Quote of the day

Labour luvvies Eddie Izzard and Dame Jokewell will be performing a “three-hander” with the Labour leader at the conference in Liverpool on Wednesday afternoon.

Says Dame Jokewell:

The details have still to be worked out as it’s a bit of a last minute thing, but the idea is to show how spontaneous Ed can be.

Two days left to plan it.

A short guide to the euro crisis

Ambrose explains.

The root of the euro crisis is a 30pc intra-EMU currency misalignment between North and South. That structural flaw cannot be solved with debt guarantees or bank rescues.

Nor can this gap in competitiveness be bridged by austerity alone, by pushing Club Med deeper into debt-deflation and perma-slump. Such a strategy must slowly eat away at Italian and Spanish society, undercutting the whole purpose of the EU Project. It would ultimately risk trapping them in a debt spiral as well, leading to colossal losses for Germany in the end.

We can already see what's happening to the society of the Greek liars. The two main political parties are draining popular support as Greek society whines at the withdrawal of the euroteet. As government seeks to cut the incomes of the lower paid, Greek society really is starting to seize up.

At a guess, Spanish society will go down before Italy's. Spanish local government is riddled with debt, and several places have already said they cannot afford to keep some basic local services running. (Don't forget Portugal's finances are probably just as rotten underneath.)

Italians are probably more inured to corruption and incompetence, so there is likely to be more acceptance there, despite the efforts of the Northern League.

With its usual arrogance, France will expect the IMF and (mainly) the eurozone to take on the burden of French banks  with too much southern European debt. Let's see what the Finns and the Slovaks make of that.

Dale Farm neighbours not happy

Villagers living near the UK's largest illegal travellers' site are considering staging a protest march if the planned eviction is delayed again.

Residents in Crays Hill, near Basildon, say they may also withhold council tax unless travellers are evicted from illegal plots at Dale Farm soon. They may also submit planning applications for building in their back gardens.

One villager said:

Why should I worry about inflaming any situations? I have been inflamed for 10 years.

UK to assist in French banks bailout?

The Telegraph is reporting that

British taxpayers risk being caught up in a £1.75trillion deal aimed at saving the euro by allowing Greece to default on its massive debts.

Are we surprised that "German and French officials came up with the strategy"?

It would involve the bailing out those European banks - mostly French - most at risk from their massive lendings to tottering economies.

We would have to finance part of the IMF's contribution.

As usual, France would get the major benefit, and our europhile government probably won't even ask for anything in return. We'll need the likes of Slovakia and Finland to fight our corner. How pathetic are we.

Dale Farm gypsies on benefits

Families at Dale Farm, Britain's biggest unauthorised gypsy camp, are still being paid housing benefits by the council trying to evict them – even though it has deemed their homes illegal.

Are we surprised?

Two conventional wisdoms - both wrong

Pass over Oborne's attempt at an arresting opening when he writes

Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics.

In fact they were right about the euro, but they're losing the EU war.

The main merit in his Telegraph piece today with Frances Weaver is in documenting the way anti-euro campaigners were treated in the BBC, and the patronising abuse dumped on them by the great and the grand, who turned out to be wrong. And they should have known they were wrong, as the arguments against the euro were not just nostalgia for sterling but also reasoned basic economics that disparate economies in a currency union would not automatically "converge" (remember that?) and that therefore large fiscal transfers would have to follow. Somehow, we were told, the benefits from a larger market would overwhelm these problems.

How wrong were they - Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Charles Kennedy, Danny Alexander. Apologies? No, I hadn't noticed any.

When you read how the BBC treated those against the euro, keep in mind its role in the "global warming" debate, and wonder to yourself if the BBC is not - once again - seriously unbalancing this country's political debate by sucking up to the allegedly great and grand in their conventional wisdom.

Now let's look at what Nick Grealy is calling the black swan of Blackpool shale gas. Please indulge me, he writes, with a partial list of those who we haven't heard from in the press yet most likely due to their jaws being locked in an open position:

Chatham House and the Oxford Institute of Energy both wrote studies predicting that shale gas would not be a game changer for Europe for example. Alistair Buchanan of Ofgem said this time last year that shale gas would not have significant production until at least 2025. This morning we see Cuadrilla's plan predicts drilling activity will start in 2013 and peak in 2021. The British Geological Society told the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Select Committee their reserve estimations were for 150 billion cubic metres in the entire UK, a tenth of yesterday's figures from one small area not even considered prospective. Those opinions then mis-informed the press who naturally seek brand name opinion. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, simply that it has the brand.

So what should this mean for the UK? Grealy writes that the entire UK energy policy rests on the a priori assumption of natural gas as finite and insecure and therefore expensive enough to make every other generation technology competitive. But ...

Nuclear, clean coal and renewable generation are three obvious examples of industries totally disrupted by shale.

With shale gas probably available in huge quantity, from within the UK, we can see "significantly lower prices, significantly lower carbon emissions and a whole slew of positive economic impacts". (Not that the BBC website last night was giving the slightest clue about any economic benefits whatever, just a warning that shale gas wouldn't be "green", as I blogged.)

So this is a win for both the economy and the environment, says Grealy, "and the sooner the green movement re-align themselves with the new reality the better".

Maybe this time the great and the grand can focus on giving us the chance to be better off, and the BBC can content itself with presenting the arguments fairly on both sides.

Here's hoping, anyway. It really really should not be difficult.

Have you seen this man?

Have you seen this man? No, he's not actually an Ayatollah, though he's just as fanatical and misguided. This is Phil Thornhill, of the Campaign against Climate Change, or CACC for short.

Yes, that's right, they are against climate change. They're also against your prosperity, and against you having reliable gas and electricity supplies. That's CACC.

So when Cuadrilla Resources announces it seems to have huge shale deposits in Lancashire, our Phil swings into action. The BBC strapline is not the strategic size of the resources, but that

An energy firm which has been test drilling for controversial shale gas in Lancashire has said it could create up to 5,600 jobs across the UK.

Good but not startling. As Nick Grealy explains

Cuadrilla revealed 200 TCF gas in place today. How big a number is that? Assume a conservative 20% recovery rate and this find is as big as the North Sea Troll super giant field. That's about 15 years of total UK demand. Or replacing ALL LNG imports for 40 years! There will be other challenges, but running out of gas will not be one of them. Cuadrilla also released figures showing the potential for £5 to 6 billion in tax revenues over 30 years.

But Phil is having none of that, thank you.

The BBC want to give less exposure to scientists who properly question the causes of global warming (which has stopped), but they're happy to quote this Ayatollah ecoloon.

"Those jobs could and should be in green energy. We need a revolution in the economy to really deal with climate change effectively", he says.

Despite his rantings, it would make not a bit of difference to global temperatures if Britain gave up all use of fossil fuels. Completely. For ever. Why? Because we're a small country with less than 2% of world output, and because bigger countries like China and India are producing more and more carbon dioxide all the time.

(That's not some obscure poison called 'carbon' by the way, that's carbon dioxide, the stuff which plants need to grow. Oh, and if they got more of it, they wouldn't be poisoned. They'd ... um ... grow faster.)

Now, economics being what it is, there would be more jobs in "green energy" if it paid. But it doesn't. Even though we subsidise it. A subsidy which is wholly pointless.

"They could create jobs in renewables", he whines, "if they put the investment there."

Just who is this anonymous, mysterious unfeeling "they"? Could it be that Phil wants taxpayers to pour even more subsidy into expensive and unreliable energy schemes?

Then taxpayers will be even poorer. And even if the wind turbines suddenly become reliable, economic, and attractive, they will make no difference to the air temperature at all. None. We will be poorer for no good reason.

Shale gas is changing the US economy. There's loads of it, all over the world. It's cheap and it can make us and our children and our children's children better off. The world will rely less on rogue nations for its fuel supplies, so it might even become more peaceful.

But the Climate Ayatollah is not interested in any of that. Britain can halt the runaway global warming we see all around us. Let us worship at the sacred flame, even as we shiver.

The BBC should surely be giving hardly any coverage to the rantings of this blinkered, ill informed ecoloon.

UPDATE The BBC have amended the page to strapline the resources:

An energy firm which has been test drilling for controversial "shale gas" in Lancashire has said it has found vast gas resources underground.

The page still stresses "green" issues, rather than energy security and cheapness.

Public Accounts Committee mice hold no one to account

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) goes through the motions of indignation about the waste of taxpayers' money on the futile project to centralise fire brigade control rooms. "A minimum of £469 million" has been "wasted". That's so far. The government is to throw a further £84.8m at trying to retrieve some value from the mess.

Meanwhile

Eight of the purpose-built regional control centres remain empty and continue to cost the taxpayer £4 million per month to maintain.

£48m a year to maintain eight empty buildings? How can this be?

The PAC calls for people to be held to account. So who does it name in its summary, conclusions and recommendations for the media to expose?

No one. Not even the ministers responsible.

The committee satisfies itself by blaming the Department. Does it expect "the Department" to offer up names?

PAC members, we pay you, so do your job. Names must be named, or there will never be any consequences. If the PAC isn't going to name names, who will?

Are you mice or men?

Sarko pinned

Irwin Stelzer is in enjoyably waspish form today, including this description of Sarko.

Nicolas Sarkozy ... continues his drive to forge a one-size-fits-all set of policies as part of his plan to establish centralized economic management of the euro zone and cripple Britain's financial sector and flexible labor market.

Don't write the EU off

There's much dancing on the EU's grave. To be sure, its leaders have contrived to achieve very little, at great expense to their taxpayers. They fear the consequences of a Greek default, yet fear also the costs of preventing it.

Andrew Lilico for one paints a vivid picture of why collapse of the euro equals collapse of the EU. It would involve a recession on a scale beyond modern experience or comprehension in a Western democracy, he writes. "Let's not go there."

Hm. Instead, let's not underestimate the ability of businesses to devise quick workarounds after a week or so of economic disorder.

And let us not underestimate the wish of many on the continent to see the EU continue. Not just the former Soviet colonies, most of them cannily still outside the eurozone, who see the EU as providing them some security against Russia. For different reasons, many in southern and northern Europe don't want the EU to dissolve.

Well, not yet. Spain is reintroducing a wealth tax by decree, to go to the cash-strapped regional governments (click the Spain label at the end for more), even though some of them are opposed to it. This is a country where only some 7,000 people declare annual taxable income above €600,000, and where the number of hours teachers must spend in the classroom weekly is to shoot up from 18 to 20.

And Portugal is another economically rickety country on the Iberian peninsula. The autonomous region of Madeira island "failed to report" a mere €1.1 billion in debt from 2008 to 2010 related to agreements between the government of Madeira and construction companies. This unreported debt is in addition to a €568 million hole found this year related to expenditure on a financially troubled, regionally owned enterprise and the cost of an aborted joint public-private partnership contract.

We probably can't underestimate the readiness of the north europeans to continue bankrolling this fecklessness, especially if the voters ever discover just how much the support operations have cost them. But they seem firmly wedded to the concept of the EU. Just like the Spanish and Portuguese, though those countries are scarcely yet feeling the squeeze of the German economic vice on their flatulent economies. But all the signs are that they will want some sort of EU to continue in some form.

Nor let us underestimate the warmth of all the UK front benches for the EU, and their readiness to cede more powers to its unelected centre, for ever, ignoring the undoubted wish of UK electors.

And never underestimate the momentum of the Brussels engine, still seeking to extend its tentacles, for instance further into management of borders, or into EU-wide regulations for the extraction of shale gas.

Too soon to write the EU off. Way, way too soon. Sadly.

Stop bending over backwards for Dale Farm gipsies

Excuses, excuses. Evicting them was going to be racist, and now it will affect their children's education.

The eviction at Dale Farm could force dozens of children out of education, their parents believe.

Thus report Sky News. I wonder how the locals will feel? You know, the ones who obey the law and pay their taxes?

There are 110 children on the register at the local Crays Hill Primary school. Of those, 107 are traveller children.

I think we can sense how the local people feel. But the gipsy mothers are seriously concerned about their children's education. Aren't they?

The school admits there is already an issue with low attendance levels.

I seem to recall government talk of increasing sanctions against parents whose children don't attend school. How is the truancy being handled here? The school say:

The parents endeavour to get their children into school, letting the school know when this isn't possible due to travelling.

My emphasis. In other words, they connive when these parents - suddenly so concerned by their children's education - choose to remove them from school:

The school will always keep places open for pupils when they are travelling rather than taking them off the roll.

When I last looked, it was illegal not to send your children to school. Why is it different for these people?

Yet all of a sudden these families who were choosing for their children not to be properly educated are now voicing fears that their children will grow up illiterate if they are forced back on the road. Forced? They've been taking off of their own accord during term times. And don't they like to call themselves travellers? When it suits them, apparently.

Anyway, Basildon Council Leader Tony Ball says: "Parents have been offered bricks and mortar accommodation near the school".

Enough with the special pleading. There are laws. These people should obey them.

More disobedience in fortress NHS

The NHS is a fortress. Too big to be managed, too big to be accountable. And the unaccountable managers mismanage with impunity.

Thus we had the Daily Mail telling us that "family doctors have been ordered to ration the number of patients they send for life-saving cancer scans to save money".

Now, as the article explains, this contradicts government policy.

The cuts are being brought in despite Government pledges to give GPs better access to cancer tests in the hope of saving 5,000 lives a year.... But it has since emerged that a quarter of Primary Care Trusts are actively discouraging GPs from sending patients for these tests.

And five Primary Care Trusts have actually banned family doctors from sending patients directly for scans. These delays will doubtless kill some people.

As usual, the Department of Health didn't know what was going on inside the fortress it supposedly controls.

Now Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has ordered NHS chief executive David Nicholson to write to every single trust telling them they must not impose such ‘blanket restrictions’.

13% of GPs had been told to reduce the number of patients they sent for MRI and CT scans - commonly used to diagnose cancer.

Who gave these instructions in the first place? How many of them will be sacked?

Guess.

While we wait, there's more. New research shows that thousands of patients are being denied hip and knee replacements, cataract operations and IVF as PCTs try to save money.

A survey of 300 family doctors by Pulse magazine found that many had been told to ration certain procedures not deemed urgent, which also include hernia operations and blood-testing for diabetes.

How many of those anonymous, unaccountable managers will be hauled up and sacked?

Guess.

Our useless state

The regulator Ofsted has been marking schools as outstanding even when their teaching isn't. Only one of 18 factors refers to "quality of teaching and learning".

Some 150 secondary schools were given the top rating by inspectors last year – even though they failed to score high marks for their teaching. And 260 primaries were similarly trumpeted after inspectors found their teaching was just ‘satisfactory’, or ‘good’.

So Mr Gove has called for the 18 criteria to be cut to four.

It's beyond obvious that a school can't be considered outstanding unless it has outstanding teaching. Effectiveness in tackling discrimination, for instance, can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. If the teaching is graded 'good', the school shouldn't score higher than 'good' - though it could score less if some other aspects weren't up to standard.

The shameful over-inflation of hundreds of schools was also damned by former chief inspector of Ofsted, Christine Gilbert, before she stepped down in June.

This would be Christine Gilbert partner of expenses fiddler and former Labour MP Tony McNulty.

Well, dahling (and I'm being deliberately offensive because you deserve it), you were paid a lot of my money to get this right.

You didn't then. So now shut up. You had your chance and we set no store by your opinions.

In the NHS, the Care Quality Commission was given too little money to regulate effectively, and then decided to concentrate on bureaucracy rather than inspections, making a bad situation worse.

Did the head of the CQC stand up and proclaim that it couldn't do its job?

No she did not. Here's another one who took the money and fouled up. People got abused in care homes while the CQC ticked its boxes.

Two regulators going for the mushy options rather than stark policing. They are there to represent the consumer interest. (That's you and me.) Clearly they don't.

Ofsted and the CQC are unfit for purpose.

Mice or men?

Civil servant bonuses topped £127million last year, the Government has admitted.

Well actually it was more than that, as some ministries think they needn't give a prompt answer to an FOI request.

Now, we're all supposed to be in this together. State employees get better pensions than the private sector, and they have greater job security.

They're paid to do a job. Did so many perform beyond the job requirements?

More than half of the DWP’s 117,000 employees picked up vouchers for High Street stores worth a combined £2.3million. It also gave bonuses to 97% of staff.

Why, for goodness sake? The amount lost to fraud and error went UP.

Close behind was the Ministry of Defence, where mandarins picked up about £49million in bonuses, even though thousands of servicemen are being laid off and our stock of military hardware is being slashed to cut costs.

Are our ministers mice or men? They couldn't run a whelk stall - like so many in the state sector.

Case for euro is based on dud history

History has shown that countries with a common currency never wage war against one another, and that is why the euro is far more than just a currency. If the euro fails, Europe fails. It must not fail, and will not fail.

Who made this breathtakingly stupid remark? Van Rompuy maybe? Or perhaps some Lib Dem euroloon?

No, it was Frau Merkel.

How can someone who has clambered up the ladder of power be so stuck in the past, so blinkered, so wrong?

First, history teaches us that "countries with a common currency" aren't actually separate countries any more. The smaller countries are buffeted by the politics of their larger neighbours in the union - over which they have no control and minimal influence. They become mere provinces.

Second, Ms Merkel doesn't seem to have noticed that the times have long gone when some aristocrat could drop a glove, or some madman rant, and the peasantry would obediently take up arms and throw their lives away.

(One can also ask whether a common currency would have stopped Hitler annexing Austria, but we don't need to sustain that argument.

And The Boiling Frog adds: Didn't Yugoslavia have a common currency?)

Most European countries don't have big standing armies. The few that do can't afford them, and even smaller armed forces are being cut back. They can scarcely afford to drop a few bombs on exposed tanks in North Africa. Invading a european neighbour would cost vastly more.

Nor are the unemployed the potential pool of cannon fodder they once were. Soldiering is more technical than it was in the days of mass recruitment. And in any case the unemployed pool prefers its welfare benefits to bayoneting people in rain and mud while being strafed by their allies. Understandably.

But probably the biggest reason why european nations aren't going to start warring with each other is that their neighbours are no longer faraway nations of which their inhabitants know nothing. They have second homes there, they and their families go on holiday there, they had their stag do's there, they do lots of business there, they retire there.

War within the EU area isn't going to happen. That's most likely due to cheap flights, the internet, and welfare benefits.

It has nothing to do with whether those countries are in the EU. It certainly has nothing to do with a common currency. Does Frau Merkel think Germany is more likely to declare war against Britain than France, because France is in the eurozone and Britain isn't?

Do Germans feel more kindly disposed to Greece because Greece is in the eurozone? Little sign of that.

So now we know. The case for tossing away billions in taxpayers' money rests on historical reasoning which was duff fifty years ago, and takes no notice of how the world has changed.

Astonishing.

Squatters are some sort of social good?

Judge Fiona Henderson is all over the papers for saying addresses of empty homes should be released to a squatters' organisation because squatting isn't a crime.

The Tribunal is satisfied that publication of this list would bring a proportion of the void properties back into use earlier than would otherwise be the case and that, consequently, this is a strong public interest in favour of disclosure.

The group publishes details of empty homes and a handbook showing how to take full advantage of housing laws.

Judge Henderson, reports The Mail, said she accepted that disclosure of the list would ‘facilitate squatting and associated crime’, that this would cost public money to prevent and that ‘the feeling of security of people living in neighbouring houses’ would be undermined. Camden Council pointed out that squatters are jumping the housing queue, but the judge wasn't interested.

Where does Judge Fiona Henderson live? Maybe that nice Mr Mulcaire could let us know.

Ambush Predator manages to stay calm enough to mock the ruling.

But fury is due on several fronts. First, because governments have delayed criminalising squatting for years. They're always considering it. Two fingers to the property owners who obey the law and pay their taxes. They don't kick up, so we don't have to look after their interests.

So what is the government going to do? Why, step up Labour's ‘empty dwelling management orders’. Oh good.

Second, this is another example of activism by the unelected judiciary. Government does nothing about that either. They expect taxpayers to shrug and put up with it.

Why should we?

Maybe most of all it's a condemnation of our spectacularly useless MPs. What are they for if not to push governments into speedily righting these wrongs?

Another of Blair's worthless opinions

Stephen Fidler has written a gently amused piece about a number of former EU leaders who have put their name to a document calling for fiscal federalism now that they are out of the political firing line and wouldn't have to sell it to their voters. The document's conclusion is mere mush.

ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST. The current crisis is a matter of the utmost urgency but at the same time an opportunity. Now European citizens expect their leaders to move from a day-to-day crisis management to taking charge and prepare the European Union for the challenges of the 21st century. Supporting European integration is not a matter of solidarity but of enlightened self-interest. It is time to address the big questions in order to preserve the unique European balance of individual freedoms, market economy and systems of social protection.

This is under the banner of something calling itself the Council for the Future of Europe. Who they?

We can ignore Blair's opinion, on the basis that he probably just scanned the document for 10 seconds before he signed up.

We also have such luminaries as Anthony Giddens. We should take no advice from him.

A pointless contribution to the debate - if contribution it is.

The eurozone "strategy" totters again

The Speaker of the Slovak Parliament doesn't want to bring forward new legislation to widen the role of a euro-zone rescue fund, reports the WSJ.

He seems to have a way with words, saying that "it's not possible to solve a debt crisis by creating new debts", and the new bailout measures amount to "trying to put out a fire with a fan".

And he complains that Slovakia - the second poorest country in the Eurozone - is being asked to subsidise richer countries like Greece and Italy which flout the rules, while poorer Slovakia is forced to follow them.

Presumably in the USA it's usually richer states that subsidise poorer ones, not the other way round.

Commenters at the WSJ suggest that Slovakia is looking for a payoff from the Commission. Finland has already demanded collateral. Doubtless others will join the queue.

It's about German and French banks anyway. Oh, and probably British taxpayers too, when our state supported bank have to reveal how much dodgy eurozone sovereign debt is going to cost us.

The Slog thinks the inevitable Greek default may now come in days.

It's the economy

The electoral drubbing of Angela Merkel's party in regional elections in her home state is worth comment - but it wasn't caused by the euro bailouts or the decision to phase out nuclear power rapidly.

If those were the reasons, why would the proportion of votes for the Greens and the Left have gone up?

This looks more likely:

The after-tax income of the average German, adjusted for inflation, fell sharply during the worst of the economic crisis in 2009, and it has been growing only moderately since. This measure — the growth-rate of real, per capita, disposable income — does a remarkably good job of predicting electoral outcomes in many countries, Germany included.

As an aside, what would that mean for a UK government which planned to add £300 to a household's annual energy bills? Especially as voters know.

Who do they think they are?

The Wall Street Journal writes of the gradual disintegration of Belgian national identity. But they suggest Belgium isn't about to split apart: it would upset the debt markets, most Belgians "say they don't want the headache", and no one can agree how to divide Brussels.

Of more interest is the comment by the (unelected) European Commission.

On Thursday, the European Commission felt obliged to deny reports in a Belgian newspaper that it had formally warned Belgium that its no-government act has gone too far.

The Commission “has full confidence that the current caretaker government will take the necessary decisions in the current context,” the EU executive said.

Remarkably, the official chose to add:

The Commission also has confidence in the democratic process in Belgium.

What do they mean? That Belgian "democracy" is responsive and vibrant? Hardly. Not that the Commission would be likely to welcome that anyway. Look at Finland, keeping its electorate on side by demanding collateral for doomed lending to Greece - and getting it, thereby probably bringing forward chaos and writedowns for German and (especially) French banks.

Maybe the Commission just mean that Belgian "democracy" is so weak that the caretaker government will be compliant? Unlike some Irish governments. And we know how the Commission stamped on Irish displays of democracy.

To the unelected Commission, democracy is just a figleaf for their dictatorial powers. Why do they think we would accord their opinions on democracy any respect at all?