Send Them Packing

Obama sends Churchill packing. Old news, I know.

He'll be doing the same with the loser, Gordon Brown, soon. Except we don't want him back.

Three weeks after news that epidurals are not as dangerous as previously thought, hospitals embark on a campaign to shame pregnant women out of wanting them. Government desire to cut costs merges new-age wibble. A follow up from yesterday's post.

The Dream Of The Spawn - Global Delusionist

It is a sight both risible and terrible at the same time, made all the more frightful by the fact that this deluded man is our Prime Minister: The special relationship is going global.

Mad Harman Natural Ant Bacteria Childbirth In EU Giscard's Stool

Lord Elvis and the New Age/New Labour natural childbirth campaign against painless childbirth. Follow the money (and the dogma).

The brouhaha about Fred Thingy's enormous pension is proving to be a successful distraction by The Spawn and his mates since it lets them off the hook for having taken an active part in the whole fuckup.

Mind you, Ms Harman's mad comments about the 'court of public opnion' have tickled the fancies of the blogosphere. I fear the court of public opinion will not judge her and her colleagues kindly if we are allowed a general election.

On which note, Charlie Brooker seems to have woken up to the abusive relationship we have with our politicians and especially New Labour. He realises now that "We're the ants in their garden. The bacteria in their stools."

John Redwood ('Britain - a special relationship with the EU?') recounts an unpleasant encounter with a bunch of German Euroweenies. As far as the Franco-German Ubermeisters of the EU are concerned Britain is most definitely the ant in their garden and the bacteria in their stool: Giscard d'Estaing made this clear recently in an interview in Le Figaro:

Il y a eu des inquiétudes parce qu'on pensait que la diplomatie française se rapprochait du Royaume-Uni au détriment de l'Allemagne. Ce geste va donc dans la bonne direction car l'entente franco-allemande est le socle indispensable de l'Union européenne. On voit bien que le Royaume-Uni ne souhaite pas participer à l'intégration de l'Europe. L'intégration, c'est l'Europe continentale avec, au centre, ce grand ensemble que constituent la France et l'Allemagne. Le couple franco-allemand est la base historique de l'Union. Tout geste politique permettant de le conforter est positif.

Rough translation of main part:

"the Franco-German relationship is the essential foundation of the European Union. It's quite clear that the UK has no desire to participate in European integration. Integration is about continental Europe with the great bond between France and Germany at its core. The Franco-German partnership is the historical base of the Union. Any political move to strengthen that is positive."

Now we know where we stand, don't we? Makes me think more kindly of the late Nicholas Ridley's comments all those years ago. (For those of you of a younger age, he described Monetary Union as "'a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe' and said that giving up sovereignty to Europe was as bad as giving it up to Adolf Hitler.")

That'll do for the moment.

Booker Points To EU Postal Elephant

Christopher Booker makes the obvious point about why the Royal Mail is in such a dire condition:

In all the coverage of a possible Labour revolt over Lord Mandelson’s plans to sell off a third of Royal Mail, everyone seems to have forgotten the report from his department last year explaining why our postal service is facing an unprecedented financial crisis. It is no accident that the likely bidders are a Dutch firm, TNT, and a German company, DHL.

The report made clear that the chief cause of Royal Mail’s huge losses was Britain’s keenness to comply with three EU postal services directives, designed to end national postal monopolies by 2010 and to promote “cross-border” integration of the EU’s postal services. As a result Royal Mail had to surrender the most profitable part of its operations, when bulk business mailing was opened up to rival firms. It still has to deliver business mail, for a knock-down price of 14p an item, while the 19 companies that bid successfully for the business of collecting and sorting them cream off all the profits.

This was a major factor turning Royal Mail’s profits into a £179 million annual loss. Driven into desperate cost-cutting exercises, it drastically reduced post-box collections and ended those on Sunday altogether, while making vain attempts to raise revenue, such as its mad “size and weight” pricing scheme. But then EU law kicked in a second time, when our Government was not allowed to make up the resulting deficit under EU state-aid rules.

This was why Nigel Stapleton, head of Postcomm, suggested last year that the only way round the state-aid rules was to part-privatise Royal Mail, thus allowing it to borrow on the open market. No one knows all this better than the great Europhile Lord Mandelson. But it still raises the question as to who would want to invest in a business which EU rules force to run at a loss. The other mystery, of course, is why, in all the coverage given to this vexed issue, no one will explain why it is happening

No chance this info will make its way into the Guardian, the Observer or onto BBC news, is there?

One Baron, Two Baronesses And A Man Of Straw

Andrew Rawnsley interviews Baron Mandy in the Observer; talks about the Royal Mail carve up and still doesn't mention the EU.

Just because you're a professor doesn't mean you can't talk out of your arse: Greenfield doesn't get social networking. Best keep schtum, then, Susan.

Jack Straw demonstrates why he should be hanged, drawn and quartered. Helena Kennedy at the Convention on Modern Liberty yesterday said it was easy for MPs to get into a state of mind where they believed what they were doing to improve national security was good and not to realise how much they were destroying our liberties. There's a certain amount of truth to that but I'm not of such a forgiving mind as the Baroness. There are plenty of individuals who are directly responsible for the deliberate destruction of our liberties and they know it. These are guilty people, guilty individually and collectively. Jack Straw is one of them.