CentreRight

A thought for Remembrance Sunday

"For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag."

(Zell Miller, 2004).

Is Big Media losing us the Afghan War?

Posted by Bob Seely.

 

It’s easy to blame the messenger for bad news, and there’s certainly a long and ignoble history of politicians attacking reporters and media organisations for telling difficult truths. But I wonder if we have now moved to a new era when the media are as responsible for mistruths as politicians. I ask because although the media is meant to reflect reality, I wonder how accurate their reporting is of Afghanistan? I have some doubt, and it is based on experience.

 

When I was in Iraq, even a year after it was clear that the Coalition and the Iraq authorities had defeated the insurgency, journalists still arrived in theatre with the assumption that we were beaten (the role of the UK in SE Iraq is debateable, but that’s not the point here). Some reporters had real difficulty accepting victory. It was almost an inverse of traditional war journalism. Through most of the modern era, journalists assumed ‘their’ side was winning unless it was undisputedly obvious that it wasn’t. In the final two years of the Iraq War, the opposite took place – an assumption of failure even when it was clear that the insurgency was spent.

 

I’m still trying to work out the reasons for this: the lazy, soft-left assumption that the Iraq Government was a Western stooge, a bitter resentment of George Bush, a breakdown of relations between the MoD and the media, or just a legacy of the previous Iraq reporting. Whatever it was, some in the media acted as if they resented the fact that ‘their’ side had won. More broadly, I wonder if journalists now have an addiction to disaster. Watch TV news nowadays and almost every story is reduced to a ‘catastrophe’ or ‘tragedy,’ no matter how parochial the story or how few people are involved. If journalists can’t wallow self-indulgently in mawkish sentimentality the story is hardly worth bothering with. Straight reporting seems to be a dying art.

 

Icelandic support for EU membership hits rock bottom

As Daniel Hannan predicted back in August, support for the Icelandic Government's application for European Union membership is falling faster than a piece of molten rock discharged by the Hekla Volcano.

The proportion of Icelandic voters favouring accession has fallen precipitously from its peak of 64% in the midst of the March 2009 bank collapse to only 29% today. Indeed, the 29% figure registered this week indicates the lowest proportion of pro-EU voters for more than half a decade.

While the Icelandic government is yet to announce the date for the country's accession referendum it strongly appears as if the attempts of Johanna Sigurdardottir's leftist coalition to subsume their country into the European Union are headed the same way as Norway's 1972 and 1994 applications: defeat at the hands of the people.

A Politics of Wilberforce on Remembrance Day

As we mark Remembrance Sunday once again, let us not simply remember those soldiers who gave their lives in war, important though that is, especially to their loved ones. Let us also remember what they gave their lives for - and let us strive to make our politics worthy of their sacrifice.

I have just re-watched the film Amazing Grace, for the umpteenth time, and once again am challenged, inspired, motivated and broken by it. I have devoted my life over the past decade or more to the struggle for human rights in various countries - Burma, East Timor, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, The Maldives, China and North Korea are just some. I have been enormously privileged to see witness some extraordinary victories of freedom over oppression, in East Timor and the Maldives in particular, and have had the opportunity to make a small contribution to those struggles. Yet with Burma, Pakistan, and North Korea in particular there is so, so much more to do. Watching Amazing Grace, and at the same time remembering the sacrifice of our troops in wars against tyranny and for freedom - the First and Second World Wars, the Falklands, the first Gulf War, the second Iraq war and Afghanistan - I realise once again how little I have done, how much time and money I have squandered on trivialities, and how much others have given for the cause of liberty. I wept as I reflected on the state of my own heart and priorities as I rewatched Amazing Grace, and I resolved to redouble my efforts.

The BNP have stolen BarackObama.com

It's an extraordinary rip-off. The racist BNP has copied so many features for its new website from the website of America's first black President. Look at the colour scheme, the positioning of the horizontal menu bars, the donate button, the YouTube video in the right hand column...

Please digg the story up and Tweet, Tweet.

PS The disgraceful use of Winston Churchill by the BNP has been attacked by the great Prime Minister's grandson, Nicholas Soames MP.

Faith and politics

Once again David Cameron has shown his refreshing human-ness and thoughtfulness, this time in yesterday's Evening Standard. Those who dismiss him as simply a 'pr' man are wrong. He speaks with a simple honesty unusual for a party political leader and prospective Prime Minister. Despite his wealthy background, he has a remarkable ability to connect with people and to come across as a down-to-earth guy we can all relate to. The contrast with the current Prime Minister is as stark as chalk and cheese.

The whole interview is fascinating, but I found David Cameron's remarks about faith especially interesting and encouraging. Despite our increasingly secular society, with the rise of militant secular fundamentalism as big a concern as militant religious fundamentalism, people do want to know what makes our political leaders tick. We want to know not just their policies, but their values, their character and their worldview. If faith is a component of that worldview, however large or small, I think we'd be interested in knowing about it. Not in an on-the-sleeve emotional tele-evangelist way, but in a simple, honest, understated, thoughtful but direct way. Equally, if someone has no faith, let them be honest and direct about it. And if they have faith but mixed with doubt, which if we are honest is the position of most believers, let's hear about that.

I have often thought that the difference between British and American politics is that, in Alistair Campbell's infamous words, we "don't do God" and the Americans "do God" too much. So while in Britain, Tony Blair looked disgusted when asked by Jeremy Paxman whether he and George W Bush prayed together, in America, one-time Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean felt he had to talk about his faith more than he had previously done and was caught out when asked what his favourite book in the New Testament was. Dean said the Book of Job. God is politicised and, by some people, hijacked in America - while in Britain God is generally abandoned and derided. In America, if you are a politician without faith or with a faith that was previously understated, hesitant, quiet, you need to conjure one up quickly for public consumption if you are to have any chance of success. In Britain, it had seemed, you need to keep it quiet, as if it were something you did in the privacy of your bedroom and found rather embarrassing to admit. Both extremes are very unhealthy.

Will we all be up for Ed Balls?

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure to spend the day in Yorkshire with our excellent Parliamentary Candidate for Morley & Outwood, Antony Calvert. Antony is a former local councillor and attended a local comprehensive in the constituency, and is dedicated to representing his local area in Parliament. He is up against Ed Balls, who defends a notional majority of 9,784, and yesterday I thought I would take a look at how this key race is shaping up.

I think our chances here are very good. Antony is an "über-local", and talks eloquently and well about the challenges facing the local area. He lives and breathes Morley and Outwood. Balls, meanwhile, has suffered from being first elected only in 2005, but being parachuted into a top job almost straight away into the Cabinet. This means that he is both well known (even notorious, as we shall see) but equally never seen in Morley & Outwood. The new seat is actually mainly from Colin Challen MP's current constituency, who has been forcibly stood down to make way for Balls. Further, Balls could make a claim to be from Norwich, or Nottingham or even the Oxford University Conservative Association (and hence the FCS), but definitely not Yorkshire. And worth noting, in the last local elections in May 2008, Labour came fourth, behind the Conservatives, the BNP and the Morley Borough Independents. So we have a lot of cause for optimism.

We were hard pressed to find anyone with a good word to say for Balls. Antony Calvert and I visited various local schools, thinking here at least there might be someone who had a good word to say for the Secretary of State for Education. We met plenty of good heads, good teachers and enthusiastic pupils. But we didn't meet anyone who liked Ed Balls. The head teacher of a large local comprehensive, Rodillian School (outside of which Antony Calvert and I are pictured, at the very top), said he wanted "more independence for schools", and wanted "schools to be left alone", and pleaded for "no more reams of initiatives". He was scornful of the National Challenge, a government flagship initiative to turn around lagging schools. He felt that national government was trying to steal the praise for his own achievements, in return for a small extra grant.

Another head, who is best not named for obvious reasons, introduced me and Antony Calvert to his sixth formers, many of whom will be able to vote for the first time in 2010, urged them to vote, but for anyone "other than that dreadful Ed Balls".

The head teacher of the independent day school, Silcoates (with Antony and I, above left), gave me an astonishing heap of documentation which he is required to complete to satisfy Ed Balls's Independent Schools Inspectorate. The surveys were depressing. There was a self-assessment survey inviting the head to rank his own health & safety measures on a scale from excellent to unsatisfactory. There was even a self-assessment form for himself, to rank the leadership of the school from excellent to unsatisfactory. As the Head put it to me, "if the leadership here were unsatisfactory, then we would be out of business". Presumably, this would be long before any DCSF bureaucrat had digested the self-assessment form.

So even the people who might be expected to know him best had little to commend in Ed Balls. I would urge any ConHome readers, if you are looking for an exciting challenge in the coming election, then why not go and help Antony Calvert in Morley and Outwood. You can contact him here. Or join his famous "Balls out for a tenner" campaign, which was a conference hit this year.

You never know, in future years, the question might just be "were you up for Ed Balls?"  

David Cameron at the British Curry Awards

On the eve of his speech announcing a new policy on Europe this week, David Cameron found himself as guest of honour at no less an event than the 2009 British Curry Awards.

And whilst I imagine there were indeed other things on his mind on Tuesday night, he still showed up for the event, attended by over 1,600 people (including yours truly), all of whom were treated to a sumptuous feast of the finest curry.

Mr Cameron gave a speech in which he congratulated the enterprising spirit of the thousands of people who serve the culinary delights of the Indian sub-continent in their restaurants in Britain - as well as praising their sense of community and family. He also noted that their integration into British society was a signal to the likes of the BNP that Britishness cannot be defined by skin colour.

In the photo above, the Tory leader is pictured at the dinner with Sari-clad Westminster North PPC, Joanne Cash, and St Albans MP, Anne Main, who is chairman of Conservative Friends of Bangladesh.

The honourable resignation of Dan Hannan

I am delighted with David Cameron's new European policy. A Sovereignty Act making British law supreme is vital. A commitment to ignore the ratchet clause and subject every new power grab to a referendum is wonderful. Renegotiation of the various areas where Lisbon has gone too far is very important. I take the Ben Brogan view of this, not the Tim Montgomerie one.

That said, our party has always been a broad tent and others disagree. The resignation of Dan Hannan from the European front bench is a pity. When Dan joined Twitter, I saw leftwingers warning each other of the dangers of 'Hannanism'. He's a major figure, pretty young to have his own "--ism". For some time now, not least in his book "The Plan", Dan has concentrated on the idea of direct democracy - local devolution of power and referendums not just on Europe, but on many measures. In this, as in his ideas on the NHS, I disagree with him. I think direct democracy is paralyzing, and referendums should only be used on measures of supreme constitutional importance. But that's not the point.

The point is, as Labour are so desperate to cry "Tory splits", that this is how a principled resignation is done. Since Dan believes we must have a post-Lisbon referendum (whereas I am quite content with a manifesto commitment) he has resigned from the European front bench. In his resignation, Dan goes out of his way to defend David Cameron's full-throttle fight to prevent the Lisbon treaty being ratified. He states that he will not be talking to the press any further. And, crucially, in his Telegraph column today, he states that this week he will be in Sussex, campaigning hard for a David Cameron win at the general election.

I'm sorry that Dan felt the need to resign. But I respect immensely the sobriety and loyalty with which he has done so. He knows that we need to see David Cameron in number 10. He is fighting for a Conservative government, just as hard as I am. I hope that a forthcoming Sovereignty Act and victories around the negotiation table (and remember, the accession protocol was mentioned as a bargaining chip) will give him some comfort. In the meantime, Dan Hannan is giving no comfort to the enemy, whether Labour or UKIP. Some posters on ConHome could learn a lot from him.

Are we about to get a by-election in South Shields?

By Jonathan Isaby

I have just heard via a usually very good source that David MIliband is now poised to stand down as MP for South Shields and cause a by-election in order to take up the EU "Foreign Minister" job created by the Lisbon Treaty.

Will let you know if I hear any more...

The triumph of Euroscepticism

November 4th 2009 marked the triumph of Euroscepticism.

I have been a Eurosceptic since the late 1980s.  I remember challenging Leon Brittan in 1989, asking him what an entity with its own Executive, civil service, legal space, Parliament and supreme court was supposed to be if not a state.  If it waddled like a duck and quacked like a duck, I said, it was probably a duck.  I made my first speech against the Single European Currency in 1991.  Throughout the 1990s I argued in favour of Euroscepticism, that we should be in Europe but not run by Europe.  After Maastricht I was in favour of renegotiation.  Neither of these views was code for anything.  My belief in renegotiation was not code for "get out of Europe".  My belief in "in Europe but not run by Europe" was not code for "join the Single European State by stealth".  I was a Eurosceptic.

Back then, from the late 1980s through the 1990s Eurosceptics of my complexion wanted Britain to remain part of the European Union but not to participate in the Single European State.  To deliver on this we sought three key things:

1. That Britain's membership of the European Union should be clarified as an international agreement of a sovereign state, not the pooling of sovereignty into a newly sovereign entity of Europe.  We thus did not object in principle to the UK's membership of either the trading agreement or the other aspects of the European Union that represented participation in an international agreement.  (Of course, we each disagreed with a number of details of the arrangement, such as aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy, but these were matters of detail, of implementation, of policy not of principle.)
2. That Britain should state that it would not join the Single European Currency, the scope of which was always going to constitute the scope of the Single European State.
3. That Britain should have no participation in any future aspect of the European Union encompassing criminal law.

Today, this concept triumphed in the Conservative Party.

Inside the North Korean Gulag

It is not every day that you meet a person who has had all their fingernails pulled out, their bottom teeth bashed out, and has been hung with their arms tied behind their back for up to 12 hours, their feet suspended above the ground and their chest bursting from the strain. Nor is it often that we meet someone who has witnessed people suffering such extreme starvation that they resorted to fighting over bits of corn in dogs' faeces. I have, however, spent the past two days taking two North Korean defectors around London. They had both been jailed in North Korea's infamous gulags - and, remarkably, survived to tell their story.

Both The Times and The Guardian have run pieces today about Guang il-Jung and Lee Sung Ae, after a visit to London organised by Christian Solidarity Worldwide in which they met senior officials at the Foreign and Commonwealth office, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister David Lidington MP and the Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Tony Baldry. They also addressed a meeting in Parliament hosted by Baroness Cox and the All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea.

The courage these two individuals have shown in escaping, at huge risk, and telling their story is extraordinary. And the examples they gave of the North Korean regime's brutality are truly unbelievable. Lee Sung Ae said that among her fellow prisoners was a person who was jailed simply because he had rolled a home-made cigarette using a bit of used newspaper which happened to have a small photograph of the "Dear Leader", Kim Jong-il on it. She said food rations in the gulag were so bad that at least 30 people died every day, and the survivors resorted to opening the mouths of corpses to see if there was any unswallowed left-over food in them. When Guang il-Jung went into the gulag, he weighed 71 kilos. When he came out, he was 34 kilos. For the very sick, veterinaries, not medical doctors, were assigned to provide treatment. When asked how a vet could treat a human being, prisoners were told "you're not human beings, you're animals".

Newsnight brings balance to its Politics Pen

Welll done Newsnight. Its old four person Politics Pen was - I complained - hugely imbalanced.

No apology was ever made but out go Deborah Mattison and Greg Dyke and in comes the Wall Street Journal's Patience Wheatcroft and a tax professor I've never heard of.  They now sit alongside Matthew Taylor and Digby Jones. Much more balanced.

Another dismal day for parliament

Listening to some of the early responses to the Kelly Report fills me only with a mixture of disbelief and deep foreboding. The campaign from certain quarters of the House of Commons to dilute its headline proposals betrays a continued failure to appreciate the scale of public anger at the perception that the parliamentary allowances system has been subverted to maximise MPs’ personal enrichment.

Whilst I accept that the Kelly proposals throw up anomalies and inconsistencies bordering on injustice for some MPs, I believe that they should be accepted swiftly and in their entirety.

Eurosceptics should give Cameron a blank cheque for the right policy on Europe

Today is the day that the future of the Conservative Party and of the United Kingdom will be decided. It may sound slightly dramatic, but it's true. It's a curious fact of history that so often the biggest events and grandest changes both good and bad were caused by the smallest of events and most seemingly insignificant or minor of inspirations. James Watt created the steam engine after watching a kettle, the Iron Curtain began to crumble due to a picnic, Robert the Bruce fought on after watching a spider, and the First World War began after a single shot. The impact of events is impossible to calculate accurately at their contemporary time. Today no bullets will be fired nor any picnics held. Many kettles are likely to be boiled as the details of policy are worked and reworked and reworked again, but they are likely to be electric. We can but hope that Conservative Central Office is suffering an invasion of inspirational Arachnida, because fight on they must. Today we will find out what "not letting matters rest" means. This is the moment when David Cameron decides the future route - towards Europe, or towards independence - and whom he wishes to do battle with - a winnable fight with Brussels, or an unwinnable fight with his own party, and indeed his own country. The EU has now gone too far, there is no getting beyond that. Lisbon cannot be undone. Renegotiation will only be meaningful if it involves the negotiation of some alternative form of membership, an affiliation or alliance perhaps, where we trade freely and can tag-along when we want, back them up when we want, but decide things ourselves but most of all always speak for and represent ourselves. This leads to an enhanced "In/Out" referendum worded correctly, offering the choice between the EU and this suitably possitive "fluffy sounding" trade area slash peace pact - as I discussed in an earlier article - as now being the only option. (A manifesto pledge would be fine also, as it's the ends that matter and not the means, but a referendum might keep the vocal Euro-Nationalist minority a bit more quiet). In return for this, I am without doubt, all Eurosceptics should give Cameron a blank cheque with regards everything else. Modernisation, governance, all women shortlists, even new grammar schools - and I went to one and think they are brilliant - are nothing compared to this. The issue is now so important, so vital, and such a cross roads in our history, that nothing else matters.

A post-ratification referendum is essential for a meaningful Tory policy

I have already made it clear that the Tories broke this ultimate promise. The voters will not stand for it. Any Tory politician worth his salt won’t stand for it.

There is a great precedent in the United Kingdom to issuing a referendum now. There is no difference in political principle or in law between what happened in the post-ratification referendum of 1975 on the then European Community and the granting of a referendum following the EU-wide ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The mere transition of the Treaty to a post-ratification stage is being used as a poor excuse by the Tory leadership to get out of dealing with Europe at all.

But don't ask me if it bothers others. See the comments published on this blog:

The path of least distraction

So, there is to be no referendum on Lisbon, but instead the Party will simply seek a manifesto mandate to renegotiate.  So far so good.  But in a ToryDiary this morning we read the following near-quote from a frontbencher:

We can spend the next few years as a government devoting those hours to cutting the deficit, delivering world class schools and hospitals and rebuilding our inner cities. Or we could spend those hours on a war with Europe. A war that we probably can't win.

The thought underlying this quote appears to be that the path of least distraction is the path that does not involve a "war with Europe".  And I suspect that this is the thinking of a number of people close to Cameron.  Their priorities are the deficit, the broken society, and Gove's schools policy.  They fear that a struggle with the EU would derail the Cameron administration and create splits in the Conservative Party.  So, what they may have in mind is to find a few token aspects of our relationship with the EU - perhaps some aspects of the social chapter as was - in the hope that that might placate the Eurosceptics so that they can concentrate on the "really important" issues.

Let's set aside the question of whether these other issues are really more important than our position within the EU.  Let us also set aside the question of to what extent we could really hope to deal with these other issues, in the long term, without dealing with our relationship in the EU.  Let's just focus on the narrow tactical question: is it really true that the path of least distraction here is that involving the minimum of renegotiation?  For I believe that's false.  I believe that the sure way for Cameron's administration to be derailed and for there to be splits on Europe would be for Cameron not to seek a proper, genuine renegotiation of our role within the EU.

Lee Rotherham: Life after Klaus-trophobia

By Lee Rotherham

Brussels orbiters are having their moment of triumph. Recent vitriolic attacks on the Czech President by the Left and by continental integrationists have told us more about the commentators than the man himself.  The Bohemians on both sides have proved their true worth.

There is perhaps an element of symmetry in the last redoubt against the EU Constitution centring on Prague Castle. During the Convention on the Future of Europe long years ago, when the text was first being carved, amongst the doughtiest  of delegates defending the principles of the nation state were the ODS representatives, both in the main debate as well as in the youth convention.

Events have now moved on. The bastion behind the White Mountain has now fallen, and with it the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect.

Many Eurosceptics will be despondent. The enactment of Lisbon means that the renegotiation process, begun at Laeken in 2001, comes to a close and a new chapter opens up based on a new acquis.
We cannot delude ourselves with the insane pretence that European integration has now reached its natural limit; nor even that we are now perched at the high water mark of the current tidal flow. The coming months, starting with the European Diplomatic service, will see the reinvigoration of the Brussels centralisers, whose one reticence – that of disconcerting an electorate – will now be removed.

Paul Goodman MP: A note of scepticism about Open Primaries

By Paul Goodman MP

Last Saturday, Wycombe Conservatives selected the excellent Steve Baker as their general election candidate at a meeting attended by local Association members only.

Perhaps this moves me to explain why Conservatives should look at open caucuses, and even open primaries, with a sceptical eye.

My line of thinking is as follows:

• In the British political tradition, the Executive and Legislature overlap.  So if the Party can form a government, some Conservative candidates, after election to the Commons, become Ministers, and some don’t.  Let’s call the first group Future Ministers and the second Local Champions.
• The gifts required of Future Ministers and Local Champions diverge.  Both need energy, enthusiasm, commitment - and come in all shapes and sizes.  But effective Local Champions must have a deep affection for their constituency and be diligent and determined on behalf of their constituents: these are basic requirements.  Efficient Ministers must be able to manage and negotiate a Department, colleagues, interest groups and voters in such a way as to achieve political goals: this calls for a different set of skills.
• Many Commons Ministers are effective Local Champions.  But – crucially – a smaller proportion of Local Champions are efficient or future Ministers.  Some simply don’t have the skills and gifts required.
• I agree with those who argue that open caucuses (meetings which voters have to attend in order to participate in a candidate selection) are a poor substitute for open primaries (the selection of candidates by postal ballot).  Recent experience suggests that if non-Association members are given a say in the selection of Conservative candidates, then open primaries will obtain a higher turnout.  So let’s narrow down the method of selecting Conservative candidates to a choice: Association selection versus Open Primary selection.
• Many Associations try to select Future Ministers (who, as I say are often effective Local Champions).  Open Primaries, by their very nature, will tend to select Local Champions (of which, as I say, a smaller proportion will be efficient Ministers).
• In the long-term and perhaps the medium term, therefore, a universal system of selection by Open Primary would produce fewer efficient Ministers.

Cameron didn't sell us down the river on Lisbon; Brown did

A great quote from James Forsyth:

The Nice and the Good

-- Oi you two. Cut that out.
-- Paedophile! Paedo! Paedo!

My other half, Keith, is a lucky man, in many ways (see first three words of this sentence for details). More importantly, he's a good man. I'm also lucky (see first four words of first sentence for details), but I'm not so good. There's an Iris Murdoch novel called The Nice and The Good - but in any case most of her books deal with that never-ending conflict between the former and the latter: how hard it is to be good, when by the consequent actions, you may cause hurt to people you care about. My greatest failings, I'm aware, stem from an innate desire that other people are not discomfited by my existence; and this can lead, strangely, to failures of love. The ultimate, of course, in human failure.

-- I'm gonna kill you you little f*cker

Big Brother is watching... sheep

At Big Brother Watch we're used to monitoring Government intrusion into the lives of people.  But try this for size.

In June this year, a remarkable debate took place in the House of Lords.

Despite the fact that we have managed to track animals in this country since time immemorial, and despite the fact that any sign of foot and mouth results in the destruction of the whole flock, Britain's farmers are going to be forced to tag individual sheep by means of electronic implant - a very expensive procedure compulsorily pushed on an industry that is already on its knees, with the Government's own figures showing that the suicide rate amongst farmers is tragically high. 

Why? Because

the introduction of electronic identification is an EU obligation, which must be implemented

To recap - stupid measure, required by EU.  So far, I accept, so unextraordinary.  BUT... honesty is clearly more common in the Lords than in the Commons, for Lord Tunnicliffe, the Minister supporting the regulation, stated

I accept that this regulation is probably, on balance, not a good idea.  It will create more costs than benefits in most of the industry.... This is part of being in the club called the European Union, of which I am proud to be a member citizen.

Well, if that's the case, Lord Tunnicliffe, given that this is a result of bureaucratic absurdity rather than any business requirement, perhaps the bureaucracy can pay for it, or at least part of it?  Oh, no...

My Lords, it is absolutely clear, I am afraid, that the industry and the individuals in the industry will pay.

This is a classic example of the worst excesses of Eurobureaucracy.  It is entirely unnecessary, it is positively harmful and when questioned the answer from the proponents is "that's the way it shall be, because the EU says so, so there."

Oh, and to cap it all off, and I accept that there's something rather disarming about this frankness, in the face of opposition from people with some real expertise in the area, the Minister went on to say...

My Lords, it would be wrong of me to pretend that I had any knowledge of this subject 12 hours ago.

I raise it because at 3pm tomorrow the issue returns to the Lords.  All any objective observer can say is... Godspeed Lord Vinson & Co.

Related post: In defence of modern farming

Dear David, a post-ratification referendum does matter

A post-ratification referendum on Lisbon does matter. It matters because of the mass of provisions over almost every aspect of our daily lives provided for in the treaty, for what it now means to undemocratic governance in Britain, and in the interests of democracy. The Westminster Parliament has become a sham, or a conveyor belt, in which 70% of our laws originate from Brussels and are accepted blindly by politicians at Westminster.

All three key political parties pledged a referendum. All three political parties have now abandoned that promise, in their own unique ways, and the electorate’s faith in politics – in return for the ability for a politician to do something in line with their wishes – is dying its death. The British people are sick of the traitors who govern them.

Those who hold the power in the mainstream parliamentary parties, who simply choose to renege on promises when the going gets tough, are watching their votes slip to ever-extreme parties with increasingly dangerous messages on Europe and immigration. And we have a General Election approaching. I would not have thought the Tory party would have joined the ranks of the mainstream who had abandoned their promises and integrity on an issue so central to the governance of the United Kingdom.

So, there goes Mr. Cameron’s promise. And now we wait. What for? All I can advise is that voters will not look favourably on another empty, referendum-less, policy-less mandate. They wanted their say and it has been denied.

Hammersmith & Fulham, and the Emperor's New Clothes

Further to Harry's report about Hammersmith & Fulham's fourth annual council tax cut, I think it's important we consider the full importance of what H&F are achieving.

For people in the Borough, of course, they have a council which is helping them to survive the recession. There are millions of people around the country who would give an eye for a council which does that, rather than slapping increasing bills, rising charges and draconian rules on them.

In a national setting, though, Hammersmith & Fulham are exposing the Emperor's New Clothes of local government. Without a sizeable council showing that it is possible to cut taxes and improve public satisfaction year on year, wasteful and inefficient councils would be able to claim it was impossible.

H&F's success removes that lazy excuse once and for all.

It's always interesting to see the attempts to dismiss the success of Stephen Greenhalgh's administration every year. Originally it was "Well, it's easy to do that if you take over from a wasteful administration." Four years later, with the 3% cut being delivered yet again, that one seems to have been dropped.

Then it was allegations that Hammersmith and Fulham is an unusually wealthy or untroubled area, which can be swiftly rebutted by the bare facts.

The latest excuse is that H&F get an unusually generous deal from central Government, which again does not seem to be the case compared to the funding of many other councils. Indeed, given the Government's record of jealously holding down funding to politically inconvenient councils, it is hard to see why Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown or John Denham should be giving a leg up to the H&F revolution.

Eventually, those excuses will run out. Just as with Wandsworth, which continues to embarass neighbouring boroughs with consistently low taxes and good services, other councils may eventually have to accept that there's nothing magical or unworldly about Cllr Greenhalgh et al - they're just good at running a council. If only other councillors would follow their example rather than attempt to rubbish it.

Beware selling banks at the bottom of the market

We should all be interested in the Government’s manoeuvres with the banks. A good receipt in a few years is important to the nation's finances. If an unwise move is made now, Gordon Brown’s “car boot sale” might more resemble the “closing down sale” so lampooned in Private Eye. It really matters to us all now – and in ensuring our children’s futures are unscorched.

The Government is planning to force RBS to offload its insurance division, including Direct Line, Churchill and Green Flag. Meanwhile RBS-branded branches in England may be sold off as Williams and Glyn Bank. We also learn that RBS is also under pressure to shed some of its investment banking units. Lloyds too will likely have to offload some of its operations - including the Intelligent Finance internet banking division.

Now here’s the key question. When is the best time to sell off insurance, retail banking and investment banking businesses? Sure as eggs, now is not the time to sell of investment banking. Investment banking will likely be a growth story that would fetch a very good price in a few years time. Retail internet banking is also a growth story. Traditional retail banking resembles a utility in nature – except right now market sentiment does not favour it for a good sale price. Insurance has certainly been more stable, but share prices suggest now would not be a great time to sell. The insurance sector was far higher in 2007 and likely to be back to stronger levels two or more years from now.

The best time to sell such businesses is not likely to be now – and may not be next year either. The difference could be very substantial. Any move to stuff these assets into Gordon Brown’s car boot must be viewed with grave caution and substantial concern. Brown has form when it comes to selling at the bottom of the market and the nation simply cannot afford a repeat of the Gold sale fiasco.