Franco-British press conference on pooled Carriers next Friday

The report from AFP in English is linked from here. I quote the particular reference below:

Separately, another French official confirmed that France's Defence Minister Herve Morin and Britain's Liam Fox would hold a news conference in Paris on Friday, but declined to comment on Tuesday's press reports.

Any formal announcement is likely to have to wait until the Franco-British summit in November, when President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron will be able to study the options, officials said.

The AFP report is repeated in the Sydney Morning Herald word for word, read here. Question for Prime Minister Cameron and Ministers Hague and Fox If our kinfolk and cousins in Australasia were to come under some form of foreign threat, would these pooling arrangements ever require that Britain must seek French endorsement before deploying such naval support?

EU Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups - to what strategic end?

The announcement that British and French ministers are to meet this week to discuss pooling future aircraft carrying warships, commented upon from a British viewpoint in my posting beneath this, begs the question as to what objectives can be presumed to be achievable from such a move. EU controlled Battle Groups can be the only aim of such a move! Why would the EU require carrier battle groups and against whom might they be deployed? President of the EU Commission is the Portuguese Jose Manuel Barroso , who is on record as stating that the EU is now evolving into an Empire. The new President of the EU under the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty is the previously unknown Belgian, Herman Van Rompuy. Reminders of the colonial record of both Belgium and Portugal are widely available on the web, examples are here and here. I quote from the introduction to the paper found from the latter link to a Unesco document: There have been times when the spokesmen of official Portugal, of a regime in power for nearly half a century, have seemed perfectly unaware of the contrary implications that others may or must logically draw from what they claim or aver. Or there have been times when such spokesmen or exegisists, including the most powerful men in the land, have appeared to be living in a world of fantasy that others cannot recognize as real. No doubt all countries have displayed examples of this kind. None seem so persistent or extraordinary as those provided by the rulers of the Portuguese. Given the history of what has become the EU, where the truth as to its direction has always been hidden from its own citizens (who have watched helplessly while their democrcies were destroyed) let alone to the rest of the world, where third world small independent nations across Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific have had their national resources plundered under irksome and onerous trade (so-called) agreements with the EU AND the economic failure of the undemocratic EU structures which are on the point of complete collapse WE MUST DEMAND TO KNOW what can the citizens of the EU gain from such EU co-ordinated militarism? More significantly what fears could the smaller nations of the world now imagine from a pointless exercise in non-defensive powers from a non-democratic European Continent presently led by men from the two nations with the worst colonial records amongst all European nations? Britain's greatest treasures include the decolonisation policies declared in Macmillan's Wind of Change speech. Britain must not become part of new Empire Building whatever the economic imperatives! Sharing of our defensive capabilities should only be undertaken with those who share our monarchy, parliamentary history, language and fundamental principles of our shared human heritage best expressed in English! Read my letter to Dr Fox on 8th August 2010, from here.

Britain's Royal Navy to be handed to the French?

Many generations of former Royal Navy officers, among them several of my own ancestors will be turning in their graves this morning as a Conservative Party Defence Minister, Dr Liam Fox, supposedly to the right of his party, prepares to hand the Royal Navy, (following much else that was once proudly both English and British) to the French. The report has just appeared on the Daily Telegraph web site linked here. Also an item in The Independent, with the possibility for comments, linked here. It was only on the 8th of this month that I wrote to Dr Fox and the Foreign Minister proposing a merging of our armed forces with those of Canada and Australia, which particularly with regard to the Royal Navy makes far more global sense given Australia's present minerals market being so dependent on the Chinese industrialisation needs. Read the letter from here. The only reply I received, I posted on this blog on 21st August, linked here. The individual responding mainly chose to reject my suggestion on the grounds that I was proposing merging the three services together, which quite obviously would not be the case, indeed the idea germinated in my mind as a means to avoid just such a merger obviously then being considered as a cost cutting measure for a bankrupt nation. To contemplate selling out the Royal Navy to the French was a treachery of which I never could have dreamt that a Conservative led Government, even one led by David Cameron, could ever stoop so low. Britain's interests are spread around the globe, they do not depend upon a defence of the coastlines and fisheries of France, nor those of mainland Europe, however fair and lucrative for our corrupt politicians they so obviously be!

Treasures from the threads - Number forty-six

On Japan's resumption of Quantatitive Easing reported here, comes this common sense:

Yesterday 09:52 PM

Recommended by 11 people

QE simply will not work unless it is for the express purpose of massive buying of government bonds for massive income and consumption tax cuts and / or issue of spending vouchers. And politically that now looks virtually impossible until our leaders are not just staring down the abyss but falling through it. I don't think they have sufficient feel, if any, for the downward compounding that multiple negative factors triggering and accelerating each other are about to unleash, not least of which is the fact that they look like rabbits trapped in the headlights.

(Edited by author 9 hours ago)

This may prove of particular historical interest as it is the first mention I have seen in the press of the possible issue of 'spending vouchers', which of course means nothing other than "new money". In the main body of the article is mention of the earlier ending of the "Great Recession" which is a seriously sick statement given the world economic situation in general and the UK housing market in particular upon which many Britons calculate their well-being. More on the world economic turmoil from Reuters here, as the markets belatedly realised that everything said at Jackson Hole was gobbledegook, particularly that from Bernanke.

Alibhai-Brown on Blair and Clegg

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a commentator and sometimes Dateline London broadcaster who, as this weekend, I sometimes watch and read with sometimes open-mouthed incredulity at the sheer plodding predictability of her nineteen-seventies left-wing views. This morning in The Independent however she puts her finger on something about Nick Clegg that I have been hinting at on this blog for the past few weeks. The article concludes as quoted below, but it may be read in full from this link. "What he (-editor's note Tony Blair...) told us was expedient and increasingly unbelievable. (There is a name for this mental condition – mythomania: the compulsion to embroider the truth, engage in exaggeration or tell lies.)

"Such degeneration befalls many of the powerful who then cast themselves as misunderstood saviours. John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the USA (1767- 1848) wrote: "Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws." Is there any more pithy and exact description of Blair and the perils of high office?

"Which brings me to our times and another fresh-faced, youngish politician, full of promise and good hope, eloquent and different. Something about him, particularly in the live TV debates, awakened the old hopes in many voters on the left. I speak of Nick Clegg, Deputy PM, a role thrust upon him and which he has taken to rather too well. Never again will I be as naïve as I was in 1997 – politics is a dirty business and requires much patience, surrender and compromise. But unease is creeping in.

"Like Blair with Bush, so Clegg seems to be with David Cameron, too flattered now that he is in the big room with the most powerful people. He no longer seems himself. Nor does Vince Cable. Both are undoubtedly holding back the most rabid Tory ideas, and there is no need yet to give up on them. (If only they would tell us more of the Lib Dem effect on policies.) But there is a glint in their eyes that reminds me of Blair on the turn when he became impatient with critics and refused to engage with public opinion. Perhaps they should read about Blair's journey – it may well save them from taking the same treacherous road and help save our faith in politics.

Washington Post article predicts demise of the EU

Charles Kupchan is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In an article in this morning's Washington Post, linked here, he suggests the end of the EU due to reviving nationalism. This blog agrees with his conclusion but believes the main driving force to the inevitable split may be ascribed to nationalism by the convinced federalists, but will in fact be due to the institutionalised corruption, the inability of those hooked on its system of obscene benefits to kick their addiction to greed, and the basic dishonesty of the manner in which it was constructed due to the deviousness of the very founding fathers he cites in his closing paragraph. As in British politics a return to decency is the prime requisite to restore a trusted international means of exchange to permit a revival of world trade. Our machine politicians are unable to perceive this obvious fact because of the previous requirement for political success to be a complete lack of morals or conscience.

One face of Britain's Corrupted Civil Service

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, is interviewed in The Observer this morning on the topic of the austerity regime to be announced in October, linked here. Spending ministers MUST demand that the first cuts must fall on the corrupt 600,000 leaches within the Public Sector who have helped themselves to vast perks and pension pots without any provision for their funding. Included in such cuts should also be the MPs own pension provisions. Donation to the state of the private homes acquired by MPs through the disgraceful expenses allowances, such as those in the property portfolios of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister could make the coming cuts more palatable to the public. Sir John Chilcott and other knavelike Knights have been already exposed and thus become topics of coverage on this blog, type "Knighthoods" in the search bar above to read past postings on this disgrace. If the leaders of the Coalition Government will not take the lead in purging the country of the corruption now gripping the nation, then for the sake of their own futures, spending department Secretaries of State and their Ministers must now do so! Criminal proceedings against the New Labour ex-Cabinet Ministers who authorised and gave tacit blessing to these excesses for their own puposes should be the first step. The axe must then fall on the the mass of materialistic public employees who, while destroying the underlying fabric of the nation state, have gorged themselves insensible at the public trough so that they today even lack the ability to sense the enormity of what they have accomplished nor follow the line through to the eventual obvious consequences.

The Wheat Genome, Robespierre's Terror and Decency.

In Professor Norman Davies's tour de force 'Europe - A History', he recounts how wheat, being a seasonal crop requires intensive labour only at the spring sowing and autumn harvest, thus leaving early Europeans, whose staple cereal wheat became, "time and freedom to branch out, to grow secondary crops, to reclaim land, to build, to fight, to politicize." Such a conjunction, he continued "may well contain the preconditions for many features of Europe's social and political history, from feudalism and individualism to warmongering and imperialism." A reporter from the nation's main anti-democratic propaganda output of the BBC's Today programme reporting the news of British scientists determing of the code for the wheat genome commented that this event could, should or might be interesting, I cannot recall which word was used although his tone was dismissive. One report on the event from Reuters is linked here. In Jonathan Black's "The Secret History of the World" in describing the horror of the Terror during the French Revolution, we are informed, " On 8th July 1794 a curious ceremony took place in front of the Louvre. The members of the National Convention sat in a vast makeshift amphitheatre, each holding an ear of wheat to symbolise the goddess Isis. Facing them was an altar by which stood Robespierre, wrapped in a light blue cloak, his hair powdered white. He said, 'The whole universe is assembled here!' Then calling upon the Supreme Being, he began a speech which lasted several hours and ended 'Tomorrow, when we return to work, we shall fight again against vice and tyrants.' Robespierre brought death on a previously unimagined scale to Western Europe and some have claimed even the first known genocide in the Vendée. Considering the rampant greed being now revealed across the entire field of governance in the UK, civil service, councils, regional authorities, quangoes, parliament all emanating out from the tried and tested practises within the institutions of the EU now copied and sometimes even exceeded in our national life, all as detailed over many years on this blog, its predecessor and sister blogs - Teetering Tories, Ukip Uncovered, The Strasbourg Cesspit etc., what are we left to conclude from the discovery of the wheat genome? Perhaps a period of change is about to commence, even perhaps a return to decency in political life - do Cameron and Clegg have the courage to lead the way bby beginning a compltete routing out of the rot in Britain's public life? Robespierre was dead by the end of the month in which the ceremony described above, with his jaw shot away by his own hands and guillotined without trial. Who will hold top account the evil men who have destroyed Britain while stashing away untold sums of our now nearly worthless currency?

Are EU Citizens finally sensing the EU Conspiracy?

Back in the old days of my blogging on Ironies I used to regularly comment upon the six monthly Eurobarometer polls in the forlorn hope that the citizens of the EU would soon see through the lies and corruption spread about by the EU and its forerunners. Yesterday, accompanied by the usual spin and untruthfulness, the latest poll number 73, linked here, appeared and the really good news for me is on pages 12, 13 and 16. The first two graphs show the lines moving as if to eventually cross on whether the EU is a good or bad thing, whether it has been good or bad for one's own country and in the three large countries France, Germany and the UK the largest majorities of all 27 former nations by large majorities now tend not to trust this ever more soendthrift and wasteful organisation. As the battle over the EU budget and Ashton's extravagences mount this situation will push the EU as an organisation evcer deeper into the deep contempt it properly deserves!

Some Pension Fat Cats Named

Click here for the latest on the Jail the Whitehall 600,000 Campaign from The Slog. A quote from the conclusion to the much more detailed posting is as follows: I could carry on giving examples of this kind of self-donated largesse forever and a day. This is not a political issue any more: it is one of apolitical justice. There are two things that make this scandal infinitely worse than banker bonuses and MPs' expenses: 1. Some bankers are actually incredibly good at what they do - and, on pre-agreed criteria - more than achieved their profit targets. Most of the Whitehall troughers have presided over abject failure. 2. While MPs working an expenses system is infuriating, it is a minute cost to Britain compared to the extra trillion Pounds these civil service peacocks have awarded themselves since 2006. The initial objective of this campaign remains the same: to establish a simple principle - regardless of past agreements on pension accumulation in the civil service - which dictates NO FUNDING, NO BENEFITS. It is outrageous that these leeches should expect us to pay for their retirement when they quite knowingly gifted huge sums to themselves knowing there were no budgets to pay for them. But after this, our central question is still, "Who authorised these unfunded awards, and when will the Serious Fraud Office be called in to investigate?"

WRITE TO YOUR MP: 'NO FUNDING, NO BENEFITS' Email and comment thread wherever you can to ensure that this greed does not go unpunished. This is what the internet is for: use it,or lose it.

Obscene pensions, EU waste and Lost Democracy

Click here for update on the "Jail the Whitehall 600,000". There is a Daily Telegraph report from November 2006 on the 1.7 million pensions available even then and against which this blog has long campaigned, read it here. We wish The Slog much success in its campaign and hope the reference to interest from The Sun in today's post bears fruit, for the blogosphere has so far proved ineffective in arousing the public in the huge criminality at play in the governance of the country over recent years; The conomic crisis might also do the trick, as hinted at in this from today's Telegraph web pages. A quote:

Yields on 10-year Swiss bonds fell to 1.02pc as investors flocked into the ultimate safe-haven asset, now outperforming gold.

No country in the developed world apart form Japan has ever seen 10-year yields drop below 1pc. Rates remained significantly higher during the two great depressions of the 1870s and the 1930s.......(blog editor's highlight)

While it concludes....

The next phase of the crisis will see revenge by all those who have already taken a big hit, or expect to do so: whether under water on their mortgages, unemployed, dependent on health support, or state employees. Democracy will have its way.

Well we can indeed hope that will be the case, but how it will play out given the apparent powerlessness of the nations states to prevent runaway EU expenditure, reported elsewhere in the same newspaper's pages, remains to be seen!

Professor Hankel to German Chancellor Merkel,

Here is Professor Wilhelm Hankel's letter translated into English.

Honored Federal Chancellor,

unfortunately you have not answered my first letter dated March 27, 2010. For this reason I have to repeat my concerns as the problem approaching Germans and Europeans has become worse meanwhile.

Both the "Greek Aid Law" from May 7, 2010, as well as the following "Emergency Umbrella Law" from May 7, 2010, do not only constitute strong offences against EU law, but also against our own German constitution.

You know the situation due to the legal action introduced by 5 university professors at the German constitutional court. Your assistants have informed you of this as well.

This is a case of breaking the law in the most severe way. This is even more dangerous than the economic consequences. Europe is the homeland of states ruled under the law. The Euro will not regain its former strength but it will be relegated into a European soft currency.

Those countries close to a state default, especially the southern, but also the western Eurozone, will neither get out of debt nor will it change their past behaviour. After all the money of the rescue fund does not flow to the states but to their insolvent banks. And the governments of these countries will not fulfill the conditions coming with the rescue funds, as doing so would endanger their political and economical stability.

It is highly implausible when your finance minister announces austerity packages while allocating 70% of annual federal tax revenues for rescue packages whose failure is already written on the wall.

Germany and the few other still economically stable countries in the Eurozone are sinking money into a barrel without a bottom. This money, that the German taxpayers will have to come up with, will be lost for German citizens and their future. By now you had to acknowledge that our country can neither fulfill its social obligations, nor satisfy its promises to keep and create jobs. I am confident you will live to see that this austerity policy will lead to similar effects as we see them nowadays in Greece: protesting people, burning cars, shattered windows and maybe still worse actions. Can you account for this?

I appeal to you to repeal these laws before the constitutional court will nullify them. Your oath included "to fend off damage for the German people" - with this you stand the chance to do so. The emergency umbrella from Brussels will not save the common currency.

This is my and our public call to the German sovereign and to you. Realize it!

Kind regards

Wilhelm Hankel

Slovak PM slates EU Commissioner Ollie Rehn

Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radicová discussing the Greek bailout package. Radicová is quoted in Die Welt saying, "we show solidarity and take on responsibility...but we don't want people who acted irresponsibly to get money." When commenting on EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Ollie Rehn's public criticism for not taking part in the bailout she says: "the way in which [he], a non-elected official from Brussels, spoke about the freely elected members of the Slovakian parliament was insulting. I will demand an official apology for this from Brussels during my visit to Berlin".

"Europe must not be constituted by a big brother and many satellites which have to obey the larger, more powerful and wealthier. We remember very well what it means to be a satellite...I don't want to compare, I only want to highlight that democracy also means to listen to the arguments of those who may be very small but are aware of their responsibilities", she says in FAZ. She continues: "Talk that Slovakia is acting irresponsibly must stop. To say it in all clarity: When democratically elected politicians raise criticisms they have the right to do so. But European administrators do not have this right, not at any time".

A direct quote from Open Europe's press update this morning (with this blog editor's highlights). One must wonder where the Slovak parliamentarians have been hiding during recent years, are they not aware they signed democracy away with the Lisbon Treaty allowing those who like "fine messes" such as Ollie to run amok!

Mandarins for the Slammer from The Slog

CIVIL SERVICE REDUNDANCIES: Mandarins' Union tries to derail Coalition redundancy scheme.

JAIL THE WHITEHALL 600,000

The Slog's campaign against pension fraud begins in earnest today

The "End Game" Approaches

"This has been one of the most interesting days in finance ever," said Andrew Roberts, head of credit at RBS. "We are right at the tipping point. Yields are about to collapse even further, equities are about to turn over. The end game approaches, probably in next few weeks."

In the US, the 27pc collapse in existing homes sales in July leaves no doubt that America's property market cannot stand on its own feet without the prop of homebuyer tax credits. "Home sales are in free-fall. These are truly dismal numbers," said Teunis Brosens from ING.

The article from which this quote came may be read in full from here. Readers of this blog will be unsurprised that the western world has reached this point, just as we warned at the start of this summer when JC Trichet pompously departed on his holiday in St Malo claiming that all was incredibly well, indeed with all our warnings down the years, that corrupt self-serving politicians would inevitably land the world in the mess in which we now find ourselves, bankrupt and with no economic weapons left to mitigate the consequences. Sound money or means of trusted international exchange will be required before recovery can begin. Restoring value to the property market, will be a priority alongside finding as yet unidentified honest and decent leaders. In September 2008 I put forward one idea to achieve the former objective, do Clegg and/or Cameron now have the courage to take on such an approach, and perhaps simultaneously convert to decency? A quote from that old posting: Mortgages have always assumed the equity provided by the mortgagee is the first at risk. In this crisis that has to be changed. I suggest that for houses purchased since Gordon Brown, in the words of incoming BoE Governor King, to paraphrase 'moved the Goal Posts and excluded house prices from the CPI' any loss of value on the resale of such houses be directly proportioned between the first mortgage holder and the mortgagee. This is potentially expensive, but less so if it halts further slides in house prices. As the country is effectively bankrupt such a move will need financing and as a further step to somewhat also put the cost of the greed at the door where it lies I would further suggest the exemption of the first home from capital gains tax be withdrawn.Decency for Clegg and Cameron could be guaged as a distant possibility by an immediate large cut to UK contributions to the EU pending a halt to their ongoing and grandoise plans for ever more vainglorious enterprises and aggrandisement.

Britain's corrupted civil service.

In my post of yesterday on the truly horrendous scale of Britain's debt I concluded with an attack against the country's political classes who have brought this disaster about. In catching up with other blogging over the past weekend I ran into this post from the 'not born yesterday' blogger, John Ward, who now regularly, accurately and most entertainingly posts on 'The Slog' while retaining the former URL. Although Mr Ward has yet to draw the direct lines between EU corruption and its progeny within the UK administration he has very accurately homed in on the disgrace which is today represented by the upper echelons of the British Civil Service, by revealing that about an eigth of Britain's indebtedness is owed due to the pension commitments for 600,000 Whitehall mandarins and that this disgrace has been deliberately contrived and hidden. The following is a brief quote to provide the substance of his revelations: What the British public has not yet been told is that out of the £78,000 owed by every British domicile, fully £36,000 is down to under a fifth of the working population....and an obscene 24% of that, we understand from figures shown to us, involves an estimated 600,000 adults....or just 1% of the UK population. But how did this pension double-up happen - and why is nobody in a dock anywhere? In 2003, when asked the question directly, the Treasury lied: 'Projections of future expenditure on public service pensions are taken into account in the Treasury's long-term fiscal projections. They are sustainable' it replied. But in that same year, Matthew Young, a project director at the economics think tank Adam Smith Institute told the Daily Telegraph that "The Government's recruiting frenzy and the fact public sector wages are rising at twice the rate of private sector pay has made the situation far worse". Most of us reporting on politics and government are used to bare-faced lies masquerading as estimates, but in this particular instance we believe there was a concerted conspiracy on the part of the Sir Humphreys to not just lie about sustainability, but also about how much pension money taxpayers would have to stump up on their behalf. The mendacity chiefly involved the level of entitlement - and it is by no means a new development. The link for reading the entire posting is repeated here. The saving grace from this disgraceful state of affairs is that public pensions can be wholly or partially withdrawn by a renewed Parliament in a trice and virtually at a stroke of the pen, just as we have long advocated on this blog for many MPs and former Cabinet Ministers. The same is true for these "Sir Humhreys", terminating their pensions does not necessarily have to be accomplished by the recipient suffering a sharp drop at the end of a rope, although I imagine there will be many British subjects who will feel, looking at the state of their nation, that such would be their most deserved fate!

Britain's debt in July - £3.68 trillion to £4.84 trillion

Over many years this blog has tried to unearth an estimate of Britain's total debts including pension liabilities, private finance initiatives and the recent huge amounts of money thrown at the still failing banks. At last, from this July the Office of National Statistics is to start publishing such estimates, read details from the Daily Telegraph, linked here. A quote: The ONS has already begun to assemble the data, publishing the full list of Britain's debts and liabilities for the first time in July, which came to a total of between £3.68 trillion and £4.84 trillion. Two questions now arise, the first is to define the trillion unit being used. It appears to have become the recent custom to use the US definition of a billion (namely one followed by nine noughts, rather than the previous British, French and German norm of one followed by twelve noughts). Can we now assume that the trillion being used by the OSN is similalry the US trillion giving our debt as one followed by twelve noughts as follows: £3,680,000,000,000 to £4,840,000,000,000 or is it the larger number implied by the usul British definition giving the even larger and even more unpayable, one followed by eighteen noughts/ £3,680,000,000,000,000,000 to £4,840,000,000,000,000,000 In any event the figures in full, contrived by politicians who have also sold off our sovereignty, utilities and independence, apparently for nought, must bring home to the British public the far-reaching corruption and decadence of our entire political class!

17th June 2010 - When Cameron sold out the City!

It is all on this link to the agreement of the last European Council, and may be found at the end of page 6 in the linked PDF document Note especially! No opt out for Britain, such as that obtained and footnoted for the Czech Rebulblic, after all they are led by thinking patriots! 16. The European Council agrees that Member States should introduce systems of levies andtaxes on financial institutions to ensure fair burden-sharing and to set incentives to containsystemic risk.1 Such levies or taxes should be part of a credible resolution framework. Furtherwork is urgently required on their main features and issues of level playing field andcumulative impacts of various regulatory measures should be carefully assessed. TheEuropean Council invites the Council and the Commission to take this work forward andreport back in October 2010. 1 The Czech Republic reserves its right not to introduce these measures.

The Australian Hung Parliament

The Australian Monarchist League advises as follows: WHAT DOES A HUNG PARLIAMENT MEAN CONSTITUTIONALLY? The potential of a hung parliament in Australia, following yesterday's election, has raised questions about the constitutional situation. The final decision of how many seats each party has will probably not be known for some days but, once all results are in, if it is found that no one party has a clear majority, negotiations will commence with the Green and independent members to enlist their support. The Governor-General is vested with constitutional powers to commission a person to form a government but, by convention, these are never used in an arbitrary sense. The duty of the Governor-General is to commission the leader of the party which can prove it has sufficient support in the lower house of the parliament to survive a vote of no confidence. Until then, the incumbent government continues in caretaker mode. If, in the future, those independents who had pledged support, decide to withdraw and support the other party, then the Governor-General will, upon being certain that the other party would survive a vote in the House of Representatives, commission the leader of that party to form a government. If the situation is likely to continue to be unstable, then the Governor-General will seek a consensus on holding an election. The number of electoral votes gained by any one party is, in a constitutional sense, immaterial - although it may influence the non-aligned members. It is all about votes of elected members in the House of Representatives. The whole process is based on providing the country with the most stable government possible. With regards Philip Benwell National Chairman

Reply to my letter on Britain's Defence

The letter to which the following is a reply may be read from here:

Our Reference:

DUWC350/2010

Date:

20 August 2010

Dear Martin Cole,

Thank you for your recent letter to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Foreign Secretary in which you raised the issue of the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces. I have been asked to reply.

As you will be aware there is an ongoing Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). At the heart of the SDSR will be a thorough examination of our force structure, looking at the overall shape, size and role of Armed Forces personnel and MOD Civil Servants, including the Reserve Forces.

In every aspect of defence, and particularly in the support area, the Government will bear down on costs, seeking improved value for money and greater efficiency wherever possible. This will include following through on the Government’s commitment in the Coalition Agreement to reduce the MOD’s running costs by 25%. This will require some tough decisions with impact in many areas of the Department.

Internationally, NATO must remain the core of UK and the instrument of first choice for collective security challenges. The US will be the UK’s major partner but the Government will also step up bilateral cooperation with France and other partners, and revitalise a broad programme of Defence Diplomacy.

Turning now to your suggestion that we merge the UK Armed Forces with the Armed Forces of Australia and Canada. As the Secretary of State for Defence has recently stated that we are not considering merging or scrapping single services, I think we can discount now the suggestion of merging our entire Armed Forces with Australia and Canada.

I hope that this response has been helpful.

Mark Taylor

I leave it to my readers to decide whether or not this adequately addresses the points that I raised. I have my own severe doubts as to whether NATO, post-Serbian bombing and the Afghanistan mis-adventure, can really resume its role as a purely defensive organisation. Given the crisis within the EU, following gross economic mismanagement and incompetence and the impossibility of determining where the likely break-up tensions of the Eurozone will be felt, stepping up "bilateral cooperation with France" surely cannot be a serious option, let alone while retaining the US as our major partner?

My letter was addressed to William Hague and Liam Fox as conservative politicians and hopefully it will eventually receive a political response. This bureaucrat's reply was nevertheless more than I expected to receive, not least as it marvelously typifies the muddled thinking behind Britain's present foreign policy and the country's supposed defence priorities.

On Liberty, Gladstone said....

"The finance of the country is intimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which English Liberty has been gradually acquired … It lies at the root of English Liberty, and if the House of Commons can by any possibility lose the power of the control of the grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison …That power can never be wrenched out of your hands… That powerful leverage has been what is commonly known as the power of the purse – the control of the House of Commons over public expenditure – your main guarantee for purity – the root of English liberty. No violence, no tyranny, whether of experiments or of such methods as are likely to be made in this country, could ever for a moment have a chance of prevailing against the energies of that great assembly. No, if these powers of the House of Commons come to be encroached upon, it will be by tacit and insidious methods, and therefore I say that public attention should be called to this." Contained in a link in a comment to an article in this morning's Daily Telegraph, containing many interesting quotes on the present state of play in the Greek crisis, linked here, which concludes with the following apt point for mid August 2010 in the EU: Chris Pryce, of Fitch Ratings, said Greece is teetering on the edge of junk status but can still claw its way back........ "Everybody is away on holiday. When they get back they will have to face their miserable new world going into the autumn, and then we will see," he said.

EU self-delusion or lies continue over Greece!

The EU Commission states that the next tranche of funds for Greece can go ahead as it meets all the conditions, read here. Yet according to the latest midday news update from Open Europe, straight out of the box, we are informed as follows:

The frontpage of Handelsblatt reports that fear has returned in Athens, Brussels, Berlin and Washington as tax receipts for the Greek government have failed to match the expectations. In the first seven months of 2010, only 4.1 percent extra tax income for the government was created, while the EU and the IMF had been promised 13.7 percent for the whole year - a goal which will be hard to achieve as the tax burden has already been increased.

Don't you just love being part of the huge, corrupt, non-democratic organisation of the EU which even lies to itself as it dispenses your money in a manner that can only bring individual national disaster? Read the article from Der Spigel, which I linked yesterday if you have not yet done so, it is titled "Entering a death spiral" if only that could refer to the EU itself!

"No double dip, it will be a lot worse"

The European edition of the CNBC Squawk Box programme, this morning at last had a guest who knew of what he spoke, rather than the usual non-thinking market automatoms, in one Egon Von Greyerz speaking live from Switzerland. A recent paper from this individual, which we presume prompted the interview, was published by Matterhorn Asset Management may be read in full from this link. The conclusion, which concurs with the thinking of this blogger over many years, is summed up in the title to this posting and indeed the paper itself! Challenged by the panel as to whether he was merely marketing his own product (goldswitzerland.com) he responded with a quote, which I have not heard before, along the lines that the price of gold (now above 1200 US dollars) was not out of line, given that, as throughout history, the price of one ounce still only buys one gentleman's suit.

Fed to lose control of interest rates in the USA?

An interesting article comes from the Wall Street Journal, Online Opinion, this morning which may be read in full from here. The main thrust is in this short quote: Between August and November 2008, the Federal Reserve swelled its balance sheet to $2.2 trillion from $940 billion to ease a potentially catastrophic credit crunch brought on by fears of cascading defaults. The assets added to the balance sheet are today comprised overwhelmingly of mortgage securities. The purchase of these securities had the parallel purpose of shoring up a collapsing housing market. Much of the money the Fed conjured to buy these assets made its way into reserves, which the banks chose to hold at the Fed. Excess reserves—reserves held above and beyond what the Fed requires of the banks as a minimum—soared to more than $1 trillion from $2 billion. As long as this money remains parked at the Fed, it poses no risk of fuelling inflation—just like cars parked in garages can't tie up traffic. But at some point the banks will muster the courage to begin transforming these near zero-yielding reserves into credit, and the Fed knows it then will have to act to prevent exuberance from pushing up prices too far and too fast—in traffic terms, to stop the cars from streaming onto the roads all at once. I recommend reading the article through to its conclusion which seems to me to correctly state: None of this matters a lick at the present moment, with inflation barely perceptible, credit weak, and banks happy to earn infinitesimal returns on their reserves. But it does suggest that the Fed's exit strategy is not credible, and that means a serious risk of high inflation down the road.

Greece as rescued by the EU and IMF - mid August 2010

Conclusion to an article from Der Spiegel, linked here, on the inevitable end game already starting within the Popperian tyranny that is now the EU:

"Everything is getting more expensive, I'm hardly earning any money, and then I'm supposed to pay more taxes to help save the country? How is that supposed to work?" asks Nikos Meletis, the shipbuilder. His friends, gathered in a small cafeteria on the pier in Perama, are gradually growing more vocal. They are all unemployed, desperate and angry at the politicians who got them into this mess. There is no sympathy here for any of the political parties and no longer any for the unions either.

"They only organize strikes to serve their own interests!" shouts one man, whose name is Panayiotis Peretridis. "The only thing that interests me anymore is my daily wage. A loaf of bread is my political party. I want to help my country -- give me work and I'll pay taxes! But our honor as first-class skilled workers, as heads of families, as Greeks, is being dragged through the dirt!"

"If you take away my family's bread, I'll take you down -- the government needs to know that," Meletis says. "And don't call us anarchists if that happens! We're heads of our families and we're desperate."

He predicts the situation will only become more heated. "Things are starting to simmer here," he says. "And at some point they're going to explode."

Lord Pearson, leader of UKIP resigns!

A sad day when the party loses the services of a true patriot. My thoughts on the best way ahead are on my UKIP blog linked here.

Bankrupt USA now faces an army revolt!

It is now three years since the world realised that the credit crunch had arrived, although the general public generally only twigged somewhat later as Northern Rock faced collapse. Yet today our ruling elites clearly remain blissfully unaware of the depths of the disaster they have wrought. An economics Professor from Boston University has now spelt out the facts in the starkest terms for Bloomberg, as may be read in full from here, while the following quote carries the essence:

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.

Worse Than Greece

Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

The scenario for the UK remains almost identical to that which the Professor cites for the USA, yet no action is forthcoming from the Coalition Government and none is proposed bar an announcement in October of reported severe spending cuts. Meantime the next downward plunge in the property price collapse looms in the wings. On 30th August 2007 in this blog in a posting titled "Britain's economic abyss" I concluded with the following: .... An Australian hedge fund went under yesterday and even the usually cheerful local SW news 'Spotlight' had a gloomy item on the looming house price bust. Not much of any of this in the morning press, but Camilla Cavendish in The Times has a good column, , from which comes this quote: Which just goes to show, I suppose, that idiocy is no more a bar to promotion in the City than anywhere else. People who complimented themselves on their brilliance at inventing ever more complex financial instruments with which to spread risk had started to act as though risk had been abolished. The problem is that the actions of the US Federal Reserve and Britain's Treasury under Gordon Brown, effectively achieved just that- indicating they would always underpin the fantasy world which they themselves had created. Until some major casualties are allowed to reap the consequences of their profligacy the final crunch will just be that much worse. A recent gushing report on the record price of 222 million dollars for a flat in London, also reported in the US as the most expensive real estate deal ever, indicates the opposite to that being reported, namely as a sign of house price strength; rather I would suggest it is a sign of amazing dollar weakness, and as goes the dollar so too will follow the pound, the euro, the yen and even the RMB! If 222 million dollars today, why not 222 billion in three years time, everything else seems to be going that way. Surely the fact that an individual can spend such a sum on a six bedroomed flat in the middle of a city bodes ill for the value of the dollar in the ordinary worker's billfold? What price a loaf of bread in Mayfair or within a stone's throw of Central Park in New York in such a world? Indeed will there then be loaves of bread in our cities for such individuals to buy and will these elites still retain the connection between mouth and stomach to make such consumption even necessary let alone worthwhile? This blog has frequently put forward suggestions (eg here and here) as to one way to avoid the continuing house price collapse where all the misplaced wealth of the nation now rests. As ever such advice is ignored and the crazyiness continues. In March 2009 this blog suggested to avoid the depression Bernanke be dropped from a helicopter, last week he unnerved the markets where junior traders with their bosses presumably on vacation sensed the looming chaos, by dedicating virtually non-existing mortgage assets assumed from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase long term US Treasury debt thus further depleting interest yields. Is worthless money worth paying interest on at all? Perhaps as long as fools exist to barter flats for hundreds of millions of dollars I guess the answer to that still remains (but IMO not for very much longer) yes! One small exception to this refusal to face up to facts and realities, I choose to presume, came from Britain's Defence Minister last week when he reportedly insisted that the battle over who will pay for Trident was an ongoing discussion. He said: "Ultimately, all our defence capabilities have to be paid for. Which bits are paid, over what timescale, is part of the discussions we are having and I'm not going to entertain them in public. I have enough time entertaining them in private." I will take that as all the reply I am likely to get to my open letter to Dr. Liam Fox posted on this blog last week. The complete silence on any matter of significance to the future security of the nation from the co-addressee of that latter, Foreign Secretary William Hague, can be assumed to continue to be the case unless I post to the contrary on this blog. While the economic disaster in the USA and Britain seem very similar on Defence and Afghanistan at least Cameron's stand-in mannequin Nick Clegg will not have an army revolt to face over the next couple of weeks. The gauntlet thrown down by General Petraeus to his Commander in Chief on the influential Meet the Press TV programme yesterday, portends a deeper crisis to come. Britain's depleted, under-resourced and ongoingly uselessly sacrificed service personnel regrettably seem in no state to challenge the utter dross who for so long have been negligently governing what was once the United Kingdom.

EU's Washington Ambassador to speak for Britain

The article from the Daily Telegraph is linked here and concludes with a quote from a UKIP MEP ending as follows: "....This is only the start, as the existence of Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council is already in the EU sights". Earlier this week in an Open Letter to Dr Liam Fox and William Hague, posted on this blog and linked here, I suggested as a matter of urgency thet Britain must consolidate its armed forces with Australia and Canada with part of the deal involving both Trident and our UN Security Council seat. The fact that a Portuguese citizen now seeks to intercede in relations between ourselves and the United States and is indeed empowered and paid by us so to do under the treasonous Lisbon Treaty, must surely bring home the urgent necessity of immediate action, particularly in light of renewed market volatility acroos the Atlantic and our looming bankruptcy! Our biggest international asset is our language, from which the soon to be EU taxed City of London takes much benefit (see posting immediately beneath this). To best recover from our present plight we must join with those with whom we most closely share a heritage!

Cameron fails to protect Britain against EU taxation of City of London

The recent EU Council Meeting agreed the following as may be ascertained from this link. 16. The European Council agrees that Member States should introduce systems of levies and taxes on financial institutions to ensure fair burden-sharing and to set incentives to contain systemic risk.1 Such levies or taxes should be part of a credible resolution framework. Further work is urgently required on their main features and issues of level playing field and cumulative impacts of various regulatory measures should be carefully assessed. The European Council invites the Council and the Commission to take this work forward and report back in October 2010. 1 The Czech Republic reserves its right not to introduce these measures. As can be seen from the referenced footnote the Czech Republic reserved the right not to introduce these measures. No such reserve was made by the Coalition Government of Britain, yet they have supposedly agreed that there should be no further losses of Sovereignty to the EU. Surely a financial tax on what is one of the largest financial centres of the world, upon whose revenues the main part of the nation's income now depends must be considered a breathtaking loss of both money and sovereignty.

EU Citizenship to be placed ahead of Nationality

Read this ghastly document in full from here or merely note the following from the foot of Page Three: 3. Empowering European citizens European citizenship needs to further progress from a concept enshrined in the Treaties to become a tangible reality demonstrating in the daily lives of citizens, its added value over and above national citizenship. Citizens need to be able to benefit from their rights stemming from European integration.

Coalition Government says Labour's Legacy was Criminal

The report from Reuters is linked here. This blog repeatedly (eg here) made that very point whilst many of these criminal acts were taking place! So WHY have no former Labour Cabinet Ministers nor former Labour Prime Ministers yet been arrested? A long list of Gordon Brown's crimes may be found on this old posting linked here.

Britain's Defence - An Open Letter

Dr Liam Fox MP Secretary of State for Defence Whitehall London William Hague MP First Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs Whitehall London

10th August 2010

Gentlemen,

Britains's Defence and its Nuclear Deterrent

The decision taken by Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to place the financing of Britain's nuclear deterrence within the budget of the Ministry of Defence, which due to its serious nature can only have been undertaken with the consent of the Prime Minister, David Cameron and his Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has presented an opportunity for you both to profoundly influence, if not indeed to change the future direction of our country. Writing as an ordinary member of the public it is my personal opinion that this is a critical turning point in our national affairs and it seems beyond co-incidence that you two particular individuals now head the two great departments of state best placed to push the necessary changes through. In my view there would be no other two members of the Cabinet of your coalition government whose instincts I would rather trust in making the coming crucial decisions. The reality of the scale of spending cuts now faced by the country makes imperative a complete re-appraisal of our policies. I suggest we approach our senior Commonwealth partners, Australia and Canada, with a view to merging all our armed forces, with a one third share/commitment from each country. The nature of the global threats we now face clearly cannot be adequately countered from our resources alone. The increased spending for the EEAS of Baroness Ashton must be vetoed because a common EU foreign policy, if achievable, seems unlikely to either work in Britain's interests nor be backed with sufficient resources given the recent acceptance by the ECB of Government Bonds of dubious worth as collateral for previously unimaginable amounts of future commitments. I therefore also propose as an incentive for our future partners that Britain's Trident fleet of submarines be placed at the disposal of this new defence force, with a triple lock for each of the Prime Ministers of the three countries other than in the event of a nuclear attack upon one of our nations, in which event the premier of the attacked country would be empowered to solely authorise the launch of missiles. Britain's vote and veto at the UN Security Council could similarly be made subject to co-ordination with these two countries. The replacement for Trident should be agreed by the governments of the three countries and jointly financed. Existing arrangements with NATO, the EU and other previously shared defence commitments would necessarily have to be reviewed. There can be few families in Britain who do not have some links to others in either Canada or Australia, other Commonwealth nations may eventually also wish to join. Defence must be directed at the protection of our heritage, how better could global protection be acieved than with such a force structured on three continents of the world, based on the shared heritage with our senior Commonwealth partners and ready to face emerging threats from new nuclear powers bordering every ocean of the world. Sincerely, Martin Cole Email copies to: Anne Palmer Australian Monarchist League Chair, Philip Benwell MBE Conservative Home Blog

'Parents, be very afraid ...!

The full quote from the mother of a(n) European Arrest Warrant victim, according to The Mail this morning was as follows: 'Parents, be very afraid – this summer it could be your sons wrongly accused yet you'll be powerless to stop their extradition and immediate detention.' The article also has a fact box on the European Arrext Warrant and the even more sinister European Investigation Order (discussed in much detail in several postings below this) as follows:

VICTIM OF THE EURO-WARRANT

The British Government and courts are powerless to protect anyone who becomes the subject of a European Arrest Warrant.

In addition, the accused is denied the right to challenge the warrant before he or she is spirited overseas.

The warrant was agreed by EU leaders including Tony Blair and introduced in 2004. Labour ministers signed up in the belief it would speed justice and improve relations between EU countries.

Last year, 1,032 Britons were extradited abroad to face trial but just 98 foreign nationals were brought here to face criminal charges.

But far from rowing back the powers handed to foreign courts, the coalition Government has just extended them.

Last month Home Secretary Theresa May signed up to the European Investigation Order, the partner to the European Arrest Warrant.

It allows foreign police to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons, place them under surveillance, monitor bank accounts and demand DNA samples.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300723/Innocent-student-extradicted-Greek-prison-hell-EU-arrest-warrant.html#ixzz0voEbgYRa

Smug and self-satisfied Trichet heads for St Malo.

The head of the ECB announced that euro interest rates will be held at 1% during a news conference today, while boasting of the ECB's eleven year record in keeping inflation down in accordance with the bank's mission. He repeatedly boasted of the credit soon to be earned by the ECB for its recent actions! The silver tongued and similarly white-haired manipulator of markets, amongst whose many disgraceful battle honours can be numbered the Credit Lyonnaise collapse and the european Exchange Rate Mechanism fiasco, has neatly bluffed the markets, so that like all good eurocrats he can depart for his lengthy undeserved summer vacation, secure in the knowledge that the fog he has dispersed will remain mostly impenetrable until well after his return to Frankfurt. Where has all the dodgy debt once held by Eurozone banks disappeared? Wait until the fouth quarter of this year and all surely by then must begin to become clear! Even ex-P.M., Gordon Brown, by his almost complete disappearance from view, must finally be suspecting that his actions were not as sound nor sensible as he so often maintained! Trichet boasting of the ECB's achievement in maintaining the best price stability since WWII over the past eleven years, reminds me very much of the demented Prime Minister Brown, as he slitheringly repeats that the mostly likely next stage will be further, albeit less robust second semester growth, more likely IMO, will be a Weimar style hyperinflation, or the closed border negative growth, siege economy wished upon the EU by Trichet's countryman President Sarkozy with his anti-parliamentary plans for pan-European Economic Governance. St Malo is a great holiday destination in the hot summer month of August. I am glad I have no plans to visit there this year, however, and I hope the same is true for the Frankfurt financial press corps forced to listen to this propaganda on a monthly basis.

Britain's Foreign Office - A National Disgrace

"We understand that so many of you feel jaded and sceptical about the EU." So begins a propaganda blast from the FCO expounding all the well rehearsed and totally imaginary benefits that the EU is supposed to bring. The EU is a means of carrying on economic warfare between the former nation states of Europe in which Britain has become the main economically slaughtered and defeated victim. All perpetrated with the active support of the traitors within the FCO. Ask any Briton to examine their utility bills from the early 1970's before the European Communities Act, all would have come from British owned (sometimes nationalised and therefore publicly owned companies). Today not just gas and electricity but also our water comes from foreign (mainly french and german companies). QED Living here in France all my utility bills come from french businesses as should be the case. The Foreign Offices of France and Germany and their Governments are run by patriots fulfilling their proper duty in protecting the best interests of their citizens. The traitors in Britain's FCO and recent Governments seem purely interested in the spoils they can personally gain from operating on a broader stage than the UK can now offer them, due solely to the treachery of their recent forerunners. Read the full FCO codswallop, from here, put out on 30th July in response to a deluge of citizens complaints. It truly makes one wish to weep at their sickening incompetence and matching complacency!

EU to attempt to prevent Britain's offshore oil developments

The startling report reflected in the headline to this posting is prompted by an article in this morning's The Independent, linked here. The headline to the newspaper's article provides the opposite view in stating "Government to buck global trend for ban on deep-sea oil drilling" but within the report we find the following: "The EU's energy commissioner, Günther Oettinger, describes a moratorium as the "right approach for potentially dangerous drilling... in light of the risk exposed by the Deepwater Horizon spill", and the Italian Environment minister, Stefania Prestigiacomo, said the plans in the Med "give rise to serious concern". But the Government made clear yesterday it would not veto the Shetland scheme, arguing that tough safety rules would prevent a repeat of the environmental catastrophe triggered by the Deepwater Horizon explosion." Given the ongoing British subservience to the EU., in doing all the ridiculous things that will eventually lead to the further impoverishment of the nation, we must wonder how long it will be before the Clegg weakened Conservatives will fold in this sensible veto against capitulation to hysterical nonsense in the face of our future energy shortfalls. Finally the facts on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico were made public by the BBC today on the programme of that name. Listen from here. (Later update: The link to the NY Times article mentioned in the broadcast is linked here).

An apt Churchill quote for the disgraceful EU

"Civilisation means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the condition of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained." It is a rare event for me to discover a quote from Winston Churchill which I have not already relished. Therefore I have no hesitation in posting this one here today as it is particularly apt for both the EU and the directionless Cameron/Clegg Coalition Government busy in daily compounding the destruction of our Parliamentary Democracy. Read the entire article on apt quotations from Robert Fisk in The Independent this morning linked from here.

Smashing Sovereignty by Hollowing out the Euro?

The following quote is an interesting extract from an article from Voltairenet.org, linked here, which makes some fascinating assertions behind the extraordinary and wrongheaded means chosen to counter the credit crunch and sovereign debt crisis up to this point. While the overall article carries an unecessarily anti-US slant in my view, the questions and links provided confirm my view that the crisis as presently handled by the EU will result in nothing less than the final loss of national independence, thereby cancelling any democratic accountability, for the entire EU:

In case of depression or even economic stagnation, the ‘policy of consolidation of public expenditure’ is doomed to fail. The foreshadowed €750 billion of aid will be used to pay back the banks to the detriment of taxpayer’s purchasing power, and this payment to financial institutions will further enhance the recession. Thus, IMF control and creation of funds to help the banks are two complementary dimensions of the same policies. The point is to effect a significant redistribution of income in favour of financial institutions.

What future for the EU?

Such an operation against people’s incomes necessitates the neutralisation of all decision-making processes at the level of national states - a structure in which citizens still maintain some means of defense - for the benefit of market mechanisms, placed completely out of range of all political pressure. The question is to know what role the European institutions are to play in this process of submission to the financial markets?

EIO to silence bloggers across the EU?

The following is from the EU Observer and is linked here. Italian gag law threatens bloggers with €25,000 fines for ‘incorrect' facts 29.07.2010 @ 17:44 CET Bloggers, podcasters and even anyone who posts updates on social networks such as Facebook all face being slapped with fines of up to €25,000 for publishing incorrect facts, if a bill that journalists' organisations are calling "authoritarian" currently before the Italian parliament is passed.

A rare glimmer of optimism

Read here. Have a nice Sunday.