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Here at UKIP press office central we’re right in the heart of Westminster. This means that when the military musicians decide to take their instruments out for an airing they march and play just outside our window.
Just spotted something that rather confused me. So there’s 20, 30 men in greatcoats and bearskins marching down the road and pumping out the 19 th century equivalent of pop music and behind them are another 20, 30 men (umm, a platoon I think from my limited military knowledge) in greatcoats and bearskins carrying that rather nifty looking new rifle.
There’s also a rather pretty looking policewoman on a horse traling along behind them in her turn.
Why?
What might happen on a London street that a woman on a horse can deal with and thirty armed men cannot?
It just puzzles me.
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From Booker’s column:
Another British industry which may soon disappear, thanks to our masters in Brussels, is production of that remarkably useful metal aluminium. Although we rank only 19th in the world production league, our two main plants, in Anglesey and Northumberland, are as efficient as any of their competitors. But aluminium relies heavily on constant supplies of electricity.
The Holyhead plant, Wales’s largest electricity user, is supplied at a discount price by the nearby Wylfa nuclear power station, state-owned through the Nuclear Decommissioning Authoritty (NDA). If the NDA was privately owned, it says it would be happy to carry on selling power to its largest customer at a discount. But under EU state-aid rules this is now “against the law”.
This is willful stupidity on the part of the EU. The major cost in producing aluminium is electricity. So much so that you normally build your smelters right next to a long term source of cheap power. So much so in fact that you might deliberately go and build a dam (as has been done in many parts of the world) and then build your smelter right beside it so as to get cheap electricity.
In a country like the UK, where we’ve not got much hydro power possibility unused, we might build our smelter close to a nuclear plant. And the nuclear plant would be very happy to have you next door as you’re going to be a reliable customer for a good percentage of their power, decade after decade.
In fact, this symbiotic relationship is so strong that the decision to build or not to build a nuclear plant will be informed by whether someone would like to build an aluminium smelter next door. And this is indeed what happened here. There is no coincidence in Wylfa and the smelter both opening in 1971. They were both built knowing that the other would be. The smelter gets a guarantee of low cost electricity, the nuclear plant knows that they have a long term customer for a substantial chunk of output and is willing to offer a discount to get one.
Think about it in any other line of business. “I’d like to take 30% of the production of that new plant you’re thinking of building for the entire lifetime of the plant but I would like a discount”.
Is he going to get his discount? Sure he is. And the EU now says this is illegal.
They’re fools.
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Godfrey does Goddersvision.
Most fun.
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But Lord Malloch Brown said: ‘With 24 countries having approved the Treaty, I am not sure whether the voters of Ireland should have a right of veto over the aspirations of all the other people of Europe. I am not sure whether that is or is not democracy.’
Quite remarkable, don’t you think? That a man who is a member of a democratic government doesn’t seem to know what the word “democracy” itself means?
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Move along now….and in fact there isn’t anything to see here.
Caroline Flint, the Europe Minister, was reported as saying that we might at some time join the euro. Now of course, we think that we would be an entirely disastrous idea but it does have to be said that what Flint was saying isn’t a change in policy or anything.
Europe minister Caroline Flint opposed a promise made by David Cameron yesterday to keep the pound regardless of the circumstances.
She told Metro: ‘We will make a decision based on economic conditions. We have identified five tests that have to be met: convergence with other European economies, flexibility, impact on investment, the impact on the financial services industry and growth stability and employment.
‘At the moment, those economic tests have not been met.’
Britain has maintained the same position on the euro since 1997 when Mr Brown as chancellor devised the tests to assess whether the country was ready to switch to the euro.
What we’ve got to worry about is when they either stop referring to those tests or start to claim that they’ve been passed.
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Interesting fact for today: The Pesticide Action Network, who were interviewed by the BBC yesterday, welcoming the EU’s decision to ban a range of pesticides, are funded by…the EU.
That’s from Bishop Hill.
That’s where some of that 2.4 billion euros the EU spends on propaganda goes. To so called “independent” organisations so that they can praise whatever it is that the EU is up to this week.
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We’ve had a fun little back and forth with some Greek MEPs over the last couple of days. Yesterday Nigel makes a speech in the Strasbourg Parliament which points out that the Greek bonds have a spread of 233 basis points over the German Bund (no, don’t worry, you don’t need to know all of this financial terminology. Essentially, the Greek Government has to pay a lot more to borrow money that the German one does because the markets think they’re a dodgy bunch….).
Then the Greek MEPs allied with the EPP (ie, sitting with David Cameron’s bods) send around an email which says this:
Following today’s attempt by Mr Farage to attack the EURO through provocative statements on Greece’s membership to the EMU -during the plenary debate on the 10th anniversary of the EURO-, the Greek EPP-ED Delegation (Nea Demokratia) would like to inform you that today’s tender of government bonds yielded a total amount of 2,550 billion Euros at an average rate of 2,51%, well below the Euribor rate of reference. The final result covers more than 6 times the amount targeted by the Greek government.
This offers a tangible response to any Member seeking to establish the truth regarding the credibility of Greece’s performance as a trustworthy member of the Eurozone.
Mr Farage was really unlucky to attack Greece on the same day that markets proved their confidence to the Greek economy.
Ohh, get that eh? They’ll be scratching our eyes out next.
(Boring technical stuff. Skip this unless you like details. Actually, the Greek government didn’t issue bonds. They issued bills. Bonds are for more than a year, bills for less than one. Also, they didn’t get “below Euribor”. Euribor was 2.19% yesterday for 360 day bills. The Greeks paid 2.67%. This is known in financial circles as “more” than, not “less than” or “well below”. The implication of this is that the markets think that the Greek government is a worse risk than your common or garden bank.)
But what is really delightful is that today S&P cut their credit rating for Greece.
This is, to use again that impenetrable jargon of the financial markets, evidence that the markets do not have confidence in the Greek economy, not proof that they do.
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All sounds very good, doesn’t it?
BRITAIN will have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in October if the Tories win a 2009 snap election, David Cameron declared last night.
The Tory leader and his shadow foreign secretary William Hague vowed to put the hated constitution to a national vote in the autumn.
Mr Cameron – who also promised to keep the Pound – made his pledge to The Sun.
He said he would honour the commitment as soon as possible after a spring General Election victory.
But, umm, as there isn’t going to be a snap General Election then they won’t win one and they won’t hold a referendum.
This is as weasel worded and mealy mouthed as Brown’s own promise to have a referendum on the Constitution: which we won’t have now because they’ve changed the title page to “Lisbon Treaty”.
We’ve got to get out so that people will stop lying to us in this manner.
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One of the little things about how the newspaper business works is that a lot of stories come from the Press Association. Each newspaper then either prints the piece or, more likley, takes the parts of it that it wants and then prints it as their own story.
So one of the things that we try to keep an eye on in the press office is, if something is mentioned in a Press Association story, which of the newspapers then use that little bit of it that mentions us?
Like this from the PA story about Sir Dai:
Nigel Farage, leader of the UKIP party, paid tribute to Sir Dai, saying: “He was a larger than life character who brought great joy to both life and our party.
“We are sad to see him gone. We will remember him, and of course we will still be fighting for what he believed in, which is a free, sovereign and independent United Kingdom.”
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What, actually, is the point of electing a Conservative Euro MP? Nodding donkey’s might actually be more useful: at least a donkey sometimes turns around and bites back.