More news from Brussels

The rather interesting Brussels Journal reports that rioting there has died down following arrests. It also reports various people campaigning against the Vlaams Belang party, including "rock singer Arno, who said this week that Brussels is an example for the future of Europe, since it is “one of the only Arab cities which is not in a state of war.”

They are also writing about political correctness, and a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that the state may deny parents the right to educate their children at home.

Taxpayers' Alliance goes regional

The Taxpayers' Alliance has announced the first of its regional campaigns, in north east england. They say, "this is the first in a series of regional campaign launches that we’re planning over the course of the next few months".

Here are more details about their north east campaign and its launch.

The Scorpion supports The Taxpayers' Alliance.

What is Godfrey Bloom saying?

Apparently "Godfrey Bloom MEP blows holes in the new regulations on age discrimination in the workplace". This is a press release, so let's quote it in full.

New burden for young people and employers

29-09-2006

New regulations on age discrimination aimed at bringing Britain into line with an EU employment framework directive are another obstacle for young people already struggling to cope with university fees, soaring house prices and a rising tax burden. Unemployment is rising steadily, with the latest figures showing 1.6 million people out of work and youth employment down 13% [1] on the past year.

"This is not the Government's promised message of 'opportunity for all'" said Godfrey Bloom MEP, "especially for young adults in unemployment black spots. People of all ages have skills and talents to offer and it should be up to employers to decide who they employ.

"If we want to reduce unemployment and increase competitiveness, we need to leave employers to make the best decisions for their businesses."

Notes

Refers to Employment Equality (Age) Regulation implemented for the UK to comply with the EU Employment Framework Directive (2000/78/EC)

Mr Bloom concentrates on youth employment - already down over a year, so nothing to do with regulations which are just now coming into force.

As he says, "people of all ages have skills and talents to offer". What the new regulations mean is that older people (probably with family responsibilities) can't be sacked just because they're older.

Now this may disadvantage younger people, but it's hard to see how it's inherently unfair.

If Mr Bloom wants young people to be able to benefit though unfairness to older people, I suppose that's a position of some sort. But it hardly counts as blowing holes in the new regulations.

And does it make a busy journalist more likely to look at future UKIP press releases?

Thinking about migration

The excellent Martin Wolf brings his analytical powers to the immigration question in the Financial Times today (subscribers only).

His piece deserves to be read in full, but centres on five questions and the answers to them

1. Whose welfare counts?

The welfare of existing citizens has priority ... countries matter.

2. Is it possible to control immigration?

Yes (though not completely), as differences in global real wages show.

[Scorpion comments: It's mainly the effect of rationing. Long distance travel and illegal entry cost a lot of money for a poor would-be immigrant.]

3. What are its economic consequences?

As you would expect, Wolf writes at greater length (though still pithily) when he gets to economic issues. He argues for emphasising the importance of incomes per head rather than the size of the economy. "China has a bigger economy than Switzerland. Most people would prefer to be Swiss. Furthermore, the principal beneficiaries of immigration are the migrants themselves."

4. Does the cultural impact matter?

He says he used to favour diversity.

This was, however, on the possibly naive assumption that a shared commitment to core common values - to democracy, equality of men and women, a single secular legal system and freedom of expression - would unite all citizens. When a small number of citizens wish to murder a radom collection of their fellows and a far larger number sympathise with them, that belief begins to look very foolish.

5. What policies should the UK have?

Continuation of net immigration on the recent scale is hard to justify ... must insist on the universality of liberal values. Focus on bringing in the skilled, who are most likely to share these values and make a big economic contribution. Above all, the topic is too important to be ignored.

==========

That's an unfairly squashed summary of Martin Wolf's views. His questions help to focus the debate. It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the government has blundered into its current position on immigration (as in so much else). Probably the party closest to those opinions is - ahem - UKIP. But is the party's tone right? It needs to be one of cool, high flown rationality, rather than tub thumping.

Property tax

It's been one of the themes of this blog - though not of any political party - that government is too expensive for this country to afford.

Today The Telegraph brings us news that

More than two million households in England, many of them pensioners, struggle to pay their council tax, according to an independent report published today.

It found that one in 10 households had difficulty paying the tax, which according to a recent poll is the "most hated" tax in the country.

The survey found:

• One in four homes in band A (the lowest band) receives a summons
• One in seven in band B receives a summons, but fewer than one in 10 in bands E-H (H being the highest band) receives one
• 181,450 households in Britain have a low income and live in bands F-H (including 101,1008 pensioners).
• 5,740,833 households in Britain have a low income and live in bands A-C (including 2,898,888 pensioners).

Reportedly Sir Michael Lyons is going to recommend residents should typically be charged at 0.78% of their home's value each year - massively increasing the tax on owners of dearer properties, especially in the South East, and probably depressing property values.

The central problem is that people are being taxed on the value of an asset that they own, even though they may not have the income or liquid assets to enable them to afford the tax.

And where is this tax going? Well, some of it is going to pay for the many people who were involved in the utterly stupid decision to prosecute nursery teacher Olive Rack. They will probably suffer no penalty for the strain and stress inflicted on her, never mind the unnecessary expense caused to the taxpayer.

Where is the party with a coherent low tax narrative? We are told that the Conservative establishment is busy trying to water down a recommendation on these lines from its tax commission. The Lib Dems are not tax cutters. UKIP will evidently launch a flat tax policy during the Conservative conference but has shown no sign of campaigning for government spending to be a lower proportion of national wealth.

So I repeat the question I asked about Mr Miliband's wasteful green policies. Where is the political opposition to come from?

Miliband continues green crusade

Something of interest has happened at the Labour conference after all. David Miliband has continued his fixation with saving the planet, bizarrely suggesting that "cutting carbon emissions should become the European Union's primary purpose", according to the Financial Times. "He told delegates the EU would appeal to a new generation only if it came to stand for Environmental Union." Presumably this is intended to pass for a joke.

Using its collective power to curb domestic greenhouse gas emissions, negotiate international agreements on global reductions and exclude energy-inefficient products from its market would give the EU a "vision worth fighting for", he said.

Now this really is micro-management of a high order, and he also unveiled a £500m scheme to build renewable energy projects, mainly wind turbines, on public sector land.

We have talked about Mr Miliband's carbon swipe cards before.

It's hard to see that the Lib Dems or Cameron's Greenies would oppose ideas like these, even though Ruth Lea has pointed out that action by the UK will make not a bit of difference to global emissions.

So our politicians will continue to indulge their feelgood hobbies at our expense, and there is no sign of a party making a coherent case against them.

Riots in Brussels

Apparently unnoticed by the mainstream media there have been three nights of rioting in Brussels by muslim youths, reports Brussels Journal, which have included throwing firebombs into a hospital.

It comments that

The authorities are especially nervous since the Belgian municipal elections are being held on Sunday October 8th. It is likely that the elections will be won by anti-immigrant, “islamophobic” parties. Since ramadan will not be over on October 8th and many immigrants might perceive a victory of the indigenous right (as opposed to their own far-right) as an insult, Muslim indignation over the election results in major cities may spark serious disturbances. According to a poll published today the Vlaams Belang party is set to win 38.6% of the vote in Antwerp (compared to 33,0% in the previous municipal elections six years ago).

Worth watching.

Parallel universes

On the Today programme the main headline at 6am was that John Prescot was expected to tell the Labour conference he would depart at the same time as Tony Blair. And Mr Naughtie expects us to be gripped by this? I switched off.

Meanwhile, in another world UKIP highlights a case before the European Court of Human Rights, questioning a section of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which requires registered owners of vehicles to say who was driving the car at the time of a speeding offence. "If the court rules in favour of Mr Francis, it brings into question the entire existence of speed cameras."

1. Does it? The government could just make it an offence for the registered keeper of a vehicle to allow it to be driven above the permitted limit.
   
   
2. If it does, is that a good thing? Do we want a speed free-for-all?
   
   
3. Does UKIP actually approve of this court having jurisdiction over the UK like this?

Apparently so. "UK Independence Party Leader, Nigel Farage, was at the Strasbourg court this morning (27.9.06) supporting Mr Francis."

What a muddle on planet UKIP.

TB-GB? No thanks

Hardly anything said at any party conferences matters one week later, let alone what a departing leader has said.

So we won't be joining the orgy of analysis, thanks.

Blogs on blogging

Arguably blogging is the last thing a blog should be talking about. But when the FT finds space for two major comment pieces about blogging on successive days, you know something is up.

As you'd expect from FT writers, they tend to comment on the top of the industry. John Gapper commented yesterday on filtering sites, and specifically Digg. There is already a blogging élite. "Just because the web is an open medium", he concludes, "it is not necessarily an egalitarian one".

No, but it is fluid. Thus Richard North may well succeed in building a network of bloggers to challenge the accuracy and agenda of the mainstream media (MSM) . Blogging is only in its very early stages. Today Gideon Rachman concentrates on the blogs of establishment figures. Of course these were always going to be bland (are they really going to say things in their blogs which they can't say in speeches?). But the point of blogging is to allow people without access to the MSM to have their say.

Thus Rachman concentrates on the people at the top in French politics and ignores the army of bloggers who were said to have had such an effect on the French constitutional referendum that presidential hopefuls are inviting some of them to their conferences. MEPs could make use of blogs to explain to their eager constituents what they are about. Single issue blogs can reveal patterns not evident from intermittent MSM coverage. And agitators like Richard North can ply their trade with some of the feistiest writing anywhere.

Rachman allows that

Blogging as a medium has virtues: speed, spontaneity, interactivity, and the vast array of information and expertise that millions of bloggers can bring together.

But of course "it also has its vices".

The archetypal political blog favours instant response over reflection; commentary over original research; and stream-of-consciousness (sic) over structure.

Instant opinion does seem to be popular in the blogsphere. But blogging is in its infancy, and this may be youthful exuberance.

Meanwhile, a suggestion for the FT. Don't keep running articles about blogging. It only encourages them.

The electoral cycle?

This week's award for the strained, inappropriate, unilluminating analogy will surely go to Commissioner Frattini, who has claimed that "Europe" (I think he meant "The EU", but it's an easy mistake to make when you're on another planet) "is not a joke". Well, ye-e-e-s, we're with you so far, Franco. "It's ..." (wait for it) "like a bicycle" (yes, really) "either it goes ahead or it falls on the ground".

Now, riding a bicycle is one of those childhood achievements the Scorpion didn't manage, but observation from the pavement suggests that most bicycles don't have to be steered in a straight line. Indeed, in skilled hands it's possible to turn around and go back in the direction you came from.

But if - OK, it's a big if - there is some sense in what the Commissioner is saying, what does that tell us about his view of the EU. Does it have to plunge further onward for ever and a day? If it stopped, would it fall over? Why?

It's a beguiling thought that a period of calm with no new measures might cause people to rub their eyes and wonder what the EU was all about. But it feels sadly unlikely.

This was the theme behind the Commission's criticism of the German government the other day. Even to pause is to show that you are not a good "European". It's the momentum, stupid.

Or in the case of Commissioner Frattini's initiative, it's the stupid momentum. As I have argued before, there is no terrorist threat against the EU as such (oh the humiliation), and it's hard to envisage the UK or French security services working hand in glove with those of (say) Belgium or Greece.

In other words, it would just be another waste of money.

On the whole, cycles aren't the EU's strong point. In putting together the eurozone it ignored the economic cycle, with the outcome that its economies are busy cycling in different directions. (Yes, it is indeed possible to push this metaphor too far.)

There's no sign that electorates across the EU favour ever closer union. Before peddling his analogy, maybe Commissioner F should cast a glance at the electoral cycle too.

Dearer shoes? Tough

The UK has offered a secret deal to Italy under which it would support demands for tariffs on cheap Chinese shoes, in return for Italian support on the working time directive.

This is a tacit admission that signing up to the working time directive was a mistake. To pay for it we would have to accept dearer shoes at the cheap end of the market, which is where many Labour supporters are.

Italy currently supports Britain’s opt out from the directive, but earlier this year Romano Prodi said that Italy would be withdrawing their backing, leaving just Poland and Germany supporting Britain’s position. The FT reports that, to bring Italy back on board, Britain has offered to junk its free trade principles and back a group of EU countries, led by Italy, that want to place tariffs on Chinese and Vietnamese shoes to protect their domestic shoe industries from cheaper producers.

The Italian government now includes socialists, of course. They naturally would prefer to see the directive enforced, so they hope to push through the tariff plans without British support.

How stupid do they think we are?

While the Blair government pretends to bumble towards a decision on Bulgarian and Romanian immigration after they join, Derek Heathcoat-Amory does a gently spoken skewer job in the Telegraph.

The Government is now panicking about the prospect of unrestricted immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, which are due to join the EU next year. Ministers are proposing a work permit scheme to control numbers.

They must know that, under the 2004 Free Movement Directive, all EU citizens are entitled to enter Britain and reside here for an initial three months. A permanent right of residence is acquired after five years.

These new rights of settlement were incorporated into British law on April 30 this year. The same regulations greatly extend the definition of family members and partners who may accompany the arriving migrant.

They also make it impossible to exclude them on grounds that they have a criminal record. These regulations will apply to Romania and Bulgaria as soon as they become EU member states.

So, in parallel with its new-found concern about unrestricted immigration, the Government was passing EU regulations that make effective control impossible. Public disillusionment will increase if ministers continue to make promises that they are powerless to carry out.

If we want to decide our immigration policy, we must first re-establish our right to do so.

Quite. Of course, they won't.

FT feeble

The Mudlark column in today's FT Business news includes this pointless item.

The right trousers

The new security rules weren't to blame, at least directly, for Martin Thorneycroft's lost bags.

The finance director of Aim-quoted PatSystems, a supplier of electronic trading technology, went to Tokyo on a business trip, but British Airways sent his luggage on a world tour of its own, via Frankfurt.

Thorneycroft, a 6'2" former rugby player, had to buy a suit, shirt and shoes in Tokyo with just 24 hours to go before an important meeting with a client.

Note the "just" - makes it more exciting, doesn't it? The story builds:

With little chance of getting anything off the peg, he spent a day trying to find a tailor who could run something up in rather less than the usual two weeks. With the help of the local office manager, a suit was found and adjusted for Thorneycroft's very European frame, with only minutes to spare.

A nation yawns. And he wasn't even out there on his own - it seems they have an office there already. But let's pass on to the next item.

Men of substance

The Serpentine Pavilion by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Belmond still gets oohs and ahs but there was a gee whiz or two for other technology at Tuesday night's gala dinner for the Fortune Global 500 at the Kensington Gardens gallery.

Pre-recorded speeches and entertainment were delivered by holograms, so lifelike that it took some of the eminent guests 10 minutes to realise that the chairman of Time Warner wasn't speaking in person.

Tee hee. It took this reader a lot less than ten minutes to realise that these feeble items are PR fodder, not news.

Perhaps the FT would consider using the space instead to expand its coverage of smaller quoted companies beyond the perfunctory.

Steady state is not good enough

Le Figaro, we are told, reports that “In Brussels, German ‘anti-communitarianism’ was judged sufficiently worrying to merit a debate on the subject during the last weekly meeting of EU Commissioners.”

And I wonder who told Le Figaro that?

Apparently the German government’s attitude to the European institutions “embarrasses eurocrats" - oh the shame! - "all the more because it will hold the Presidency of the EU from 1 January.”

The Commission is apparently worried that it will become the target during a “critical” German presidency, already believing it is a “scapegoat”.

The article cites Germany’s hostility to the Commission’s idea for a common European energy regulator, and its concerns that the proposed move to qualified majority voting in justice and home affairs will “torpedo” the EU Constitution, which Germany believes should be revived.

So acquiescing in the status quo is not enough. To be communautaire is to want greater integration. Nothing else will do.

Petition to scrap Strasbourg parliament reaches 1m signatures

Congratulations to the organisers of the online petition on reaching 1 million signatures - do sign up here if you haven't already. The Parliament migrates to Strasbourg 12 times a year, costing €300 million annually. This is wholly wasted money. The building is empty for the remaining 307 days a year.

"If the EU is going to be able to deliver results, make decisions and maintain the confidence of the hundreds of millions it represents, it must adopt and get rid of the greatest anomalies", writes the organiser of the petition.

The existence of the ugly Strasbourg parliament has been defended as a symbol of the post-war reconciliation between France and Germany. The local council has been accused of over-charging the parliament for rent, and MEPs have recently voted to buy some of the buildings.

Doubtless the French will stick their noses in the air and haughtily refuse to discuss this flagrant waste of other countries' money. The Strasbourg parliament is not a monument to history, it is a monument to French arrogance and greed.

An immature democracy

The Hungarian government was useless and it only got re-elected by not telling the truth. So far, so "democratic".

But Hungary has shown it doesn't yet have the world-weary resignation of a mature democracy. That verdict on the government came from the Prime Minister, no less, in a meeting which it turned out was filmed. And, hearing the confession, indignant crowds took to the streets.

What a lot they all have to learn. Perhaps the EU could fund a cynicism project for them.

You can find good stuff in the MSM!

Yesterday was a good day for the Telegraph's Business News. Sometimes it seems that their main news section is the place for the froth, while news about the machinery that makes things work is buried in the section for difficult pieces - you know, the ones with numbers.

Incidentally, this is not blanket praise for the MSM. Viewers of the BBC's Spooks will have seen the Cabinet Secretary refer to himself as a politician (as did someone else). No. Courtier maybe, but nothing so vulgar as a politician. And the 10 o'clock news carried an extraordinary item which was no more than a puff for the next night's Panorama, without explaining properly what a "bung" (the subject of the programme) is. A News broadcast is supposed to give you facts - perhaps we can charitably view the plug as an in-house commercial break. Would Huw Edwards take a bung to run a commercial? On his salary one imagines it would have to be pretty substantial.

Later we will talk about the recent spate of pieces about exiting the euro. Tonight, let us again praise Ruth Lea, who continues to write lucidly about Britain's pointless efforts to prevent climate change, at huge cost to our economy.

Britain is responsible for only a tiny fragment of pollution, and the increase in our polluting will be dwarfed by China and India (to name but two), so our puny efforts will make no difference at all. Meanwhile, our brothers in the EU are far too sensible to disadvantage their industry by taking Kyoto-friendly declarations seriously, while our government is hypnotised by its conviction of its holiness.

Don't look to Cameron or the Lib Dems for any criticism of this vacuous greenity. Brown is said to be in favour of evidence based government (but then Verheugen is said to favour less regulation). But Brown is a politician and knows a fashionable trend when he sees one (well, probably he doesn't, but he has people who tell him).

The policy outlines for a nimble minded libertarian party somewhere to the right of the consensus are becoming clearer. Will it be UKIP?

More immigration confusion

Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has again criticised Spain and Italy for regularising thousands of illegal migrants. “Potential illegal immigrants watch European television and read newspapers”, he said, adding that “If they think that there is a coming legalisation, then they will arrive in big numbers.”

The Moldovans follow the media too. The Mail on Sunday reports that more than 80,000 Moldovans have applied for citizenship of neighbouring Romania in the past three weeks, “in the hope of joining a mass exodus to Britain”. The large amount of applications for passports follows warnings in the Moldovan media that Romania will close its doors to new citizens when it joins the EU in 2007.

Governments and bureaucrats seem to underrate the knowledge and initiative of people overseas. But inertia is stronger at home than it is in poor countries which have richer neighbours.

David Cameron wins Swedish election

What the successful Swedish right-wing opposition did was to move closer to the government and promise minimal change.

Sound familiar? It seems to have worked. Disgruntled the UK Conservatives may be, but tradition will assert itself and they will always choose a winning strategy over purity and defeat. Not for them the Michael Foot way.

As long as Cameron stays ahead in the polls, a party to the right of the Tories will have to target uncommitted voters rather than Tory loyalists.

Weekend snippets

The great British public have saved the Scorpion household a useful sum of money by choosing Connie rather than Siobhan to play the role of Maria. We think Siobhan is a star in the making, but then we get sentimental at times.

Meanwhile, Dennis MacShane (yes, we chose a picture of Siobhan instead) has been brown-nosing Blair in The People. Usually politicians can say what they like in the expectation that it will be forgotten by the next day, except in the Westminster village.

However, MacShane's comment is so ridiculous that it deserves a long life of being quoted against him.

"I know from my contacts that Blair's status in Europe and globally is on a par with Winston Churchill's.

"And in America he is as big as Tom Cruise - so fundraising there would be no problem."

Which Europeans would they be?

And would that be the Scientology believer Tom Cruise?

Oh never mind, the remark's just too silly to analyse. But its utter stupidity makes it worth preserving.

Harriet Harman for Deputy PM?

Brain-free Harriet Harman wants to be Deputy Prime Minister, the BBC tells us. This smug ministerial failure, who would have sunk without trace has she been a man, also revealed she had spoken to the prime minister about "the time of his departure".

She said she had privately "given him the benefit of my view about when I think he should go" but would not elaborate while talking to the PM programme.

It seems her self-satisfaction is too ingrained for her to recognise that it's her superficiality that keeps letting her down.

Or maybe she thinks she could do the job better than the present incumbent, and considers that qualification enough.

It's hard to imagine that G. Brown would want her anywhere near his front bench.

Could Britain join EFTA?

No, argues David Rennie in an interesting Spectator piece. Icelandic politicians argue that the EU only tolerate EFTA because most countries in it are relatively small. But former Icelandic Prime Minister David Oddsson believes that "Norway, a giant among the other Efta tiddlers, already pays nearly as much as it would if it became an EU member".

Rennie points out that

Switzerland, for all its bilateral deals, recently found itself ordered to levy a special tax on the savings of EU citizens in Swiss banks — and to send much of the proceeds to Brussels. Brussels has just ‘invited’ the Swiss to stump up extra funding for the ten new member states that joined the EU a couple of years ago: a cool £435 million over five years. The Efta–EEA trio, for their part, have agreed to cough up an extra £805 million for the same newcomers over the same period, with Norway paying the lion’s share.

Oddsson suggests that it would be very difficult for anyone to leave the Union and pay less, leading Rennie to conclude that

Withdrawal from the EU is not impossible, of course. The ‘join-Efta’ argument is not a wholly false prospectus. But when you hear that it might not save us any money, and might even wreck the whole EEA deal, the argument suddenly sounds a lot like false comfort.

European issues, not EU issues

EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has said that EU member states need to give up their veto over criminal justice and policing in order to prevent another terrorist attack, reports EUObserver. He says EU terror prevention efforts are "stuck" because of unanimity - “shall we just sit around and wait for the next European terrorist bombs?"

Well, no. Are these threats against the EU as a whole? I must have missed the threats to bomb Luxembourg and Latvia off the map. No, they are threats against individual countries which are members of the EU, and are always expressed as such. Mr Frattini surely knows this. Indeed, why would any terrorist threaten the European collective when NATO is so feeble in Afghanistan?

And what about subsidiarity? Would Commissioner Frattini care to explain exactly how the EU would be better at fighting terrorism than individual countries? Bearing in mind the lax security recently revealed at the Brussels offices of the Mixed Anti-Terrorism Group, would information still flow in from outside if it was all being shared across the EU? Is the Greek security service secure? And - whisper it - what of Rumania's and Bulgaria's security services?

Similarly with immigration. As The Economist points out, it is "a Europe-wide concern. It is not clear, though, that it needs a European solution". Countries with stricter immigration controls can nonetheless be affected by their neighbours' immigrant amnesties, as the amnestied immigrants then become citizens of their new host country and can work anywhere in the EU.

In response to such beggar-my-neighbour actions, the leaders of France, Italy and Spain this week proposed to increase the European Union's competence in immigration policy. They have a good case. And like immigrants themselves, they are pushing at an open door: unsurprisingly, the European Commission would graciously accept more powers over immigration.

The paper argues that "immigration touches on the most basic concepts of nationhood, such as when immigrants may become citizens. Citizenship, like other such matters, is rightly a prerogative of member countries, not the EU".

But what unique rights do citizens (say) of the UK have in their home country which citizens of other EU countries do not? The list is being steadily eroded, partly by the unelected and unaccountable European Court of Justice.

So what does being a British citizen, as opposed to (say) an amnestied Spanish citizen, actually mean?

A European parallel?

This was a day when the allegedly pro-EU Financial Times reported - on its front page - about evidence at a court hearing that a Commission whistleblower was subjected to blackmail and harassment before being branded mentally unstable. The details of the way he was treated are chilling.

Around 200 Commission staff members are placed on long term sick leave each year, half of whom have mental illness. This policy is said to cost EU taxpayers €74m a year.

This was also the day when The Telegraph reported that the two main groups in the European Parliament are attempting to “bury” a report by German MEP Markus Ferber, which calls for the black hole in the parliament’s pension fund to be plugged out of MEPs’ pockets rather than taxpayers’ funds.

This is the same Parliament which has proposed that a Fundamental Rights Agency should cover policing, justice, immigration and counter-terrorism issues.

It was also the day when Romano Prodi said

“The European Union is of the Left. It is the only structure in the world in which the least developed zones have grown more than the developed zones, thanks to the structural funds and to a serious regional policy. A country deprived of infrastructures like Spain has been transformed into an ultramodern country thanks to European funds.” Put to him that Italy is a counterexample, he says, “That’s our fault. Italy has not known how to profit from European funds. They have been mismanaged, partly in some little known regions like Basilicata and Abruzzo. We must make a big effort to change, but the first thing to do is to recognise that we have wasted enormous resources.”

Where did those "enormous resources" come from, again?

And Ségolene Royal said the EU had to “assert a social counter-model opposed to savage liberalism, which today makes the citizens of Europe feel threatened by globalisation.”

What does this mean if not protectionism?

Commenting on the aborted Constitution, Royal also said the EU should first initiate programmes to prepare for a world after oil and promote investment in research and innovation to convince citizens that Europe was working for them before returning to institutional questions. "Only after that will we be able to explain to them that a reform of the institutions is necessary."

Convincing voters of this is likely to take at least 5-10 years. Is she really saying that institutional reform should be delayed for so long? Or is this just woolly?

The European parallel I was thinking of wasn't overspending or woolly thinking, but the small Swedish Democrats party, discussed in the Financial Times. They want fewer immigrants, and immigrant assimilation. The party's leader says

"The big political parties don't want it discussed but I can tell you, this is what people are talking about when they are doing their jobs or eating breakfast. Under the surface, it is growing."

In an ageing soceity, he believes, a growing number of Swedes will want their taxes spent on areas such as helping the elderly rather than on unemployment benefits for immigrants. "This is also being felt in France, Denmark, Norway, the UK," he says.

The FT also discusses the other side of the argument. But the interest for UKIP is in the rise of this new party. Four years ago the Sweden Democrats had seats in five local councils, reports the FT. Today they have 30. National support was 2.7% in a recent poll, three times higher than four years ago.

UKIP has yet to make such strides.

Immigration in Ireland

Back in April I suggested that Ireland was an interesting country to follow when considering the effects of immigration. Foreigners then made up 10% of the Irish population of 4 million.

Today the Irish edition of the Mirror reports that more than 150,000 workers from Eastern Europe have settled in the country since enlargement.

Independence!

This time the cry comes not from Nigel Farage or David Bannerman but - strikingly - from Sir Digby Jones, reports The Guardian. Tonight he will attack the UK's "meek" special relationship with the "bullying, protectionist" US.

And -

Sir Digby will say it is time to question the value Britain is getting from the EU, and that he is concerned about the "erosion of the values of enterprise, of choice, of independence, of fairness, of common sense that this country has always stood for, that my country has sent men to die in their name for. It is these values that I want back or at least eroded no further."

What's striking about this is some of the phrasing he's using - has he been talking to some people in the eusceptic movement?

Equality's obviously good ... isn't it?

Discussing his bid for Labour's deputy leadership yesterday, Peter Hain revealed that he favours greater equality.

This has an oddly old fashioned ring. It's not a slogan one recalls from "New Labour". For sure Gordon Brown's tax and spend is hugely redistributive, but the thrust is hidden under the threadbare cloak of "abolishing child poverty" - a policy whose definition of "child poverty" makes its success impossible.

It's easier for the press to fill columns with waffle about G Brown and friends (the post below discusses a feeble example in today's Telegraph) than it is to dig out real news, so we shall doubtless hear many more Labour claims over coming months that greater equality is desirable in itself.

We can't expect any candidate for the Labour leadership to challenge this, and it's highly doubtful whether we will see sustained challenges from anyone else.

The debate will therefore be conducted within the limits of which particular parts of Labour policy should be emphasised, giving the impression that these are the terms of reasonable political debate, and that anything outside is beyond the mainstream.

Expect to see "balance" meaning balance between different factions of Labour. And no questioning of the costs and benefits of "greater equality".

Heffer is wrong about Alan Johnson

Simon Heffer has produced a windy column in today's Telegraph, almost as if he had had trouble filling his space.

When eventually he gets round to his core argument, it is that Alan Johnson is English whereas Gordon Brown is Scottish (true so far), and that Brown is "one of those romantic socialists ... who adopt the working class and cherish them but never really understand what motivates most of them".

Johnson by contrast - being English - "understands, in a peculiarly Home Counties way, the importance of aspiration and the urge for self-improvement.... His real value is that he has, with complete success, embodied the English virtue of self-elevation".

And the robust virtue of English common sense has appeared elsewhere too.

Another senior Labour figure told me recently of his anger with Mr Brown about taxation. "He doesn't get it that our people don't like taxes either, and want the right to spend a bit more of their own money." That former minister sits, by the way, for a seat in the heart of England.

Goodness knows why the world gave up being ruled by the English.

Strangely, Mr Heffer does not find space to discuss Alan Johnson's capitulation to the unions over public sector pensions, a scandalously expensive settlement which Mr Brown is believed not to regard as a done deal.

Alas for Mr Heffer's wan thesis, the very same edition of the paper also carries a news item about Mr Johnson. For it seems that the doughty, plain spoken Englishman is not above the New Labour tactic of telling the press beforehand about speeches he is going to make, thus spreading coverage over two days.

Placing himself to the Left of Mr Brown, we learn, Mr Johnson will say Labour needs to distil "old Labour and new Labour into real Labour".

Oops.

Police bullying

Reckless drivers who use legal loopholes to avoid conviction are being targeted in a new police initiative, reports the BBC.

Police are frustrated, we are told, that "lawyers well versed in motoring laws are using small print to win acquittals for those charged with reckless or drink-driving".

Of course some of the lawyers' legal manoeuvrings have been despicable, but that's lawyers for you. But it is not for the police to decide which parts of laws are "small print". They are there to enforce the law as it is, not as how they would like it to be.

Acpo is also introducing a team made up of a lawyer and a former police officer to help prosecute speed camera cases.

The association hopes motorists will avoid contesting their speeding charge because if they lose, their costs will include up to £4,000 for the cost of the team.

This deliberate policy of pricing people out of the right to defend themselves is immoral. People who can afford "celebrity lawyers" will not be deterred, but poorer people will be.

Like it or not - and the police evidently don't like it - the law is the law.

The BBC reports that "Campaign group Liberty raised concerns that police may unlawfully target individuals who they believe have been unfairly acquitted of motoring offences".

That's a concern with any targeting of offenders - but in principle there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, it's good policing. The Liberty group have picked the wrong issue. The police are there to enforce the law, not to bully people into pleading guilty by threatening them with high legal costs.

"UKIP needs to broaden appeal"

Nick Assinder has suggested in a well crafted piece on the BBC website that the new leader of UKIP "needs to unite the party and avoid any future civil wars. But he also needs more than the single issue of Europe to write into his party's manifesto" if it is going to achieve a political breakthrough, now that the issue of EU membership no longer has the urgency it used to.

Jeffrey Titford apparently accepted this line in a news interview this morning, saying

"Whoever comes through, you're going to find that we're going to be involved far more with national politics and not so much selling the European line.

"We've won the European argument, the European Parliament argument, what we're looking for now is to get into British national politics and I think that will be right up on the agenda of the new leader."

He has doubtless cleared this with Nigel Farage.

But will the new leadership realise how much they have to change their ways? Policy spokespeople will actually have to speak and campaign about their own policy areas.

UKIP can't expect David Bannerman and John Whittaker to write all the policy, especially given that the education policy was disappointingly tame. And the subsequent debate on that showed that the policy document would have benefited from wider discussion within the party before its release.

This route into national politics really will require a cabinet approach. It will be very interesting to see if the new leadership can make this huge change.

Community policing

Philip Johnston in The Telegraph tells us the Conservatives are proposing more local control over policing.

Communities unhappy with the priorities of chief officers will be able to withhold part of the budget and spend it on beat patrols of their own, or reopen mothballed police stations.

The funding reform would be backed up by new political arrangements, such as directly elected police authorities or – the favoured option – an elected police commissioner.

Greater local control of the police is something UKIP has supported in its vague way for some time but the party has never run specific campaigns highlighting the issue.

Elections might give voters the chance whether they wanted the police to concentrate on (say) speeding motorists, or on violence, burglaries and anti-social behaviour.

But would senior police be willing to stand in elections? That remains to be seen, but greater local control of policing is very desirable.

For instance, our own rural Parish Council Area apparently contributes through council tax no less than £520k to the county police budget - and council tax provides 33% of the police authority's income. We have the lion's share of one community police officer (who has changed every few years). If we want an additional CSO, we have to pay half the cost.

Now, the authority has its overheads, and we are not their most lawless area, and we do get extra police to investigate the occasional mugging or shop burglary, but what we receive is tiny compared to what we spend.

So we should favour this idea. But it could divide communities from each other, as some communities remove part of their budgets.

Nonetheless, the proposals must be worth exploring.

A blogging network?

The invaluable Richard North has gone off on a weekend ramble, taking swipes at any bloggers or eurosceptics who cross his path, not all of them justified. Luckily this little eurosceptic blog slips under his radar.

The eurosceptic community, he suggests, has a choice.

We can continue as we are, bleating from the sidelines in the hope that the media will somehow take pity on us and espouse our cause, thereby condemning ourselves to the continued failure to which we have become accustomed. Or we can do something positive. And, looking at it in the round, that means redirecting our fire.

He suggests the media are the biggest influence on politicians. Collectively, he suggests, bloggers "can claw back power from the media and challenge the assumption that it represents the public".

He sets out a plan of campaign.

Firstly, we can disagree with the media, challenge it publicly and make our disagreements known – known to the public of which we are part, and to the politicians who would otherwise believe that the media was speaking for us.

Secondly, we can challenge the veracity and accuracy of the media output, in so doing challenging its authority as the monopolistic purveyor of information and opinion. We can make it known that the MSM is but one source, not necessarily the best and certainly not one which can be relied upon.

Thirdly, we can provide alternative views and analyses, both on our own account and through our forums and comments sections, where our readers have their chance to air their opinions. We can also give a platform to politicians, thinkers and others, airing ideas and opinions that the MSM chooses to exclude – thereby again challenging its monopoly.

Fourthly, we ourselves can perform some of the basic functions of the media – providing news and analysis. Even with mainstream stories we can often do it faster and better and certainly – in respect of analysis – there are more experts out in the blogosphere than there are accessible to the media.

Bloggers can add to this by "writing up the stories which the MSM chooses not to follow. By so doing, we challenge the power of the media by not accepting its right to set the agenda. We write up and discuss the issues we think are important – not just those that the media sees fit to tell us about."

North suggests "this requires that there should be a wide range of blogs, loosely working to the same overall agenda, partaking in that informal alliance which has worked so successfully in the United States under the generic name of the 'blogosphere'".

Some American comments on his piece have criticised their country's media, as if ours were better. But it is not only in the US that bloggers have more influence than here - in France they have become a political phenomenon, though perhaps more in the area of ephemeral political gossip than North is looking for, which already attracts hits and comments on some UK blogs which North identifies.

One can only wish North well in his interesting endeavour. One wonders how many eurosceptic UK bloggers there are. Bloggers are also by their nature determinedly individualistic. Some will write what they want to write and hope that the hits will follow, others will follow the popular path of political gossip.

Is there a nascent community here? It will be interesting to see. As North rightly concludes, "democracy is not a spectator sport. You can have idleness or you can have democracy – you cannot have both".

There's more than one problem

Another excellent piece in this morning's Telegraph from Ruth Lea, discussing "costly futile gestures in the climate change debate".

She starts with a broad perspective from scientists.

The British Association (BA) for the Advancement of Science's festival of science was told that climate change was the making of civilisation. Nick Brooks of the University of East Anglia said that, without dramatic changes in climate thousands of years ago, we might have remained farmers, herders and hunter-gatherers.

Early civilisations were founded between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago when global climate changes, driven by natural fluctuations in the Earth's orbit, resulted in increasingly arid conditions. Mankind used his initiative and adapted – with startling consequences.

The BA's President, Frances Cairncross, also spoke of adaptation. She said that climate change was inevitable and that the Kyoto agreement to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions would be "ineffectual". It was, therefore, necessary to implement adaptation strategies.

Against this background, Ruth Lea suggests that Kyoto's emphasis on "mitigation" policies rather than adaptation strategies looks misguided. But "evangelical support" by the UK government is increasing our energy costs in this country. Of the EU15 countries, "only the UK, Sweden and nuclear-powered France appear likely to hit their Kyoto compliant targets".

She then explains in some detail how the UK government is disadvantaging our economy against those of other EU members, which are setting their industry more generous targets on emissions.

The UK Government has already submitted its plans with a tough 3pc reduction target for carbon emissions. Germany's plans are much less stringent. British business will, therefore, continue to operate at a cost disadvantage. The impact on climate change will be zilch.

It's no good blaming the EU for everything, or even blaming it for everything bad which happens in an EU context. To use the tennis expression, this is an "unforced error" by the UK government. Not all ills can be laid at the door of the EU.

Will this faith-based approach to policymaking survive what Archie Brown in the FT calls "Mr Brown's preference for evidence-based policy that can withstand serious scrutiny"? Since the green Mr Cameron seems as wedded to serious policy analysis as Mr Blair (and in that sense would certainly be a true successor), would Prime Minister Brown be tempted to expose much greenery for the pointless expense that it is?

Trapped in the CAP?

The European Court of justice has annulled reforms to the EU's cotton subsidy régime. The Court said the Commission had not properly assessed the impact of the reforms. In particular it criticised the Commission for not including labour costs in its impact assessment. It concluded that once labour costs were included “adequate profitability” of cotton “is not ensured” under the reforms which could lead to the crop being given up.

The Court said that Community institutions must be able to show before the Court that when a contested measure was adopted, all the relevant factors and circumstances of the situation the measure was intended to regulate were taken into consideration.

The Court seems to be saying it has the power to judge whether a subsidy régime will be adequate to achieve stated policy objectives, and to strike it down if it apparently does not.

Thus a legalistic attitude is imported at a stage where a political judgement seems more appropriate.