The EU Plays the Black Knight

EU Ministers are to meet, following the Irish rejection of the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty to decide how to fudge it the way forward.

I haven’t seen yet whether odds are being offered on some communiqué along the lines of “we hope the Irish people are suitably ashamed of themselves and we have told them to go away and think hard about what they’ve done and then say yes in a second referendum.” Or words to that effect.

Otherwise, the EU is rather resembling Monty Python’s Black Knight in the Holy Grail. It may not have yet lost all its limbs, but under EU rules it might as well have done. Then again, as the rather savvier French, Spanish and most other EU nations know, EU rules are there for decoration, with only us mugs here in the UK actually taking much notice of them.

Expect the re-education of the good people of Eire to begin forthwith.

“Useless” Would Be An Improvement

Today sees the Government unveiling its latest brainwave to tackle binge-drinking / underage drinking / anti-social behaviour.

The proposals also include handing the police tougher powers to disperse gangs of young people congregating outside.

A new offence would make it illegal for someone under 18 to be regularly caught in the possession of alcohol.

I know that in my own area, the local bobbies take it upon themselves, in a dangerous display of initiative, to empty the bottles and cans of errant youth, as well as donating the unopened vessels to the Hayes Village Fete bottle stall (14th June this year - put it in the diary). They seem to be able to do this without any new laws, and I have no doubt that if things really kicked off, they could nick the relevant miscreants using public order laws.

But hey, Something Must Be Done, so let’s have another law. Which adds little to the previous laws, and is no substitute for some decent coppering (when coppers are allowed to get on with the job of coppering, of course). One major reason that dispersal orders and alcohol exclusion zones are so understandably popular is that these days, nicking one errant member of the public the old fashioned way will take the officer off the street for half a shift at least.

While we’re on the subject of useless things to do while waiting for the General Election, this comes just a couple of weeks after the grand but unworkable plan to keep us safe in our beds by recording details of every electronic communication that everyone makes in the UK in the preceding twelve months. Dizzy demolished that one beyond repair, but I suspect it’ll resurface again in a year or so, and will be dutifully reported by hacks working to a deadline and with an inexplicable lack of access to Google.

Finally, in a similar vein, we hear of this fantastic (as in, of a fantasy world) development, from the Register:

EU project scans air passengers for terrorist tendencies

An EU aviation safety project is testing a camera-based passenger surveillance system intended to spot terrorists poised to rush the cockpit.

[The system] … relies on video cameras being built into every passenger’s seat….

Each camera tracks passengers’ facial expressions, with the footage then analysed by software to detect developing terrorist activity or potential air rage. Six wide-angle cameras are also positioned to monitor the plane’s aisles, presumably to catch anyone standing by the cockpit door with a suspiciously crusty bread roll.

But since people never sit still on planes, the software’s also designed so that footage from multiple cameras can be analysed. So, if one person continually walks from his seat to the bathroom, then several cameras can be used to track his facial movements. (Or maybe to track the freshness of the tuna pasta? - NR)

As the Reg correctly concludes:

But isn’t it a little late to be detecting terrorists once they’re already on the plane? And how prepared are we to have our every last twitch monitored and analysed?

As many commenters have pointed out, how many false positives will there be out of all the thousands of passengers flying every single day on the highest risk routes? How many times will a terminal be closed as an escorted airliner is landed with a particularly nervous flyer on board, setting off the system?

The fact that it is billed as an EU project should fill us with both relief and foreboding. Relief, since if the EU’s involved it’ll take decades to actually happen and then won’t work properly anyway and foreboding because when it does happen it’ll cost a fortune, so it’ll be worse than useless.

Eurovision’s Coming

Ah, Eurovision. Who needs by-elections when you get all the excitement of an early hours election count, but combined with cheesy music and thinly veiled medieval tribalism to boot?

Now I know it’s a joke over here. After all, if anyone has any real talent they have half the global music industry based in the U.K. to pick them up and make a few bob out of them, but to our neighbours beyond the White Cliffs, Eurovision is where it’s at.

Even so, it’s good old fashioned patriotism and racial brotherhood that is more than a passing factor in the Eurovision voting, especially since nowadays it’s all done by the viewers.

The trouble for Eurovision itself is that the major broadcasters, such as the BBC, make significant contributions to the running of the contest, in return for which the British acts get a free pass to the finals. Without the likes of Auntie, the thing would possibly collapse.

Now I am not a fan of Pop Factor, X Idol, Britain’s Got (No) Talent or any of the other reality talent shows, but I suspect, judging by their popularity, Eurovision would still garner some audience over here. I’ll be honest, though, if it wasn’t for Terry Wogan liberally pouring on the sarcasm, it just wouldn’t do it for me – and a good few others I suspect. Sadly, it’s a fact of life that Ol’ Tel won’t be around forever, and unless they can replace him with the likes of, say, Jack Dee or Bill Bailey, then that’s it for me. So if Terry goes, it will dent the audience, which makes it a bit harsh for the director of Eurovision television to complain about the tone of the Togmeister’s coverage. Of course, to be the boss of Eurovision I guess you have to take the thing unnaturally seriously, but does he not realise that without Terry, he might lose one of his major stakeholders? (Actually, he probably doesn’t care: he knows that the BBC, being just a teensy bit pro-European in its outlook, would probably still find the cash somewhere milk the licence payer for the necessary.)

So, where was I going with this? Ah yes, the voting. As a low-ranking psephological anorak, I have given some passing thought to how to sort out the Eurovision voting. Eurovision should be taking the voting problem more seriously because sooner or later, some of the old Europe nations, who do still think the Eurovision is where it’s at, will get fed up and take their balls with them.

Here’s my solution: regional finals, followed by the main final where each country still votes as at present, except they are barred from voting for their region’s entry – in the same way that they cannot vote for their own country’s entry now. That would put paid to the Balkans, Baltics or Scandinavians voting for each other. The sticking point would be drawing up the regions to be roughly equal in number of countries. We could take advantage here and do the football/rugby thing and send up four separate entries (or maybe six, including CI and IOM) – so we could possibly scrape together a British Isles region.

Anyway, problem solved. Next!

Sounds like a job for the OFT

Supermarket firms Sainsbury’s and Asda have admitted that they were part of a dairy price-fixing group that earned about £270m extra from shoppers. (BBC)

So let’s see if I’ve got this right: It’s wrong for supermarkets to collude to artificially increase consumer prices, but it’s OK for governments to do so through the Common Agricultural Policy.

Brown Envelopes

This is one of the regular deliveries I get as a councillor from the Civic Centre. An assortment of committee papers, post and sundry plans, invitations and leaflets. Alas, contrary to popular belief, these brown envelopes rarely never contain any wads of cash. For some reason, dodgy businessmen don’t seem so keen to get questions asked in Council Chambers as they are in the House of Commons.

We get these twice a week, and occasionally a few bits on Saturday if we’re lucky. This was Tuesday’s delivery and, as you can see, comes in at an impressive two and a half inches (you won’t see those words together very often). To be fair, this is exceptional at nearly 5 pounds (that’s 2.2 kilos for French readers). This is largely because of the inclusion of the Bromley Town Centre Area Action Plan. This plan was already in its early stages of development when we lost a couple of department stores from Bromley Town Centre, and we were already concerned how Bromley should respond to competition from Croydon and Bluewater.

The report is pretty comprehensive – after all, if a job’s worth doing, etc, etc.

Now I bet you’re thinking that the report on the left is the most relevant one – don’t be silly. The main report is the thin one. The other, three times the thickness, is the sustainability appraisal. I kid you not. Sustainability, as in being kind to the environment and stuff - like, not cutting down too many trees.

This is not to have a pop at our planning department, though - as the report is quick to explain in its preamble, “under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, preparation of Development Plan Documents (DPD) must be informed by a Sustainability Appraisal (SA). This ensures that any significant environmental, social and economic effects have been considered during the preparation of planning policy documents consistent with European Directive 2001/42/EC relating to the Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA).”

So I and my colleagues on the Executive and Development Control committees will have to digest these two documents, including the SA, by Tuesday (or I suppose the wrath of Brussels will be upon us, or something).

However if the people of our fine town think they’re getting away with this, then they can think again, because on Tuesday we are merely approving the documents for public consultation. We are also drawing up masterplans for Orpington and Beckenham. We like to spread the joy.

Yeah but no but yeah…

There is so much to say about Ming’s confusion over the EU that I don’t know where to start, so I’ll leave most of it to Iain. It does seem though that Ming has lost the Lib Dem plot. It is common, of course, for them to say one thing to one person and another elsewhere. The trouble is, Ming’s saying the different things to the same audience.

It may be that he thought this would put David Cameron on the spot - challenging DC to say whether he would hold a referendum on EU membership. Unfortunately it seems it has just focused attention even more on his own leadership and political acumen. Just before the party conference (possibly his last as leader) this is a gamble that has gone horribly wrong for Ming. He has ensured that any Lib Dem policy announcement next week will be ignored amidst the blanket media coverage about unhappiness with the leadership. (And, dear Lib Dems, don’t think that the coverage of the conference will bear any relation to what is actually happening in the conference hall or fringes. Remember, we Conservatives have been here ourselves - we know how it works.)

The only way this could be bad for the Conservatives is not any awkward internal argument over Europe, but the prospect of Ming not leading the Lib Dems into the next general election.

Eurosceptics for Washington!

I have been invited to join a facebook group “Eurosceptic Admirers of the American Declaration of Independence” Join it I shall certainly do.

As I recall, American Independence was finally prompted by a rebellion over excess taxation and regulation. The American founding fathers had a vision of a nation based on liberty, an ideal they still aspire to, though it has triggered (so far) 231 years of debate over how far they have achieved that dream. Even so, can we in the UK say that as a nation we aspire to the freedom that the US does? After all, the declaration’s signatories simply inherited the same values that had driven so much of the English nation prior to the time that relations with the colonies went pear-shaped.

One of the more fascinating exercises in counterfactual “what if” history is what would have happened if Britain hadn’t been so obstinate in the course of action that led to the Boston Tea Party. More than a few American commentators have remarked how obsessed the American public and media seem to be with the British Royal Family, given that the yanks themselves actively rejected the Crown. The thirteen colonies of the “First British Empire” would probably have still spread west - though without the loss of the colonies, what would have been our ambitions in Canada, given the French interest there? Would we, more significantly, have expanded East to India. What of Australia: could modern day Aussies be speaking Dutch? Would a China untouched by Western gunboat diplomacy have been so vulnerable to Communist exploitation?

Anyway, back to the point: what is this to do with Europe? A key factor behind the establishment of the thirteen colonies was the desire to break free from the old problems of Europe. Another emerging aim was the expansion of trade. Indeed, that is what initially drove the Second, more successful (in terms of longetivity* and contemporary influence), British Empire. Trade drove the establishment of routes to the East and defined the initial relationships between Britain and the Indian leaders which later turned into a more traditional imperial structure.

Europe fleetingly dallied with the idea of being a trading partnership, but alas, from day one, it was ultimately being driven by imperial desires of a less transparent nature, borne of the trauma of the Second World War. Europe could still now be a great continent, were it to genuinely free its people from statism – regulation, high taxation – and embrace true free trade, both within its borders as well as between itself and the rest of the world that the current leadership establishment seems to studiously ignore. What nods we currently see towards free trade are often couched in terms of the “level playing field”. Sadly, Brussels’ idea of a level playing field extends to all players wearing the same strip, playing in the same direction, each with his own ball, referee and linesman, and having to ask each match official every time he wants to pass or shoot.

So whereas the American nation was founded on liberty, the European nation will be founded on residual Franco-German suspicion, rampant anti-Americanism, and an unswerving faith in the power of the state. I know which I would more likely identify with.

*”longevity” to our transatlantic cousins. No, let’s not start on the language thing right now.

EU Referendum

David Cameron’s speech yesterday has gone down well with many. Whilst it was ostensibly a restatement of principle, it was no less welcome for that. Of course, as with any speech on such broad themes, there was still plenty of scope for snipers of the Heffer persuasion to make hay, but as more hard policies start emerging over the next few months we should find more items of a practical nature to discuss and support.

As heartening as the repeated commitment to smaller government, was a small appendix to the speech that Iain Dale pointed out this morning – a pledge to hold a referendum on any new EU treaty. An early and necessary stake-in-the-ground ahead of this week’s summit and well ahead of the Euro-elections in 2009.

Not that I’d expect these sorts of sites to come back to life anytime soon.