Nosemonkey's EUtopia

I was wondering what the next area for Blair’s EU presidency to fail in would be. They’ve already buggered up sorting out the budget, the constitution aftermath, CAP reform, data retention, very nearly Turkey, and doubtless numerous other less prominent areas of dispute which I’ve missed thanks to them being discussed behind closed doors or in Brussels corridors.

Next step? EU/US military relations – specifically that ongoing spat over the long-suggested European Defence Force (first proposed by Winston Churchill back in the 40s, and still no closer to becoming a reality).

The US position? What’s the point if we’ve got NATO? (You can kind of see their point…)

The position of a good chunk of our EU brothers and sisters? Erm… We don’t seem to agree with US foreign policy much at the moment and rather object to the idea that we could be forced via NATO ties into getting involved in wars with which we don’t agree – we want our own little club, thanks. (You can kind of see their point too…)

The UK position? Almost exactly the same as that of the US.

Yep – we’re the IDEAL people to be the middle-men on this one, aren’t we? We can’t speak for the rest of the EU because we don’t agree with or understand the positions of a decent section of them – and those that disagree with the British position will likely refuse to be bound by any deals the UK presidency proposes out of suspicion that we’re acting as Bush’s lapdog rather than honest brokers – whether this is true or not.

On top of that we also can’t shake off the ongoing competition between European military manufacturers (a decent percentage of which are British) and those of the US. So the US is going to be suspicious that all our boys are trying to do, nominally on behalf of the EU, is secure NATO contracts for British arms dealers conflict resolution hardware suppliers.

Can’t see this one going tits up…

Bird flu confirmed in Romania. Tomorrow the test results on the virus found in Turkey should reveal whether it’s the deadly H5N1 strain – with its 50% fatality rate. And still the government has only 900,000 doses of the vaccine.

Go on, everyone – sign the pledge – we haven’t had a good old-fashioned mass panic opportunity for – ooooh! at least a couple of months now…

Blair government in complete policy U-turn following “turns out it wasn’t either popular or properly thought through” shocker! – This time those stupid data retention proposals they were trying to push through the EU to avoid having to have a vote in Westminster on the things.

Now, I wonder, will they start pushing for EU-wide biometric ID as an alternative? They’ve only got a couple of months left with the presidency – are they really going to achieve NOTHING with it?

I do hope so…

As such, things put here to remind me to read them later:

“Is there anything left to argue about in economics? Anything interesting, to be more precise, or important?”

“A couple of days spent clicking around the economics blogosphere last week gave me the feeling of walking through a maze of corridors, as in a dream, academic passageways giving way suddenly to corporate swank and back again to think-tank threadbare.”

Are Today’s Authoritarian Leaders Doomed to be Indicted When They Leave Office? The Russian and Other Post-Soviet Cases

“‘peak oil’ doom-and-gloom fantasists are talking a load of nonsense”

Carnival of Revolutions

More, possibly, to come, if I can find a spare few minutes.

France attacks Peter Mandelson for “going beyond the principles of his mandate” in trade talks with the US. Mandelson has a mandate? Mandelson has principles?

I feel a migrane coming on, so will shortly be unable to see. So in the meantime check out how much just one government department is forking out on consultants via our Justin and the generally top chap that is blogging Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell. I was reading it just as my vision began to go/ It made me cross. As usual.

Update: An alternate perspective, well worth a look.

Ha ha ha! Thanks to Amazon’s “Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for” thingie, I’ve just had my suspicions confirmed – bloggers are all self-obsessed onanists. On the page for our man Worstall‘s anthology of British blogging (in which I will apparently be making a couple of appearances), one of the items listed is The Big Book of Masturbation…

Public Service Announcement: Human Rights group Liberty has organised some potentially interesting public meetings this week as parliament returns to discuss Blair’s mental anti-terror legislation. On Wednesday at Central Hall, Westminster, 6:30pm they’ve got an interesting line-up of speakers to discuss the statement “Only united communities will defeat terrorism and protect civil liberties” (which you can sign up to here), while tomorrow from 7pm in the Grand Committee Room at the House of Commons there is a meeting titled “Defend Our Liberties! – No To The Politics Of Fear!” with another load of interesting, if not quite so prominent, speakers. May be worth a look for London-based people.

Defence Secretary John Reid: “Iraq has achieved in 14 months what it has taken this country several centuries to achieve”

Eh? I know this country’s gone to shit recently, but I still don’t seem to recall car bombs and suicide bombers killing tens of people daily, having to spend months with only intermittent electricity and running water, or having to keep an eye out for foreign troops rumbling around our towns and cities in armoured vehicles, guns at the ready, due to our police force having been inflitrated by terrorist insurgents determined to overthrow democracy and the rule of law. Or maybe I haven’t been paying attention and the New Labour project to destroy everything good about Britain has got a lot further than I thought…

.eu domain pre-registration now open, prior to the launch of the new web address wotsit in the new year.

Bad news for Eurosceptics though – someone’s already booked fuck.eu – although screw.eu, stopthe.eu, leavethe.eu and ihatethe.eu are all still available.

I’m currently pondering ilovethe.eu, thebestthingintheworldisthe.eu or, more seriously, europhobia.eu or nosemonkey.eu. But any of those would involve forking out a tenner to register…

Blair government in “ill thought-out legislation” shocker! Yep – once again a supposedly bold initiative is being dropped because they didn’t think it through properly – this time the pub smoking ban. Which for those of us who like a fag with our pints is good news, as we get a bit of a reprieve before the near-inevitable blanket ban on smoking in public places. Although quite why they couldn’t leave it to market forces, perhaps offering incentives to pubs along the lines of reduced licensing fees for those which voluntarily ban smoking, I have no idea…

Why! It’s the Blair government!. Yep, much as with the whole mad cow disease thing – and bovine TB, for that matter – rather than fork out on funding vaccination research and production they’ve sat on their fat city-based arses and done tit all. So now Turkey and Romania are desperately culling poultry in a bid to stop the bloody thing spreading to the rest of the continent, chicken farmers look set to go bankrupt and – if it turns out to be the H5N1 strain – we could all die slow painful deaths. Hurrah! Thanks Tony!

Update: The Guardian – “authorities across the EU were yesterday preparing for a worst-case scenario: that the H5N1 virus could mutate into one that spreads easily among humans, creating a catastrophic pandemic. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed between 20 and 40 million people.”

Well, except for the British government, that is – nowhere near enough vaccine, and not enough time to churn enough out to protect us all on the off-chance this is the nasty stuff. The English Channel may be a handy barrier that’s saved this country from invasion on countless occasions – but unlike our current threat the Spanish Armada couldn’t fly.

And so we have to rely on our continental cousins to deal with this crap, as otherwise we could be screwed. Hurrah!

Update 2: Blogcritics has a Bird Flu blogging roundup to help get you up to speed on the latest thing that’s going to kill us all.

Update 3: Just to heighten EU/Turkish tensions even more after last week’s accession talk nonsense, the European Commission has announced a ban on Turkish bird imports – somewhat neglecting to realise that this thing doesn’t just affect domesticated animals and that wildfowl is rarely documented observing international borders.

Elsewhere, The Independent has a review of a book on the whole Avian Flu business, again pointing out that “so far the Department of Health in the UK has taken delivery of just 900,000 doses [of anti Bird Flu drug Tamiflu]. So, if the pandemic arrives this winter and you were thinking of relying on the state to protect you and yours – forget it. It will be every man, woman and child for themselves.”

Update 4: Hot off the email – a new Pledgebank wotsit to try and get our dear government to finally get their sodding arses in gear.

Update 5: Scare yourself even more shitless with the Personal Pandemic Preparedness Plan – “Since December 2003, 112 people have been infected with H5N1 and 62 have died. Although it is possible some minor cases of H5N1 infection in humans may have gone undiagnosed and unreported, a mortality rate approaching 50% is frightening in its implications especially considering that the Spanish Flu Pandemic, with only a 2-5% mortality rate, resulted in 50 million deaths globally… When people do begin to take the threat seriously, there is apt to be panic and frenzied buying as worried individuals rush to stores to begin their own stockpile purchases. Avoid panicked crowds and stockpile necessities NOW.”

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! It is the end times!