Quotulatiousness

June 13, 2011

British carbon tax may spark de-industrialization

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:51

The current British government’s global warming/climate change programs, combined with the European Union’s policies, may have triggered a race to the exits by British industry:

Now, the CBI and Britain’s leading chemical firms have warned that the proposed “carbon floor” tax (also unique in the world) will make our industry so uncompetitive that, unless the policy is changed, it will lead inevitably to mass plant closures and job losses. Similarly, the European Metals Association warned last week that the EU’s various “anti-carbon” policies are becoming so costly that they are already forcing steel, aluminium and other producers in their energy-intensive industry to relocate outside Europe, losing hundreds of thousands more jobs.

At one end of the scale, then, whole industries are protesting that the soaring costs of “climate change” measures will amount, in effect, to a colossal economic suicide note. At the other, we begin to see how the obsession with “climate change” will push our own household energy bills through the roof, driving millions more people into “fuel poverty”. Apart from anything else, by 2020 our Government expects us to pay £100 billion for a further 10,000 useless, subsidised windmills, plus £40 billion to connect them to the National Grid. These costs alone would almost double our present electricity bills.

Furthermore, we are all unwittingly having to pay billions for the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Reduction scheme, higher airline taxes, higher vehicle duties, highly paid “low-carbon officers” in our council offices, and heaven knows what else besides. With the new carbon floor tax soon due to raise our energy bills by further billions, we can see why the Government’s own forecast — that the Climate Change Act will cost us up to £18 billion annually until 2050 — might well be an underestimate.

Most terrifying of all, however, is the extent to which our politicians remain firmly locked in their little green bubble, oblivious to the practical implications of the measures they have set in train. As for what purpose it all serves, we may note last week’s report that China, already the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, is now also the world’s largest energy user. Each year it increases the world’s CO2 emissions by more than the total that Britain emits annually.

June 9, 2011

Those ungrateful peasants

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Government, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

I had wondered about the origins of that bit of verse:

I asked if people were perhaps not tricked, but legitimately voting against the left because they objected to socialist policies such a massive spending and multiculturalism.

He responded that these issues were indeed difficult for ‘common people’ to comprehend, and therefore for the right to take advantage of. He reiterated however that the problem was not with the policies, it was that people did not ‘understand’.

This was a revealing statement, for it is a typical line of thinking across the left-wing political spectrum, from the most hardened communist to the most moderate social-democrat. While all leftists claim to be for the ‘people’, at the same time they have utter contempt for the people.

They believe they know what is best for the people, and if the people — uppity ungrateful peasants — object, then the people be damned.

Bertolt Brecht — ironically himself a dedicated Marxist — poked fun at this leftist mentality in a now famous poem, Die Lösung (The Solution), following a workers uprising against the Communist East German government in 1956.

    After the uprising of the 17th of June
    The Secretary of the Writers Union
    Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
    Stating that the people
    Had forfeited the confidence of the government
    And could win it back only
    By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
    In that case for the government
    To dissolve the people
    And elect another?

May 29, 2011

More on the Anglo-Danish Marmite affair

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe, Food, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:34

Colby Cosh rounds up the details on the Marmite affair:

Nothing stirs the blood of the British like a nice slapfight over European regulation, and this goes double when food is involved. The UK press has found its latest excuse for tut-tutting and finger-waggling in the unlikeliest of places: at the bottom of the squat, distinctive little jar in which the vile breakfast spread Marmite is sold. This week, English-language journals in Denmark reported that the Scandinavian kingdom’s food regulator was having the dark brown yeast extract cleared from the shelves of shops which serve Brit expatriates.

The British reared up as one, displaying a spirit of indignant unity. “What have the Danes ever done for global cuisine?” thundered the Belfast Telegraph, breaking Godwin’s Law into splinters over its knurled Ultonian knee. (Unfortunately, a good answer might be “Not given it Marmite, at any rate.”) Fans of the quasi-foodstuff gathered on Facebook to form a “Marmite army”. Social campaigners used the ban to call attention to dubious patches in Denmark’s record on human rights and environmentalism.

As he points out, nobody at the Danish food nanny office suddenly issued a ban: technically Marmite had never been cleared for import at all. So it’s just a matter of filling in a form or two and Bob’s your uncle? Not quite:

Marmite’s status as a “fortified food” has apparently only just been noticed, and the DVFA says that “it has not received an application for marketing in Denmark of Marmite or similar products with added vitamins or minerals.” A glance at the DVFA’s procedure for obtaining approval to market these foods reveals why brand owner Unilever might not be in such a hurry to file. (And it also reveals that free-trade fanatics like me should probably rein in their admiration for the EU’s trade barriers just a little.) The agency not only requires compliance with EU-wide regulations, but insists that each product pass an “individual risk assessment” performed using a made-in-Denmark scientific procedure.

May 16, 2011

Christian holidays? Down the EU memory hole!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:34

It could hardly be an oversight that the EU “forgot” to include any traditional Christian holidays in their run of 3 million school diaries produced for students:

A year ago the European Commission (EC) printed more than three million school diaries for distribution to students. They are lovely diaries which, true to the EU’s multicultural ethos, helpfully note all the Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Chinese festivals. The diary also highlights Europe Day, which falls on 9 May. But the diary is not without some very big gaps. For example, it makes no reference to Christmas — or Easter or indeed to any Christian holidays.

However, the importance of 25 December is not entirely ignored. At the bottom of the page for that day, schoolchildren are enlightened with the platitude: ‘A true friend is someone who shares your concern and doubles your joy.’

Not surprisingly, many Europeans are not exactly delighted by the conspicuous absence of Christian festivals from a diary produced for children. In January, an Irish priest complained to the ombudsman of the EC and demanded an apology for the omission of Christian holidays and the recall of the diaries. A month later, the commission apologised for its ‘regrettable’ blunder. However, the ombudsman dismissed the demand to recall the diaries, arguing that a one-page correction sent to schools had rectified the error.

I suspect, had the complaint been from a religious leader in a non-Christian faith, they’d not have let a month elapse before springing to address the error in that faith’s holy days . . .

April 18, 2011

True Finn party surges to 39 seats in Finnish election

Filed under: Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:53

From nowhere to third-largest party:

The True Finns finished just behind the conservative NCP and the Social Democrats on around 19%.

While the Social Democrats have called for changes on EU bail-outs, including the planned Portuguese rescue, True Finns opposes the plans altogether.

A hostile Finnish government could theoretically veto the package.

Unlike other eurozone countries, Finland’s parliament can vote on whether to approve the measures.

Correspondents say the increased sway of Euro-sceptics in Finland’s parliament could hold up any further bail-out deals.

As the biggest party, the NCP is tipped to lead the next government with former Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen likely to become prime minister of whatever coalition emerges, replacing Mari Kiviniemi of the Centre Party.

Gavin Hewitt called it a “tremor” with an “epicentre” in Finland:

A few years ago the True Finns were a fringe party, that received almost no attention. So what happened? The vote was not just about the bailout. There was anxiety about unemployment and fears of a jobless economic recovery. Reductions in pensions had angered many workers. The party also tapped into fears about immigration.

What makes this election so significant is that it follows a pattern across Europe. Establishment and incumbent parties are being rejected. Nationalist parties are gaining influence.

In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders leads the country’s third largest party. In Italy the Northern League — hostile to immigration and wary of the EU — is increasingly powerful. In France, Marine Le Pen — who wants to abandon the euro — is showing strong support in the polls.

Recently, writing in the Financial Times, Peter Spiegel questioned whether we were seeing the emergence of a European Tea Party. Certainly there is a strong sense of alienation and dissatisfaction. Immigration is a key factor. It is shaking governments. There are more than 24 million people without work in the EU and there is no appetite to welcome new arrivals. That is why the migrants from Tunisia are sparking such tension between Italy and France.

As important as immigration is unemployment. In countries like Italy and Spain there is talk of a “lost generation” that cannot find work. There is a growing awareness that Europe may be a low-growth area.

H/T to Elizabeth, who reminded me that I had an obligation to report the final results after having posted links to the election race twice before.

April 17, 2011

This is why the Finnish election matters to Portugal

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

Unlike most other EU states, Finland has an option of putting the bailout to a vote:

Opinion polls suggest the True Finns have nearly quadrupled in popularity since the last election though they are unlikely to enter government.

Analysts see mainstream parties taking a harder line on the EU as a result.

Unlike other eurozone states, Finland can put requests for bail-out funds to a majority vote in parliament.

Since any bail-out must be approved unanimously by all 17 eurozone members, a hostile Finnish government could theoretically veto it.

The outcome of Sunday’s election may affect EU plans to shore up Portugal as well as impacting on stability in debt markets.

April 8, 2011

Monty’s daily dose of DOOM!

Filed under: Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:12

People suffering from over-cheerful attitudes about the future of the European Union could just read Monty’s chock-full-of-DOOM postings at Ace of Spades HQ for a quick depressant:

Let’s begin abroad by explaining why Spain is boned. Spain suffers from the same disease as the rest of the continent generally — socialism, postmodernism, an ossified job market, an unsustainable welfare state — but in more concentrated form. Spain is so boned that their main export these days is young ‘uns (h/t Andy).

If you look at the countries currently in the midst of insolvency in Europe — Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and (shortly) Spain — it’s obvious that they are different entities altogether from their more prosperous European peers. For one, most of them are recent entrants onto the first-world stage. Spain languished under Franco until the mid 1970’s; Ireland only emerged from decades of civil strife (both amongst themselves and against England) in the early 1990’s; and Portugal was (and still is) a third-world nation glued to the continenet almost as an afterthought. Portugal is more properly thought of as a North African developing country than a first-world European country, whatever the maps say (h/t rdbrewer).

The Euro project hid those problems…for a while. Cheap credit allowed the dysfunctional European countries to borrow enough money to pretend to a first-world standard of living for more than a decade. There was real growth in the various economies — particularly in Ireland — but much of the “growth” was mainly borrowed money with little attendant economic or social reform.

The Great Downturn of 2008 did not cause the problem; it simply exposed what a sham the whole thing had been all along.

England is watching the drama play out on the Continent, and thanking $DEITY that they never signed on to the Euro. England still has serious problems, but they also have options that the other European nations do not have because they control their own currency.

As usual, the original post has lots of links to follow to increase the dosage of DOOM. Adjust intake to adequately suppress your optimism.

March 20, 2011

Stilton cheese

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe, Food, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:48

In the comments to a post at BoingBoing about something called a shooter’s sandwich (which itself sounds remarkably edible) was a link to Huntsman cheese. I’ve actually had Huntsman cheese, although I didn’t know it had a formal name: it’s Stilton and Double Gloucester cheeses in alternating layers (very tasty).

Having already made myself hungry — I got up late this morning and still haven’t had breakfast — I followed the link for Stilton cheese to discover the following little bit of EU nomenclature inanity:

Stilton is a type of English cheese, known for its characteristic strong smell and taste. It is produced in two varieties: the well-known blue and the lesser-known white. Both have been granted the status of a protected designation of origin by the European Commission, together one of only seventeen British products to have such a designation. Only cheese produced in the three English counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire — and made according to a strict code — may be called “Stilton”. This means that cheese produced in Stilton, the village in Cambridgeshire for which the cheese is named, would not legally be allowed to be called Stilton Cheese.

Absurd, right? Well, for a change, there is actually a good reason for the restriction:

It is commonly believed that the pioneer of blue Stilton was Cooper Thornhill, owner of the Bell Inn on the Great North Road, in the village of Stilton, Huntingdonshire. Traditional legend has it that in 1730, Thornhill discovered a distinctive blue cheese while visiting a small farm near Melton Mowbray in rural Leicestershire — possibly in Wymondham. He fell in love with the cheese and made a business arrangement that granted the Bell Inn exclusive marketing rights to blue Stilton. Soon thereafter, wagon loads of cheese were being delivered to the inn. Since the main stagecoach routes from London to Northern England passed through the village of Stilton he was able to promote the sale of this cheese and the fame of Stilton rapidly spread. However, the first known written reference to Stilton cheese was in William Stukeley’s Itinerarium Curiosum, letter V, dated October 1722, and in his 1724 work A tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain Daniel Defoe describes Stilton cheese as “famous”.

So the cheese called “Stilton” isn’t actually made in Stilton. However, the Bell Inn is still there, and you can indeed get a meal with Stilton cheese in the building that helped to make it famous. I’d dig out my photos of the building, but I was there in the pre-digital photography age, so I’m not at all certain where they are . . .

February 23, 2011

Now you can’t have “Cornish Pasties” unless they’re from Cornwall

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe, Food — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

Apparently the poor bakers of Cornwall have been driven to the edge by unfair competition. They’ve been fighting the tide of so called “Cornish Pasties” that have never been within hundreds of miles of Cornwall. Now, thanks to the intrepid bureaucrats of Brussels, the Cornish Pasty now has the same kind of name protection as Champagne:

Aficionados of the Cornish pasty will in future be assured that their pasty is the real deal, following a European Commission ruling that only pasties prepared in Cornwall in the traditonal way can be labelled “Cornish”.

Cornish maiden bearing platter of genuine Cornish pasties. Photo: Cornish Pasty AssociationThe announcement that the pasty has been granted “protected geographical indication” (PGI) marks a great day for the Cornish Pasty Association, which for nine years has battled to protect its product from pretenders pumping out non-traditional imitations “inferior in both quality and taste”.

I’ve always been a big fan of “Cornish Pasties”, but I now discover that I’ve apparently been cheated all these years: I’ve never actually eaten a “real” Cornish Pasty in my entire life! (And given that I’ve never been to Cornwall, I may never try one . . .)

February 10, 2011

The Netherlands go nuke, downplay wind power

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Europe, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

Of all the EU states, the last one you’d expect to give up on wind power would be the one that everyone associates with windmills:

In a radical change of policy, the Netherlands is reducing its targets for renewable energy and slashing the subsidies for wind and solar power. It’s also given the green light for the country’s first new nuclear power plants for almost 40 years.

Why the change? Wind and solar subsidies are too expensive, the Financial Times Deutschland, reports.

Holland thus becomes the first country to abandon the EU-wide target of producing 20 per cent of its domestic power from renewables. This is a remarkable turnaround from a state that took the Kyoto Agreement seriously and chivvied other EU members into adopting renewable energy strategies. The FT reports that instead of the €4bn annual subsidy, it will be slashed to €1.5bn.

I did a quick Google image search for a typical Dutch windmill image, and decided that this one was too amusing to pass up:

December 3, 2010

Reactions to the Irish financial crisis

Filed under: Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

Kevin O’Rourke sees it as almost a kind of bereavement:

It is one thing to know that someone you love is terminally ill; their death still comes as a shock.

I certainly don’t want to compare the arrival of the EU-IMF team in Dublin last week to a bereavement. But I was surprised at how upsetting I found it, given that it came as no surprise. It had been clear for a long time that the blanket guarantee given to the liabilities of Ireland’s rotten banks, in September 2008, had saddled the State with a debt that was too big for it to handle. Ten successive quarters of declining real GNP, and one attempt too many to draw a line under the losses of our banks, made our exclusion from international capital markets inevitable. But to know something is one thing; to see it actually happen is something entirely different.

I am not alone in feeling this way, it seems. The economics editor of the Irish Times, Dan O’Brien, wrote that

“nothing quite symbolised this State’s loss of sovereignty than the press conference at which the ECB man spoke along with two IMF men and a European Commission official. It was held in the Government press centre beneath the Taoiseach’s office. I am a xenophile and cosmopolitan by nature, but to see foreign technocrats take over the very heart of the apparatus of this State to tell the media how the State will be run into the foreseeable future caused a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.

This is not to say that we would be happy to have our country’s affairs managed by the current, disgraced, government. I yield to no-one in my loathing of the men and women who have done this to my country. What has been the intellectual low-point of the last couple of years? Was it the cash-for-clunkers stimulus package (Ireland does not produce any cars)? Or the statement by our Finance Minister that Ireland need not fear a bank run, since Ireland is an island? Or the biggest Irish joke of them all, which underpinned the bank guarantee in the first place: that if we wanted investors to retain confidence in the creditworthiness of the Irish State, we needed to make sure that nobody who invested in our (private sector) banks ever lost a penny?”

H/T to Tim Harford for the link.

November 30, 2010

Ireland’s debt problem

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Humour, Italy, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:48

James Howard Kunstler looks at Ireland’s plight:

When you’re out of the country, as I was last week, it’s good to know that the home folks are keeping up with the Kardashians and bravely venturing into the blood-splattered chambers of cable TV’s latest hit, Bridal Plasty — where candidates for marriage are transformed from Holstein cows into inflatable sex toys by magic surgical technology — not to mention all those humble guardians of freedom who kept the parking lots of WalMart safe for consumerism in the wee small hours of Black Friday. These are, after all, perilous times.

Elsewhere, Ireland and the rest of Europe wore themselves out with soul-searching all week over how to handle national bankruptcy within a currency system that bears only a schematic relation to reality. Does the bankruptee go broke all at once, or is she recruited into permanent debt slavery so that the bond-holders of various banks can keep their loved ones in marzipan and Fauchon’s wonderful marrons glacés for one more holiday season? As of Monday morning, Ireland has been commanded to, er, bend over and pick up the soap, shall we say, for about a hundred billion euros in loans that will not be paid back until a mile-high ice-sheet covers Dublin (something that might happen sooner rather than later if the climate mavens are right).

We’ll see how this bail-out goes down with the French and German voters, too, who have to pay for it, after all, especially as Portugal, Spain, and Italy line up at the cash cage for their cheques (and bars of soap). Of course, a few more basis points in the interest rate spreads could prang the whole Euro soap opera — does anybody really believe this game of kick-the-can will go on after New Years? I’m not even sure it goes on past this Friday, but I am a notoriously nervous fellow.

This is almost as good as the (temporarily discontinued) daily Financial Briefings from Monty.

H/T to Terry Kinder for the link.

November 19, 2010

The A400M is a “Euro-wanking make-work project”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

Gotta love those unbridled opinions in British politics:

A peer and former defence minister has described the A400M military transport plane — which is being bought by the cash-strapped UK armed forces for a secret but outrageous amount of money — as a “Euro-wanking make-work project” in the written Parliamentary record.

The straight talk came from Lord Gilbert, who held various ministerial portfolios in the 1970s – including a defence one – and did another spell in the MoD as a peer in the first years of the Blair government. Last week he made the following remarks in the House of Lords:

I regard the decision on the A400M as the most bone-stupid in the 40 years that I have been at one end or other of this building. It is an absolutely idiotic decision. We have a military airlift fleet of C-17s and C-130s. We have total interoperability with the United States… six or seven countries altogether will be flying the A400M. Flying the C130, which it is intended to replace, are 60 countries, with 2,600 or so C130Js currently being used. That is the interoperability that we are losing…

September 28, 2010

Britain in the 70’s

Filed under: Books, Britain, Economics, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:38

A review of Dominic Sandbrook’s State of Emergency: The Way We Were. Britain, 1970–1974 sounds interesting:

As prime ministers, Edward Heath and Gordon Brown had quite a lot in common. Both were monstrously self-centred, permanently grumpy and capable of astonishing rudeness. Both of their relatively short-lived premierships ended in humiliating failure. In a recent poll of academics on Britain’s best and worst prime ministers since the second world war, Heath came ninth out of twelve and Mr Brown tenth. But that is where the similarities end. Whereas Mr Brown was largely the author of his own misfortunes (the banking crash apart), Heath, as Dominic Sandbrook reminds us in his splendidly readable new history of Britain during the four years from 1970, was faced with a set of problems whose intractability and nastiness would have overwhelmed even a far more gifted politician.

Heath both appals Mr Sandbrook and elicits his sympathy. Tory mythology still insists that many of Heath’s difficulties arose from his U-turn when he abandoned the free-market ideas with which he entered office and embraced an already discredited and peculiarly British form of corporatism the moment the going got rough. The truth is that although Heath had tried to present himself as the champion of ruthless neoliberalism, he was always at heart a “one nation” Tory with little appetite for the kind of confrontation his successor as Conservative Party leader, Margaret Thatcher, relished. His burning desire was to modernise Britain and to arrest its economic decline through efficiency, pragmatic problem-solving and, above all, by joining the European Community.

My family left Britain in 1967, which was a good time to go: the economy was still in post-war recovery, but opportunities abroad were still open to British workers. My first visit back was in 1979, which was a terrible shock to my system. I’d left, as a child, before the strikes-every-day era began, and my memories of the place were still golden-hued and happy. Going back to grey, dismal, cold, smelly, strike-bound Britain left me with a case of depression that lasted a long time. It didn’t help that the occasion of the visit was to attend my grandfather’s funeral: it was rather like the land itself had died and the only remaining activity was a form of national decomposition.

Some readers will find the way the author flits about tiresome, but given that he was born only in 1974 his almost pitch-perfect ability to recreate the mood and atmospherics of the time is remarkable. He does not lose sight of the fact that although the 1970s are now seen as a nadir in Britain’s post-war fortunes, for the majority of people it was nonetheless a time of growing affluence, widening horizons and personal liberation. Many of the positive developments that are associated with the supposedly wonderful 1960s did not gain traction until a decade later. Viewed from a distance, Britain in the 1970s looks ghastly — angry, decaying, on the skids. But that is not the whole story.

Mr Sandbrook compares this turbulent period with the four years between 1910 and 1914 described by George Dangerfield in “The Strange Death of Liberal England”. As he says: “Dangerfield’s story was one of political ferment and economic turmoil, of challenges to the moral order and rebellions against traditional gender roles, of Utopian socialism and Irish sectarianism — all rooted, like the challenges of the early 1970s, in profound historical trends that no government could possibly control.” Thankfully, the discontent of the 1970s did not end in world war, but continued, mostly unresolved, until the arrival of Lady Thatcher in 1979. That may pose a problem for Mr Sandbrook’s next book, which will be an account of the second half of the decade. In many ways it was more of the same, but without a central character as oddly compelling and sad as Heath.

I’m even more interested — in a grim sort of way — in the next book. It’ll be interesting to read an account of that time from a different perspective than my brief mid-winter visit provided.

September 15, 2010

The real results of Turkey’s referendum

Filed under: Europe, Government, History, Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

Austin Bay is still hopeful for a secular Turkish government, but the results of the recent referendum don’t encourage quite as much hope:

Turkey’s leading political organizations both portray the choice between them as “either us or darkness.” This rhetorical demonization is typical of successful democracies. Ataturk deserves credit for establishing a democratic structure that survived his death in 1938 by 72 years.

Turkey’s actual circumstances, however, are much more complex and murky. Start with the referendum’s irony. The constitution had many undemocratic articles and was in fact imposed by the military after a coup in 1980. The European Union ruled that many of these elements did not meet EU membership standards. Thus the ironic situation of an Islamist political party promoting constitutional changes in order to meet Western European democratic standards. Aligning Turkey with Europe was one of Kemal Ataturk’s long-term goals.

Yet the judicial reforms approved this week may be an anti-democratic trap door, for they give the AKP the ability to limit systemic checks and balances on executive power. The AKP can pack the courts. The judiciary has protected the Turkish military. The AKP distrusts the military because it fears a coup, and with good reason. The military sees itself as the protector of the secular state and a bulwark against Muslim fundamentalist usurpation.

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