence and security policy of the UK and how they can be changed," we have to ask ourselves whether the promise was delivered.

Looking at what we have been told, it seems that our aspirant defence secretary is telling us that we need to understand "who we are and what brought us to where we are before we lose our hard won gains." Then we must, it seems, ask ourselves whether we wish "to shape the world or be shaped by it".

Once more, one can take a view as to whether Fox's analysis is worthwhile, but we can also suggest that, in terms of telling us how "trends currently shape the defence and security policy of the UK" and how things "can be changed", Dr Fox seems a little light on detail.

Thus, since Fox is in a questioning mood, perhaps we can offer our own question. Would it be untoward, we could ask, to expect from a shadow defence secretary just a little more detail as to how he would manage his portfolio when or if he came to assume the office of defence secretary? Or, quite possibly, you may consider that unreasonable.

My thanks to Politeia for a transcript of the speech and the photograph.

COMMENT THREAD

Turn your back for one moment …

… and they'll come out with another "daft" idea, this one suggesting that British naval bases should be handed over to Brussels.

The story comes from Justin Stares via Lloyds List, a usually reliable source, also copied out in The Daily Mail, which runs the item big.

The idea is that British (and other member states) naval bases around the world should be at the service of the European Union to protect shipping lanes. For Britain, that would include our bases in Gibraltar, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands, set up as part of an EU "forward presence" for securing vital trade routes.

Actually, this is something and nothing. It is in a report commissioned by the EU parliament's subcommittee on security and defence, written by two UK-based academics, James Rogers and Luis Simon. It suggests that these installations would provide a formidable asset for the geographical and functional expansion of "EU Grand Strategy".

Trade lanes can be secured only if the far-flung bases belonging to the two main European naval powers are put to common use, the report argues: "As the world moves towards a dynamic multipolar system and US relative maritime power declines as powers like China and India rise, there is a growing and compelling need for Europeans to take responsibility for the Sea Lines of Communication that link them to the farthest corners of the world, particularly those most vital to European trade and security."

Geoffrey Van Orden is on the case, dismissing the report as "among the most hubristic proposals the EU has yet produced in support of its defence policies." He says he has criticised the EU's military operations as mere exercises in sticking an EU badge on our soldiers' arms. Now they want to run up the EU flag on our ships and even our overseas territories."

And there the matter will rest – for the moment. It has no legislative status and is not even a formal EU proposal. But, in the history of the institution, the EU parliament is often used as a sounding board, testing the water, so to speak, to see whether an idea will fly.

It also points to the direction of travel, confirming the long-range intention to integrate the whole of the member states' defence capabilities, no matter how long it takes.

With the focus on G20 and the economic crisis, the idea will quickly disappear from public view, but it will not go away, any more than the idea floated by the commission that in future the EU should represent member states on institutions such as the IMF. This, Bruno Waterfield tells us, is the EU's price for an agreement at the G20 summit.

Nor will the idea, now well advanced, that there should be a stronger EU level telecommunications regulator. This has now been agreed by the EU parliament and member states, bringing into action in 2010 a new agency which will have the power to reverse decisions made by national telecommunications regulators in the EU – particularly on network access and pricing.

The Naval Base idea gets the attention because it is novel and outrageous. But it will be a long time in the future before it comes to pass. The IMF idea and the telecoms super-regulator are equally outrageous, but so technical and boring are they that they will be given little attention – even of they are also just as dangerous.

Thus, while we each focus on our own pre-occupations, the EU marches on unabated, watched by the likes of the invaluable Open Europe which each day brings us a fraction of the torrent.

It is difficult enough keeping track of what our puppet government is doing. With a supreme government over in Brussels, dipping its oar into virtually every aspect of our lives, it is impossible to pick up everything.

And that is another reason why we have to get out of the EU. The sheer scale of the operation and its interests defy any effective monitoring. Every time you turn your back, it comes out with another "daft" idea... and most of them get implemented.

COMMENT THREAD

The little picture

You can be terribly grand and go for the "big picture", as your canvas on which to portray your world view. But sometimes, the "little picture" is just as revealing. Let me take you through a sequence. First, we see an extract from the The Sunday Times (review section) today:

Next day, the eve of the Musa Qala operation, Jonno tried to fit Kevlar armour plates to the seat of his Vector armoured vehicle. But once they were in place he couldn’t get in with his helmet and kit on. Everyone hated the design of the Vectors. They had a crucial design flaw that made the driver or front passenger (usually the vehicle commander) particularly vulnerable to being killed if the vehicle struck a mine. "It's an absolute death trap. I don’t feel safe in this," said Jonno.

"You've just to get on with it," he was told. Everyone knew the problem all too well.

Sergeant Lee "Jonno" Johnson was killed in a Vector in December 2007, blown apart by a mine. He was not the only one. And it was not as if the MoD was not warned. Let us go back to the Booker column for 29 October 2006 based on information supplied by this blog. Headed: "Our troops will patrol in 'coffins on wheels'". It read:

At the heart of the disaster gathering round Britain's military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is the fact that our Government has in each case sent an inadequate number of troops, hopelessly ill-equipped for the job they faced.

Nothing brings this home more cruelly than the rising number of soldiers who have died because the Ministry of Defence failed to provide them with patrol vehicles properly protected against mines and roadside bombs.

Last week Dutch troops in Afghanistan were supplied with the first of 25 mine-protected Australian Bushmasters, costing £271,000 each.

This means that every other Nato contingent, American, Canadian, German, French and Dutch, now has mine-protected vehicles, but not the British, who still patrol in wholly unsuitable Snatch Land Rovers, like the one destroyed by a suicide bomber in Helmand 10 days ago, in which yet another British soldier died, with a second seriously injured.

The MoD says it will soon be equipping our troops with Pinzgauer Vectors. These are known as "coffins on wheels" because they are in some respects even more vulnerable than the Land Rovers; not least because the driver is sitting right over the wheels when a mine strikes, and because the nature of their armour is such as to confine the effects of a blast within the vehicle, probably killing all inside.

Yet each Vector costs £487,000, nearly twice as much as a Bushmaster. In other words, we are spending a great deal more money to give our men even less protection.

When our Armed Forces minister, Adam Ingram, was asked on October 18 by Mike Hancock, a Lib Dem MP, what risk assessments had been carried out on the Vector, he would only reply condescendingly that "we do not comment on the details of our vehicles' protection levels".

The Tory spokesman Gerald Howarth, on the other hand, far from recognising the shortcomings of the Pinzgauer, is pictured giving it a glowing testimonial on the makers' website.

Why is this national scandal not on the front page of every newspaper in the land?

More to the point, what were the MPs doing about it? Well, as we know, the Defence Committee eventually got round to asking about the Vector, last year. But there was no mention of the "crucial design flaw". However, in his defence, the committee chairman, James Arbuthnot tells us this:

Nobody had told us as a committee - or so far as I know as individuals - that there were any problems with the Vector, even though we had been going to Iraq and Afghanistan on regular visits and asking about the kit and whether there were any problems. Therefore we had nothing to prompt us to pursue it as an issue.

As for having a proper inquiry about mine protected vehicles, well says Arbuthnot, "We are at the moment choc-a-bloc with inquiries". The sub-text is, of course, that his committee of important MPs is far too er … important to look at unimportant things like saving soldiers' lives. And, in any case, nobody told them nuffink.

They are, needless to say, far too grand to read blogs which might tell them something that they didn't know. Gerald Howarth, for instance, tells us his diary is far to full to allow him the time to read blogs … although we know he is very familiar with Conservative Home, but then that is a political site, whereas we don't do politics.

But, if the Defence Committee owes us an explanation, there are the cohorts of Labour MPs who are equally useless, a subject further explored in today's Sunday Times. In the Atticus column, headed: "The devil may make some work for idle MPs to do", we read:

You'd think MPs would have a lot on their plates at the moment (fine china plates, let's not forget, available on expenses from John Lewis). The government is trying to wrestle the economy to the ground, we're still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Harriet Harman is absolutely not positioning herself for a crack at the Labour leadership.

But according to Tory Nadine Dorries, MPs are bored and don't have enough to do. "We have a bit of a problem here in Westminster," she says. "The business is sterile – that makes for lots of bored MPs."

She blames the prime minister for avoiding issues that might be controversial or would draw attention to government incompetence (which, let's face it, is pretty much everything).

But is that wise, Gordon? "Experience shows that bored Labour MPs are like naughty little schoolboys. And irritable, naughty little boys tend to look around for stones to throw, things to break and new friends to play with."

Now look at this, a debate initiated by Ann Winterton, on the design of military vehicles. Ann was there. The minister was there – because he had to be. And how many "bored" MPs were there, from either party? We can certainly reliably inform you that Nadine Dorries was not.

Interestingly, my piece on parliament as a failed institution did not exactly set the world alight. Too few people actually understand the nature of the problem, but of the political claque, many like it the way it is. It is much easier to report and enjoy the soap opera than get stuck in with hard-edged, detailed scrutiny, which actually requires some research and a great deal of effort.

Thus we turn to another bit of the "little picture", with this in the letter column of The Sunday Telegraph today, from Timothy Stroud of Salisbury in Wiltshire. He writes under the heading, "No laughing matter":

David Cameron warned last week that a full-scale depression is on the cards, marking some sort of turning point for the Tories. They would improve their respectability still further if, when we look at BBC Parliament to watch debates, we did not regularly witness giggling on the Tory front bench as they pull faces at the Government.

Some shadow cabinet members seem to believe they are starring in a live comedy show, judging by the way they act in parliamentary debates. The Tories won't find things so funny if they win the next election and have to face up to the grim realities of three million unemployed or the sad fact that the shadow Treasury team appears out of its depth.

This is not the first time this has been noted and we have made the same point. They giggle while our troops die, because they, like their fellow travellers on the opposite benches, are too idle to do their jobs.

And that, folks, is real politics – which is why nobody is interested. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some work to do.

COMMENT THREAD

Enterprise and industry

"Medical trials red tape costing lives" complains The Daily Telegraph, doing something useful for once … like reporting the news instead of garbage on "climate change".

It is conveying the views of Professor Rory Collins, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at University of Oxford and his colleagues, who tell us that increasing bureaucracy was making it harder for scientists to carry out clinical trials, especially large-scale experiments involving teams from more than one country. The problem, we are told, has led to a drift of trials from Britain to countries like China.

The nearest thing the paper can get to admitting EU involvement, however, is the weak as ditch water label of "European red tape". It really can't cope with the idea that this is an EU directive. Why do they have to treat us like morons?

As they go – being a connoisseur of such things - this is a beauty. We are talking here of Directive 2001/20/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 April 2001 on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States relating to the implementation of good clinical practice in the conduct of clinical trials on medicinal products for human use.

You have to give it to the EU commission – they really know how to go for snappy titles.

Anyhow, this nightmare creation had Prof Collins declaring that, "At the moment people are dying unnecessarily because of the way in which the bureaucracy is working is preventing us from getting the information that we need to save lives." He calls for a "risk based" approach which would apply less stringent criteria to trials involving aspirin as those on entirely new drugs.

Collins adds: "The hugely increased bureaucratic burden over the last several years has made it more difficult [to do trials] and inadvertently is killing people."

Thus, hackette Kate Devlin, styled as the "Medical Correspondent", tells us that the "increased red tape" means that all drugs now have to be marked with the individual patient's name, even if they can already be bought over the counter in chemists, at greater expense, especially in trials involving tens of thousands of patients.

Trial co-ordinators, we also learn, are also expected to travel to individual clinics more often to monitor their work, despite evidence that it has no effect on how closely they follow procedures.

Then we get Professor John Bell, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, warning that Britain now faces "serious obstacles" maintaining its position as a leading research centre.

Here, little Kate Devlin misses a trick. This directive is having a devastating effect on an industry worth more than £12 billion annually, directly employing nearly 60,000 people. And it is brought to us by that wonderful part of the EU commission which calls itself DG Enterprise and Industry.

You could not, as they say, make it up, especially when you read this drivel.

COMMENT THREAD