Gulf Stream Blues

"Chaotic" G8 Helped Few but the Tabloids

2009-07-10T13:01:00.006+01:00

As the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy wraps up, it would seem that initial predictions for the meeting’s lack of accomplishment have been born out. In the area of climate change, though a 2 degree temperature rise cap was theoretically agreed, the leaders failed to pass a climate bill which would mandate halving global emissions by 2050. The G8 also failed to agree a concerted strategy to boost the global economy, and they could not agree to any new sanctions on Iran or North Korea.

The timing of the summit, sandwiched as it is between two important G20 meetings, is of course partly to blame for the inaction. But many on the ground are blaming the failures on the country leading this year’s meeting, Italy. In the run-up to the summit there was a great deal of press about how the US had been forced to take the reigns of at the last minute after Italy failed to show any real leadership. But it was a report in Monday’s Guardian which stirred up the most controversy, alleging that senior officials from the other G8 nations were saying that Italy’s organisation of the event was so bad, the group should consider expelling it as a member.

The newspaper quotes senior officials as saying that in the last few weeks leading up to the summit, Washington was forced to organise “sherpa calls” at the last minute in order to give the summit some kind of purpose, as the Italians had seemingly failed to propose any substantive initiatives. For a country other than the host to organize these calls is “unprecedented”, one official told the paper. It was the US that organized the food security initiative, perhaps the only substantial thing to come out of the meeting. The paper also said that moving the summit from Sardinia to the recently earthquake-ravaged area of L'Aquila had created a logistical nightmare, with both officials and press unable to get around and telecommunications limited. And that’s not to mention the danger posed to the visiting heads of state as the area is still experiencing aftershocks.

The Guardian’s article was met with shock and consternation from Italian officials this week, some of it rather amusing. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini reacted to the assertion that some are calling for Italy to be kicked out of the G8 by saying it is The Guardian which should be “expelled from the list of great newspapers!” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi himself even gave his take on the article, saying it was a "load of rubbish" from a "small newspaper". Well which is it, a small newspaper or a great newspaper?

But disorganisation – an admitted national stereotype - isn’t the only accusation being levelled at Italy. Yesterday news emerged of a developing spy row in L’Aquila as people claimed the Italians were trying to use headphones to listen in on other negotiations. Berlusconi’s aids were also accused of having looked into using an audio device to communicate messages to him during secret meetings.

If the chaos and corruption being reported on the ground is true, it will not help Italy’s case for staying in the G8 or its successor body as a growing chorus of people call for the G8’s dissolution. There has been talk of replacing Italy with Spain, which now has a higher per capita national income than Italy and gives a greater percentage of GDP in aid. But US officials oppose this, believing that the group is already too Euro-centric. It may be that Britain, France and Germany are a bit nervous about the prospect of seeing Italy get the boot, because they know that they could eventually be next. The world has changed a great deal since the G8 was formed, as Spain’s emergence from the dark ages of the Franco era attests.

Many in the US think that a new group should be formed where all European nations are represented by a single EU seat (especially considering the EU already has an unofficial seat in the G8, effectively giving the European nations double representation). Individual EU countries would surely resist this, but the reality is they may have to accept it eventually. A more logical “G6” grouping in the future might be the US, the EU, China, Russia, India and Brazil.

Sex on Their Minds

Of course everyone gathered in Italy for the G8 summit can’t escape the Berlusconi sex scandal lurking in the background that has coloured the whole event. Wednesday saw the bizarre spectacle of five first ladies visiting the pope, all wearing veils - including Britain’s Sarah Brown - except for the first lady of Brazil - the largest Catholic country on earth. (Side note – can someone explain to me why non-Catholic women were compelled to wear a veil while meeting the pope?).

They were led by a former topless model (also veiled) who was standing in for the first lady of Italy, who is currently in divorce proceedings with her philandering husband Silvio Berlusconi. The stand-in for Italian first lady was Mara Carfagna, a former topless model appointed by Berlusconi to be – get this- his equal opportunities minister. The first wives had been asked to boycott the summit by a group of Italian university professors in response to, “the way women are treated in public and private by the Italian prime minister.” None of the wives agreed to the boycott but interestingly the most high-profile ones – Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni – were conveniently not available for the pope introduction led by the topless model.

None of the leaders or their wives have offered direct comment on the scandal, but Obama seemed to offer veiled disapproval of Berlusconi earlier this week following his meeting with Italy’s president. He lavished praise on President Napolitano (a mere figurehead in the Italian system of government) while offering none for Berlusconi.

President Napolitano had called on politicians and the media to take a break on discussing the sex allegations against Berlusconi during the summit so as to spare Italy any further embarrassment, but now that the meeting is coming to an end it looks like new allegations will keep emerging. New photos will reportedly be revealed in the next few days showing two topless women kissing in front of the prime minister for his amusement.

As G8 summits go, this year’s was, if not the most productive, at least the most sexy.

Who will the Hackgate Net Ensnare?

2009-07-09T13:04:00.008+01:00

Last night the Guardian newspaper came out with some explosive allegations here in the UK, and the evening news broadcasts were scrambling to unravel a scandal that could ensnare David Cameron, Rupert Murdoch and Scotland Yard all at once.

The Guardian article alleges that British newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. have paid £1 million in settlements to people who have had their phones hacked by private investigators hired by the company. The story alleges that such criminal activity was ‘systemic’ at News Corp’s British papers, particularly at News of the World and, to a lesser extent, the Sun. And all of this was going on during the editorship of Andy Coulson, who was recently hired as the Communications Director for Conservative leader David Cameron.

The list of people who had their phones hacked is wide and varied, representing the papers’ multi-faceted role of covering celebrity gossip, sports and politics using the same methods. Celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Nigella Lawson were hacked along with former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell.

There are a number of important questions raised here that could have big ramifications. One, did News Corp have a widespread, top-down policy of hacking phones, and then pay to cover up evidence of this policy once it was discovered by police? Two, was Scotland Yard coerced into dropping the investigation after discovering the evidence of widespread bugging? And three, what does it say about the Conservatives’ media strategy that they have hired a communications director that engages in these kind of practices?

Back in 2007, a News of the World reporter named Clive Goodman was convicted and jailed for hacking into the mobile phones of three members of staff for the royal family. News Corp assured parliament at the time that this was a one-off incident, calling Goodman a ‘rogue reporter’. But a source at Scotland Yard told the Guardian that during their inquiry investigators found evidence that News Corp staff had hacked into “thousands” of mobile phones using private investigators.

The investigation they’re referring to came after the Goodman case was exposed. It’s a bit unclear what happened, but it would appear that the Goodman case prompted the police to investigate other reporters at News of the World, evidence of widespread phone bugging was discovered, and some of the victims were informed by the police and others were not. It appears that none of the political victims were informed, but several of the sports and entertainment figures were. One of the figures who was told, Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor, sued News of the World. According to the Guardian, the company paid Taylor a £700,000 settlement with the stipulation that none of the information about the phone tampering could go public.

The idea that a newspaper would pay a settlement to keep something hidden from the media is pretty shocking. But what’s perhaps more shocking is that, faced with this allegedly overwhelming evidence that criminal activity was taking place, the police chose not to investigate it further or inform the victims. Considering that many of the victims were cabinet-level political figures, this seems downright bizarre.

It appears quite possible from the Guardian’s report that Andy Coulson was, if not directly involved with the strategy of hacking people’s phones, complicit in it by looking the other way. This may create a big headache for David Cameron, who’s decision to hire Coulson as the Tories’ mouthpiece was quite controversial, given his tabloid background. Cameron has been surprisingly cavalier about it so far. When the news broke last night his spokesperson said Cameron was “very relaxed” about the story. Then this morning, speaking outside his home in west London he said: "It's wrong for newspapers to breach people's privacy with no justification. That is why Andy Coulson resigned as editor of the News of the World two-and-a-half years ago… Of course I knew about that resignation before offering him the job. But I believe in giving people a second chance.”

Cameron seems to be suggesting that that because Coulson resigned following the Goodman conviction (which he claimed was a one-off he had no knowledge of), new information that shows he actually presided over a more wide-spread policy of hacking is irrelevant. This is a strange argument to make, and I have a feeling his “second chance” line is going to come back to haunt him as questions about his judgement arise. The BBC is already reporting that the Tories are getting increasingly nervous about this as the day goes on.

Given that Cameron is frequently derided as a “spin-meister” who is all showmanship and little substance, the news that he’s hired a tabloid news editor who is accused of presiding over a newsroom that systematically hacked people’s phones to drudge up dirt on them is probably the last thing he needs for his image. Much like Tony Blair’s PR guru Alistair Campbell before him, Coulson has now “become the story” in a way that is never good for any PR man.

The Guardian is providing a live feed of the developments in this matter as the day goes on. It will certainly be interesting to watch.

Awkward Handshakes in Italy

2009-07-03T12:37:00.004+01:00

Given his squeaky-clean image, Barack Obama is probably not thrilled about the prospect of clasping hands with sex-scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi next week as the Italian prime minister hosts the G8 summit in Italy. Berlusconi, dogged by allegations of sex with minors, hiring prostitutes and organising lavish orgies at his Sardinian villa, will probably be uncomfortable company for all of the G8 leaders, especially for the lone female leader, Angela Merkel. After the stories that have been unveiled about the prime minister’s treatment of women, she’s probably going to feel pretty uncomfortable standing next to the 72-year-old Lothario.

Considering the huge blow this scandal has dealt to Italy’s image abroad (which Berlusconi has bizarrely blamed on foreign media rather than on his own behaviour), this is going to be an awkward few days. But add to that the hugely controversial “vigilante justice” law passed by the Italian parliament yesterday, which will allow citizen patrols to dole out punishments on the street, and you’ve got a hugely important meeting happening in a country that observers fear is edging closer and closer toward a return to fascism.

In reality, the expectations for this summit are not very high. The meeting is sandwiched between the more important G20 summits in London and Pittsburgh where actual policy on the financial crisis was and will be devised. There will eb some important statements on climate change during this summit, but those policy shifts were dictated by Obama, not Berlusconi. And on development and aid, there is likely to be little in the way of commitment, and even the location of this meeting seems insultingly absurd in that area considering Italy has one of the worst reputations in the Western world for meeting aid commitments, cutting its aid to poor countries by 56 percent this year.

Italy is now so concerned about its rapidly deteriorating image abroad that the president this week begged his country's politicians and journalists to protect Italy's international reputation international reputation by ceasing all talk about the prime minister's sex scandals. Italy's media, which is mostly owned by media tycoon Berlusconi, may be only too happy to comply. But it's unlikely the foreign press will

Though Berlusconi has tried to make the location of this year’s summit reflect a global mood of “sobriety and solidarity” by moving it to the central Italian region of L’Aquila – battered by a devastating earthquake last year – it’s likely that to many the location of this year’s summit will instead highlight the absurdity of the group’s very existence. If the G8 is supposed to stand as a model for the developing world, why does this year’s host more closely resemble a Central American dictator than a respectable leader of a great power? Why is China - which has the world’s third largest GDP - not in the group, while Canada – ranked 11th – is? Does the G8 still have any moral or economic legitimacy? Is it even relevant? These questions will likely be asked more forcefully as the summit is held in a country with such embarrassing political, social and economic problems.

‘The New Blackshirts’

On Thursday the Italian parliament authorized unarmed citizens' patrols patrol Italy's streets, aiding law enforcement and dispensing justice. In anticipation of the move, a right-wing uniformed group called the Italian National Guard was set up last month. They wear beige uniforms and black military-style hats, much like Benito Mussolini's fascists. That group will shortly begin patrolling the streets. The legislation follows significant recent gains by Italy’s neo-fascist parties, most notably when Gianni Alemanno was elected mayor of Rome last May.

The same legislation will make illegal immigration a criminal offense in Italy, introducing fines of €5,000 to €10,000 for those caught, extending detention periods for illegal migrants to six months, and introducing prison terms of up to three years for anyone housing them. It follows recent moves by the Italian government to introduce mandatory fingerprinting for Romani people (gypsies).

Aftershocks and Futureshocks

There was apparently another earthquake in L'Aquila just today - an aftershock from the previous one that devastated the area. One can question the wisdom of holding a meeting of the world's most powerful leaders in an earthquake-prone area, but its perhaps earthquakes of the political variety Berlusconi is most eager to avoid. He is no doubt very aware that his first government eventually collapsed in 1994 after a newspaper published court documents relating to allegations of corruption against him while he was hosting an international security summit in Naples. He’s also surely aware of Italy’s humiliation in 2001 after violence and heavy-handed police action marred the last G8 summit he hosted in Genoa. Berlusconi has passed a lawmaking himself immune to criminal prosecution, so he doesn’t have to worry any more about being subject to any legal embarassment. But he does have to worry that Italy’s host duties will put his philandering behaviour in the international spotlight in a way that is finally too unpalatable for the Italian public, who have so far stuck by the prime minister with approval ratings as high as 72%.

It has been speculated that large swathes of the Italian public are actually unaware of the sex scandal surrounding Berlusconi because he owns most of the media in the country and his stations and newspapers have avoided covering it. But the high-profile nature of the G8 summit could make a further whitewash impossible over the next week if the allegations somehow become connected to the summit.

One thing is for certain – Berlusconi will have to tread carefully over the coming week, and he will have to be on his best behaviour. It looks like Italy’s meter maids, for this week anyway, may get a reprieve from the unprovoked humpings.

EU Takes a (Half-Hearted) Stand on Smoking Bans

2009-06-30T17:40:00.007+01:00

Throughout my travels around Europe one of my favourite things to do is observe the differences between countries – and if you’re someone who enjoys a drink or two, many of those observable differences can often be found at bars. From the availability of beer versus wine to the size of drinks to the closing times, bars can be a great place to see the particular cultural quirks of a society play out. In recent years one area of difference has become increasingly pronounced – who and who does not have a smoking ban. It's a blisteringly confusing patchwork of laws. Today, the EU announced a move to ban smoking in enclosed spaces across the EU. But as we say in the US, Brussels seems to have shown up a day late and a dollar short.

Amusingly, smoking bans have seemed to follow me as I’ve moved around the globe. I was in New York City in 2003 when one of the first bans in the US began (following California’s), which resulted a whole new party atmosphere in the streets that summer as everyone poured out of the bars to smoke (the police were too busy handing out noise violations to enforce the ban at first). Then just after I had gotten used to having my clothes no longer smell of smoke after a night on the town, I moved to Chicago where I could once again light up in a bar. It wasn’t long before that city implemented a ban too, but not matter, because I then moved to Washington DC, which at the time people thought was “too Southern” to ever have a smoking ban. But they thought wrong, because before long I found myself witnessing yet another smoking ban come into effect. I moved to London and could smoke inside again at first, but in the summer of 2007 that city too went smoke free. I moved to Paris shortly after France’s smoking ban went into effect, but then moved to Switzerland where I could again smoke inside. It was all very difficult to keep track of, and I don’t even smoke!

Smoking bans in Europe have developed much as they have in the United States, with a patchwork of different states and municipalities adopting different laws. [as this public smoking map from BudgetTravel shows] England and Ireland have the strictest smoking bans, not even allowing hookah (shisha) pipes to be smoked. Spain and Germany both have a lax patchwork approach that varies state by state. France, Italy, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands have all adopted smoking bans that allow special designated smoking rooms (I can attest that these hastily created rooms in France are just about the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen).

As I travel I like to ask people about the peculiar legislative history behind these quirky bans, and oddly I keep being faced with the same remarkably consistent but completely inaccurate assertion: that smoking bans are mandated by the EU. This of course was completely wrong, the EU has never taken any decisions regarding smoking in public places. That is, until today.

This afternoon the European Commission officially called on member states to adopt their own legislation to make enclosed spaces in the EU smoke-free by 2012. The commission likely knows that, like the environment, this is a winning issue with the European public. A recent Eurobarometer survey found that 84% of Europeans favour banning smoking in the workplace, 79% in restaurants and 65% in bars and clubs. The remaining 35%? Funny you should ask, that roughly corresponds to the number of EU citizens who currently smoke (32%). The highest proportion of smokers is found in Greece, Bulgaria and Latvia.

So the EU is riding in on a white horse to save everyone’s lungs right? Not exactly. It would be hard to argue that this is anything but laughably too little too late. This is a “recommendation” from the EU, not a directive. It isn’t in any way binding, and member states aren’t under any obligation to pay any attention to it. The idea that somehow the remaining 17 countries with no smoking ban are going to rush to implement smoking bans in the next two years because the EU has politely suggested it is pretty absurd actually. No wonder today’s press conference was met by a collective eye roll at the midday briefing.

It’s too little, and it’s too late also. It was the member states that took the bull by the horns on this issue, particularly in the British Isles (and soon Bulgaria, which will implement a total smoking ban similar to Britain’s shortly). France and Italy can also be commended for being able to implement smoking bans in countries where cigarettes have long been associated with the national character. The EU on the other hand has not been a leader on this issue, and perhaps its no coincidence that you can smoke wherever you want to in Brussels!

Then again, perhaps the EU can’t be faulted too much for being unable to force a smoking ban an a widely diverse collection of member states. After all, if Washington hasn’t had the chutzpah to do it (“states rights!” they would scream down South), how can Brussels be expected to?

But isn’t it curious that everyone I meet seems to assume that any “Draconian” law affecting their personal liberties comes from the EU. Today’s announcement from the Commission may not accomplish anything except furthering that misconception.

Say hello to the standard EU phone charger

2009-06-29T17:42:00.004+01:00

The European Union has reached an agreement with mobile phone makers today to create a standardized phone charger that will work across all models and brands. The agreement was reached after the EU told the phone companies that it did not reach a voluntary accord it would force their hand with legislation. And as the phone companies learned from the roaming rate cap battle, Brussels is willing to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to telecommunications.

Starting next year, new mobile phones will come with the same electrical input socket, mini USB, and they will all come with the same charger (with different prongs for the British Isles and the continent of course). MEPs noted that the new system would make it easier to use someone else’s charger if you’ve forgotten your own, with consumers no longer having to hunt around for a charger that matches the make of their phone.

Commissioner Verheugen demonstrated that difficulty at today's press conference, although perhaps with a bit of exageration!

Of course the main purpose of the change is environmental. Allowing consumers to reuse their old charger with a new phone will cut back on electrical waste

The agreement was reached with Apple, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, which together make up 90% of the EU phone market. Since most of these companies also design phones in the US and the rest of the world, I would assume that this standardization will eventually spread to the rest of the world. After all, why would they make phones with different electrical input jacks specifically for Europe?

While this change probably won’t have a huge impact on anyone’s life, it is interesting to note how quickly the companies responded to the EU’s threat of legislation. It’s clear that in the area of consumer rights, companies have learned a lesson from the roaming rate cap debate. From now on when the EU threatens to use legislation for force a consumer rights issue, companies may quickly decide it’s better to each a voluntary agreement than to dig in their heels and resist, only to be forced to change by legislation later on.

Tories Form “Anti-EU” EU Party

2009-06-23T17:07:00.003+01:00

Well he’s gone ahead and done it. David Cameron has made good on his leadership contest pledge four years ago to leave the mainstream centre-right party in the European Parliament and form a new anti-federalist minority party, the “European Conservatives and Reformists” group. Considering the big impact this will have on the UK’s influence in the EU, I’ve been shocked (and frankly a bit disgusted) by the barely perceptible amount of coverage yesterday’s announcement received in the British media.

The new block will be the fourth largest in the parliament, which sounds big until you realize that the parliament is made up of three main blocks (the conservatives, the socialists, and the liberals) and then a whole lot of side parties. Really, it’s a bit like bragging that the Democratic Unionist party is the fourth largest block in the British House of Commons, both in terms of size and influence. Ideologically it would be more like the 7th largest Commons party Sinn Fein actually, considering the Tory MEPs apparently don’t think their constituents should be part of the EU in the same way Sinn Fein doesn’t believe their constituents should be part of the UK.

The Tories’ allies in the party are a ragtag group of mostly Eastern European far-right parties including Poland’s PIS and the Czech Republic’s ODS, but the Tories are the overwhelming majority in the party (they needed to join with MEPs from at least 8 member states to form a Brussels party, and they met the bare minimum). Leaving the EPP, which is currently the largest party in the parliament and is also the party of the Commission President (the most powerful position in the EU), will mean a huge loss of power for the UK in shaping EU policy. Tory MEPs will lose all of the committee seats they had held by virtue of being part of the largest bloc, and as members of a small party they will be unlikely to be chosen as rapporteurs – the people who escort legislation through the parliament and shape the changes the parliament will make. This defection, along with the increased seats for the UK Independence Party and the two new seats for the BNP, means the UK will effectively not be using 30 of its 72 seats.

I nearly spit out my drink last night when I saw the way Channel 4 News mentioned the official formation of the party. It was literally the last item in their quick news roundup, a 10 second sentence tossed in as a seeming afterthought. It was the same on the BBC, and this is after the British media basically completely ignored the issue during the run-up to the Parliament election. Newsnight was the only show I saw that gave the issue more than passing lip service, and that was only in a roughly two minute interview with a correspondent in Brussels.

To the extent that today’s papers have covered the development at all, they’ve tended to focus on salacious details about the unsavoury characters the Tories have chosen to align themselves with, Both the Daily Mail and the Guardian devoted most of their articles to this aspect, rather than on the loss of influence for the UK in Brussels. The Financial Times was the only paper I saw that focused on the loss-of-influence angle, quoting Labour party officials as saying the Tories have ‘moved to extremism in allying with the extreme right’. The FT quotes foreign secretary David Miliband as saying Cameron has throw away influence in Europe "in favour of ideological isolationism".

What’s Next for the ECRG?

So what was the point of this move? It’s hard to tell what productive purpose this could possibly serve other than scoring political points back home, tapping into the ever-popular Europhobia in Britain. The stated reasoning is that the EPP was too federalist in its attitude, and the Tories wanted to form a new party to oppose moves that would give Brussels any more power, and advance moves that would give power back to the individual member states. That’s all well and good except for the fact that the parliament has very little to do with such issues. The parliament doesn’t make legislation, it merely approves it. It is in the Commission, the EU’s executive branch, where law is made. And it is in the Commission where any decisions about the makeup, membership or structure of the EU are taken. So there’s really very little a minority party could hope to achieve in the parliament in terms of “opposing federalism”.

The Tories argue, however, that losing British influence in the short term is worth the sacrifice if in the long term they can eventually form a viable, strong anti-federalist party that could put the kibosh on Commission attempts to further integrate and harmonize EU law. While this could be true, with the way the parliament works their little party would have to grow exponentially in order to have that kind of influence, and with their lack of interest in Europe it’s hard to see the Tories grabbing the bull by the horns for that project. It’s strange that a national party that is not very interested in Europe and indeed quite internally divided by the subject would choose to take on this quite ambitious project of “reforming” the EU.

And perhaps therein lies the problem with British euroscepticism. So much of what the UK does to resist EU federalism are empty gestures, symbolic grumblings of discontent that do nothing to advance British interests and instead shut the Brits out of influence in Brussels. They are quite simply cutting off their nose to spite their face.

It will be interesting to observe where this drama goes from here, though after months of following this subject I suspect this is the end of the story rather than the beginning. The Tories are unlikely to take much of an interest in this new party they’ve formed, and it will probably sit in the back of the parliament somewhere in stagnation, all but forgotten by the rest of Brussels. A few of the Tory MEPs will probably stop showing up to vote at all now that their position in the parliament has been so substantially weakened.

Who knows, I could be wrong. The far-right fascist parties that were given seats across Europe have given indications that they would like to join, which would not only increase the size of the party but also spice it up a bit. But the Tories are almost certain not to let them in - and why would they, when they already got their requisite number of foreign MEPs from eight countries? I suspect the end goal here was really just to form a party, not for the party to actually accomplish anything.

Saving the Earth Dutch Style

2009-06-20T11:59:00.010+01:00

This week I was in Holland, being shuttled around the country on a press tour showing journalists various environmental projects. I know it’s almost cliché to say this at this point, but coming from the Anglo-Saxon world I couldn’t help but feel a bit ashamed at how much further along countries like the Netherlands are in developing sustainable solutions to climate change. Many of these solutions have been being developed since long before climate change became a prominent issue, and people have largely gotten used to the adjustments they’ve had to make to their daily lives. One example was this houseboat, pictured right.

The other journalists on this tour were an interesting mix, coming within Europe from Brussels, Germany, Denmark, Spain and the Czech Republic as well as further afield from China, India, Brazil and South Africa. It was interesting to hear everyone’s comparisons with what’s going on in their home countries, particularly the developing BRIC countries.

There were also interesting comparisons we could make between countries in the EU, particularly with Denmark and Germany which are also quite far along in developing sustainability projects. One funny detail was that many of the Dutch presenters for the projects would wistfully say that what they have might be good, but it’s nothing compared to what they have in Germany. This made my German colleague laugh, because in Germany apparently they always think of Dutch as having the height of green achievement. Two such modest peoples!

One of the more interesting sites we visited was energy-from-waste incineration plant in Amsterdam called the Waste and Energy Company, a public utility.

Having never seen a trash incineration plant before, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But I had plenty of pre-conceived notions about massive industrial plants spewing out plumes of noxious gas they torch piles of needless human waste. When our bus pulled up it looked like this was going to be the reality, as we could immediately see two giant smokestacks pouring white smoke into the air. However once inside and given a tour, I was surprised by many of the things I learned about the plant. The facility, which processes over 1.4 million tonnes of municipal and industrial waste annually, is actually the largest waste processor at a single location in the world. Two freight trains and 600 garbage trucks deliver trash to the facility each day.

Gross right? But astonishingly, the facility is able to recycle nearly 99% of the waste it receives. It does so by using the heat produced from burning the garbage to generate energy, much like a coal plant burns coal to produce energy. The facility produces 1 million MWh of electricity per year, enough to cover three quarters of Amsterdam households. All of Amsterdam’s public transportation is powered from the plant, as well as all street lights. The plant also uses the excess hear generated during the burning to provide businesses and homes with heat and hot water. Thus two environmental issues are solved: what to do with garbage and how to create energy without using finite resources like oil, coal and gas.

That’s all well and good, you may say, but what about the toxic emissions that are produced from the burning process? Well the AEB plant has devised a way to treat this. During the burning process, the steam (which drives the turbine) is separated from the smoke, and the smoke is then extensively filtered through flue-gas cleaning, which actually takes up 2/3 of the whole plant! By a process of separation, new materials are extracted from the gas. The sulphur recovered is used for the production of plaster board and blocks for the building industry, and the calcium chloride extracted can be used to defrost roads in winter. And the metal waste that can’t be burned is extracted, ground into bottom ash, and made into artificial sand for use in the construction of roads and buildings. In the end 99% of the impurities are filtered out. That smoke I saw coming out of the building? Only water vapour.

Still, energy-from-waste plants remain highly controversial. Many argue that although they do reduce CO2 emissions, they provide perverse incentive for governments to do nothing about the amount of waste generated by their societies. Additionally, such plants will always generate some pollution and the facilities can also be dangerous if there are accidents. Green groups in the UK have been particularly aggressive in opposing such plants, defeating plans for them in every council that has considered it.

Another interesting site we visited was a house outside of Amersfoort which generated its own energy. Apparently this has been increasingly done with new home construction in the Netherlands, as the government has started a feed-in program where homes that generate excess electricity can give it to the power grid and be paid for it. With this particular home, the solar panels and wind turbine on the roof generate more electricity than the house needs during the day, so that electricity is sold to the state and put into the wider grid. At night, when the sun is down, the house buys electricity from the grid, but it buys less electricity than it sells during the day so the homeowner actually makes a profit. The house also has many other energy-savings tricks including a special type of insulation made of Styrofoam (pictured left). But at the same time it looks like any other house, with a typical 1930's boxy Netherlands design (pictured above).

All in all it was an interesting trip. It was especially interesting talking to all the other journalists, especially the ones from Brussels. It actually made me excited for my move there in the Autumn. This weekend I'm in Zurich, Sunday is Father's Day in the US and UK so I thought I'd come here for it. I'm basically living at Heathrow Airport these days! After this I have a few straight weeks in the UK though. Well, at least 2 weeks. Hopefully we'll get some sunshine in London finally.

Prince-on-Prince Contact

2009-06-15T14:54:00.002+01:00

In a shock turn of events, it was revealed on Friday that Prince Charles has been successful in his bid to stop the Qataris from constructing modernist apartment blocks on the site of the old Chelsea Barracks, which is across the street from my flat. As you can imagine my flatmate, who has been intimately involved with the negotiations between our building’s residents and the Qataris, is none too pleased that the concessions he’s worked for two years to get have now gone up in smoke.

So what did it take for Qatari Diar (a real estate firm owned by the Qatari royal family) to abandon their planned development, designed by one of the worlds most prominent architects for a site that they purchased in the most expensive land transaction in British history? From the looks of it, it was a little princely camaraderie. The decision follows communication between Prince Charles and the Emir of Qatar in which the Prince of Wales asked him to stop the modernist development and instead start over with a more classic, traditional design.

So is this really the result of some royal influence, or is the royal contact angle just an over dramatisation by the British press? Right now it’s a bit unclear. As I wrote about in my previous post on this topic, the letter my flatmate received from the prince last month seemed to indicate that he probably didn’t want to see his royal name too associated with this mess - an effort that, judging from the headlines on Friday, clearly failed. One can easily see why he wanted to avoid it though. The heir apparent has been the target of considerable anger following this news, particularly from architects who say he should stop his “meddling”.

However the fact is that Charles was not really the driving force behind the opposition to this plan. The resistance was led by a proactive and energetic residents association (one that my building wasn’t a part of). It was that group, the Chelsea Barracks Action Group, that commissioned the ‘alternative’ Chelsea Barracks blueprint by traditional architect Quinlan Terry that much of the media has presented as being the brainchild of the prince (the one on the right in the above photo, compared to the planned design on the left). The prince, in fact, was really just peripherally involved in this whole dispute, from the looks of it. This was really a victory for CBAG chairwoman Georgie Thorburn, who has pursued this issue with almost messianic zeal over the past year.

But as peripheral as his involvement may have been, was Prince Charles the factor that tipped this in CBAG’s favour in the end? We’ll probably never know, as the intimate chats between royalty aren’t usually public knowledge, especially in Arabia! But what is for certain now is that the Chelsea Barracks site is back to the drawing board, and will continue to lie as a giant pit in the middle of posh Chelsea, with its two abandoned high-rise barrack dorms sticking up like rotting teeth. Not so great for the neighborhood’s aesthetic, but hey, at least I’m not going to be woken up by construction equipment in the morning any time soon!

Incidentally I’m in Amsterdam this week for work, on a press tour of some environmental projects throughout Holland. I’ll try to write a little bit about some of the things I’ve seen later in the week.

Euroelection: BNP Overshadows the Real Story

2009-06-10T13:28:00.007+01:00

Europe’s centre-left is licking its wounds this week after the European Parliament vote, and nowhere is the pain being felt more acutely than by Labour in Britain. But perhaps the larger significance of the poll results for this island nation, which the British media have so far failed to pick up on, is the fact that the British will not be using 60% of their potential voting power in the new European Parliament.

Anti-EU parties did enormously well in Britain’s European Parliament vote. The UK Independence Party, which believes that Britain should secede from the EU, got 16.5% of the vote, beating Labour and coming in second with 13 seats. With the far-right British National Party – which also wants to exit the EU – gaining two seats, Britain will be sending 15 MEPs to represent them in the European Parliament who don’t believe the institution should exist at all. And of course “sending” is perhaps a misleading term here, since all 15 of these MEPs are unlikely to ever show up in Brussels to cast a vote, preferring to remain in Britain in protest.

Yesterday I was at a sustainability conference in London’s Docklands, and was listening to an opening speech given by Tory MEP Caroline Jackson, who represents Britain’s Southwest region. She said she was dismayed that British voters had chosen to waste 15 of their seats in parliament. Those 15 seats which will remain conspicuously empty for the next five years, as the British people have elected them in based on an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with the European Parliament, which decides neither which countries are in the EU nor the makeup and structure of the union.

Jackson went on to point out that with the departure of the Tories from the main centre-right group European People’s Party (EPP), the reality was that the UK has now effectively relinquished 30 out of its 72 seats.

Fulfilling a pledge he made back when he was campaigning for the Conservative Party’s leadership, David Cameron is taking the Tories out of the EPP, the largest block in the European Parliament with all the continent’s centre-right parties – including those of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy – saying that the block is too federalist. He is instead trying to form a new Eurosceptic party, finding strange far-right allies from Eastern Europe to join him. Jackson, who has decided to leave the parliament after this term, could barely conceal her disdain as she listed these parties, which include the Czech Republic’s ODS (which she pronounced o-di-ous) and Poland’s PIS (which she refrained from making into a word). “Rather unfortunate acronyms” she observed dryly.

“It’s a sad moment for me, as a Conservative, to find that the Conservatives have put themselves in this bottom group, leading effectively nowhere,” she said. She isn’t alone in this observation. Many Tory MEPs have pointed out that this decision will put the Conservatives on the fringes of Europe, with no influence in the parliament and shut out of decision-making. If they had stayed in the EPP, the Conservatives would have been one of the largest parties in the EP’s largest block. It would have been a powerful position in an increasingly powerful body within the EU, which now controls the majority of British policy in the areas of environment, agriculture and trade.

As it stands, the second-largest country in the EU will have just 42 real usable seats in the European parliament (minus 30 wasted seats), compared to Germany’s 99 effective seats and France’s 68 (minus their 4 wasted seats from fringe parties). While the rest of mainstream Europe is fully engaged in the EU as it works to solve problems that cannot be solved nationally - such as climate change, terrorism and the financial crisis – Britain will have taken its toys and gone home. They’ll remain part of the EU, governed by its laws, but refusing to actively take part in shaping its policy. The Tories are now going to lose most of their ranking seats on the parliament's committees. Representatives of British industry and NGOs will now have few MEP to go to to influence EU policy in Britain's favour. Essentially, the UK has cut off its nose to spite its face. Many in Brussels are scratching their heads at what could motivate what they see as an idiotic, irresponsible decision.

Far-Right Ascendance in Britain

However the fact remains that a vast swathe of the British people have yet to be convinced that the EU serves any purpose, and they see no reason why the UK can’t single-handedly solve these large problems all on its own. And there is a growing segment of the country that believes the “British race” would also be better off on its own.

The British Media hasn’t taken much notice of the diminished influence the UK now has in the parliament. They’ve instead focused on the fact that the British National Party, the far-right group that doesn’t allow non-whites as members and espouses the ideas of Adolph Hitler, won two MEP seats. The victories, which were won in the North of England, have caused alarm and revulsion across the UK. When notorious BNP leader Nick Griffin tried to hold an impromptu victory press conference outside the houses of Parliament yesterday he was confronted by a group of anti-fascist protestors who pelted him with eggs. The anti-fascist group says they will trail the far-right leader wherever he goes to remind the public of his extreme racist views, but the reality is such protests will probably bring him more attention than having the seat will.

Of course Britain won’t be the first EU country sending far-right MEPs to Brussels. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National has long been sending elected members to the body, and there are far-right MEPs from Eastern Europe that have called for the mass deportation of Roma (gypsies). But this is the first time that Britain, the mother of all Democracies, has sent a fascist representative to Europe. In fact, this is the first high office that the BNP has been elected to (so far they’ve only managed to get seats on local town councils), and without a doubt it gives them some legitimacy (if not any actual power since they’re unlikely to ever make a trip to Brussels to cast a vote, lest they mix with the foreigns).

Such a win for the BNP does great damage to the nation’s psyche because it challenges many of the narratives the British people have for themselves. Most British people forget that there was significant fascist movement here during the 1930’s that in the end was unable to wrest power. The sad reality is that this win means the BNP is now a bit player in British Politics that isn’t going away, but they are unlikely to become a significance force with anywhere near the reach of Oswald Mosley’s fascists of the ‘30s.

The British people’s attitude about the irrelevance of the European Parliament has enabled two fascists to sneak into their representation in Brussels. In the long-run, the more important consequence of that will be the European disengagement and isolationism that one day Britain may look back on and regret if it finds itself alone and irrelevant in the 21st century. “And all we were talking about was the bloody BNP,” they may remark with a larf.

Europe Goes Conservative in Crisis

2009-06-09T19:35:00.009+01:00

If you heard a soft whimpering sound Sunday night, it was likely the sad echoes of Europe's left sobbing into their beers. All across the continent, with only the exception of Greece and Slovakia, Europe's Democratic Socialists were dealt crushing blows in the European Parliament election, whether they were the ruling party or the opposition.

Considering this result has come at a time when a majority of Europeans want to see more state action in the economy and people are reeling with anger against "fat cat capitalists", the result has left Europe's socialists scratching their heads, wondering what to do next. Though there is a mood of public anger across the EU, the ruling conservative governments in Germany, France, Italy and Poland didn't see their parties punished at the polls, in fact some of them even gained seats. On the other hand, the governing socialists in Spain, Hungary and Britain all took a drubbing at the polls. The Party of European Socialists (the block of various centre-left parties in the European Parliament that includes Britain's Labour, France's Socialists and Germany's Social Democrats) lost 20 seats.

I watched the election results while in Berlin this weekend, and I can tell you that even though the Social Democrats knew they weren't going to do great, the sheer margin between them and Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats was highly depressing for them, since it now seems certain she will no longer need to ally with them after the general election in Germany in the Fall. Sarkozy's UMP also easily defeated his socialist rivals, gaining 13 seats to put the UMP representation in the European parliament over the French socialist contingent for the first time ever. In Britain Labour received its lowest vote in the history of any UK country-wide election, coming in with a shocking 15.7%. The dismal results may even have the effect of forcing Gordon Brown to call an election, which would almost certainly lead to Labour being ousted from power.

So does this mean Europeans are turning to traditional conservative economic theory to guide them out of the current crisis? Not a chance, say most analysts. The poll result is being attributed more to the chaotic and fractured state Europe's socialists find themselves in today than any kind of ideological shift for the continent. As the Socialists have been in chaos, Europe's centre-right has hijacked the traditional tenants of socialism, co-opting the ideas of the left. Sarkozy suddenly went from being "Sarko l'Americain" to Sarko the French champion against unrestrained Anglo-Saxon-style capitalism. It would seem that Europe is now asking, what is Socialism in Europe in 2009? What is it the socialists represent?

So the coming months will see the socialists regrouping, in each country, and figuring out who they are and what they represent. It's clear they have lost control of the narrative, and they have lost credibility with much of the public. Socialist floor leader Martin Schultz was probably right Sunday night when he called the result "a very sad evening for social democracy in Europe."

*Of course the election was also a big victory for extreem parties, particularly the far-right. But I'll write more on that tomorrow. Oh and yes, the Swedish Pirate Party did win a seat. Arrr, matey!

My first vote in Europe

2009-06-04T13:32:00.006+01:00

This morning I voted in my first European election, a right newly available to me now that I have my Italian passport. An EU citizen can vote for an MEP in any EU country they live in. It was a fairly uneventful affair. Though it was 8:45am and hence prime commuting time, I was actually the only person at the Chelsea polling station.

In the UK they still use paper balloting, so they hand you a sheet, you take it over to a little desk, mark off a big x, and slip it into a box. It seemed very old-timey to me, as where I’m from in Connecticut they haven’t used paper balloting since before I was born. Even the big pull-lever voting machines with the automatic curtains - which seemed so cool to me as a child when I would go into the booth with my parents - now seem antiquated in the US with the advent of electronic voting machines. Funny enough, the paper I was given this morning was about a metre long, making it appear as if I had a lot to vote on. But in reality there was only one X to be made, next to the party you were choosing. Each party though has to list the six candidates it would field if it wins, making the list quite long with all of the small parties. It’s done on a proportional allocation basis, with the winning parties getting to put forward a certain number of MEPs based on how much of the vote they got in each district. The UK and Holland are the only countries voting today, the rest of Europe will vote on Sunday and the British results won’t be revealed until then.

I won’t say who I voted for but I will say it was a tough decision. In Brussels they complain that one of the (many) problems with the European parliament is that people vote on purely national issues, which are mostly irrelevant to the issues being considered by the European Parliament. Even knowing this, I have to admit that national political considerations in Britain probably contributed about 50% to my decision. It’s just really hard to ignore the national politics when so often the most immediate and tangible result of these euroelections is the verdict they deliver on the national party in power.

Off with their Heads!

Owing to the economic crisis, this ‘verdict’ element is more prevalent this year than ever before. Across Europe there are several countries where the governments are teetering on the brink of collapse, and a poor performance in the EP elections could topple them from power. Across Europe the parties in power are expected to do poorly while the opposition parties are expected to do well (with the bizarre exception of Italy where, though their leader is embroiled in a sex scandal involving a 17-year-old girl, it is expected that his hard-right ruling coalition will do unprecedentedly well). In Greece, where the conservative government is weak following violent demonstrations against the economic crisis, a big win for the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement on Sunday could cause the collapse of the current government and a general election. Similarly in Spain, a big win for the conservative Popular Party could trigger a no-confidence vote for the ruling government of the Socialist Workers Party. In Germany and Portugal, big wins from the opposition would have a dramatic effect on upcoming scheduled elections in the fall. It seems that across Europe, whether the right or the left is in power, the verdicts delivered by Sunday’s election could be the opening shot of a coup by the rival ideology.

But nowhere is the euroelection being watched more closely as a barometer than in Britain, where it is being held concurrently with many local council elections across England. Gordon Brown’s government is in freefall this week. The ongoing expenses scandal has caused Brown’s already weak government to fall apart, and each hour that passes seems to get worse. The last two days have seen the resignations of several cabinet ministers, and it is thought that Chancellor Alistair Darling will be sacked within days. Brown will have to form a new cabinet next week, but if Labour MPs refuse to serve on his cabinet, he will have to step down as Labour leader. A new Labour leader would then be selected by the party, who would inevitably have to call a general election that Labour will almost certainly lose. It is thought that Labour MPs are waiting for the result of today’s vote to make their decision. If Labour does dismally (some are predicting they could even come in fourth or fifth behind the far-right British National Party) then they will force his resignation by refusing to serve on his new cabinet.

It is expected that the Tories will probably receive the largest share of today’s EP vote, thought the majority of people almost certainly don’t realize what they’re voting for with that decision. David Cameron is set to take the Tories out of the parliament’s main centre-right EPP grouping shared by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy and form a new Eurosceptic fringe grouping by allying with far-right parties of Eastern Europe. This issue has received almost no coverage from the British media, so it is certain that most of today’s Tory voters aren’t aware that they’re voting for a coalition that will include the anti-gay, climate-denying Polish nationalist Law and Justice party. That said, perhaps even if they knew they wouldn’t be bothered by it.

Rock Stars and Royalty

Of course there are interesting non-government-toppling things to look out for in Sunday’s results as well. In the Netherlands, for instance, the country is rife with speculation over the performance of controversial populist Geert Wilder’s anti-Islam Party for Freedom, which many are expecting to do quite well. In France, people are watching to see if the newly solidified Socialist Party leadership of Martine Aubrey will give people confidence that Sarkozy’s opposition is back in the game and safe for a vote after a year of chaos and in-fighting. I think that’s unlikely and they will probably do quite poorly, especially considering that Communist Olivier Besancenot’s new Anti-Capitalist Party is expected to do well and will probably siphon off votes from them. But just how well they will do is a matter of speculation, and I imagine it will keep Sarkozy up quite late Sunday night if they have a good result.

Then of course there’s the amusing MEP entries of this year’s election. The European Parliament, often half-jokingly maligned as a refuge of freaks, cast-aways and has-beens, has attracted its fair share of celebrity candidates this year. Slovakia, which was mortified after the last EP election five years ago when it had the lowest turnout in all the EU at just 17%, has pulled out all of the stops to try to get people to the polls this year, fielding an African-born pop singer, a fitness trainer and a former ice hockey star. Who knows that their objectives for Europe are, but I suspect the main intent with fielding them was just to make sure Slovakia doesn’t come last in turnout again.

Another interesting one to watch will be Sweden’s Pirate Party, a group formed entirely in reaction to the recent prosecutions in that country of file-sharing site managers. The candidates actually dress as pirates and have used pirate speak when campaigning (and they’re expected to gain some seats on Sunday!). There’s also Elena Basescu - Romania's equivalent to Paris Hilton – who is expected to win a seat as she is the daughter of the Romanian president. Other quirky candidates include a former Czech astronaut; a Finnish racing champion and a Bulgarian Taekwondo idol.

And of course my nerdy European history fascination can’t help but be interested in the fact that the reigning heirs of two of Europe’s formerly most powerful but today ousted (and banned) monarchies – the Habsburgs and the Savoys – are both in the running in Austria and Italy respectively. The candidacy of “Prince of Venice and Piedmont” Emanuele Filiberto in Italy is particularly interesting as he was banned from entering Italy his whole life (oweing to the expulsion of members of the former Italian monarchy when the Republic was declared in until Berlusconi lifted the restriction for him and his father in 2002. Shortly after that he celebrated his triumphal return to his family’s former kingdom by entering Italy’s version of Dancing with the Stars.

Asked why he would make a good MEP, he said, "I was in exile for 31 years and I know Europe well. I speak five languages. I know half of the current heads of state personally, and the other half I'm related to." It’s an argument any Royalist could agree with!

Check out this BBC site for real-time election results on Sunday and Monday. I'll be in Berlin this weekend, but will certainly be keeping tabs on it from there!

Where are the Ideas for Britain?

2009-06-01T17:42:00.005+01:00

I’ve written before on this blog about a general lack of ambition in Europe, the noticeable absence of a strong desire from Europeans for themselves or their country to achieve success. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the reaction of the British public to the unfolding expenses scandal which may be hours away from causing the resignation of the Chancellor.

The British media has been telling us that the public is “enraged” by the unfolding scandal, which is precipitating a “revolution” that could topple not just the current leadership but the entire system of British government. But judging by the reaction I’ve seen from ordinary Brits, this seems a highly dubious claim. In fact all I’ve heard so far is a whole lot of whinging, but very little ideas about what should be done about the problem. We can laugh that, of course, this is the stereotypical British way of dealing with everything. But in the end it’s a real problem, especially right now.

A friend of mine who is a journalist covering Westminster made this observation: as he’s been doing the “man on the street” interviews that every reporter is required to do while a scandal like this is unfolding, the reactions of people are all the same. “They’re all a bunch or crooks aren’t they?” “They should string ‘em up from the rafters, the lot of ‘em!” “All of the MPs have been on the gravy train!” But when my friend asks a follow-up question on their opinion of the system itself – like whether they believe MPs should be given a raise instead of using expenses, whether the number of MPs should be cut, or whether the House of Lords should be abolished – people just stare back at him blankly. “Oh, I don’t have any opinion on that” they say. Well hang on, a second ago you were just calling for all MPs to be hung from the top of Big Ben, but who exactly would replace them in this great plan of yours, Average Joe?

I may be accustomed to apathy having grown up as part of America’s Generation X, but this strange combination of indignation and cynicism I find in the UK is truly bizarre to me. Everyone is completely disgusted with the UK parliament – across all party lines – but nobody has any ideas or ambition to change things. Throughout all of the media analysis I’ve seen, as commentators go on and on about how “furious” everyone is, I have yet to hear a real discussion about ideas for reform. And I have yet to see one member of the public who really seems “furious”. I know that this sort of understated composure is the British way, but it’s hard to see how anything is going to change when nobody seems to care all that much. I mean, where is this fury the media has been describing? Where are the protestors outside the houses of parliament? If the definition of “fury” in the UK translates to a couple of people in the audience of Question Time making some half-hearted boos, I think all this talk about a “revolution” is premature, if not downright fantasy.

This country just doesn’t seem to have any plan for its own future, which worries me. And it never ceases to amaze me that British people will complain about too much power being handed over to Brussels on matters that should be dealt with by national MPs in Westminster, and then in the next breath go on to talk about how inept and corrupt British MPs in Westminster are. So let me get this straight – you think your own government is corrupt and dysfunctional, so as a consequence you want them to be in charge of more things? But interrupt a Brit’s rant about the EU to ask them their opinion about reforming the British system of government and they don’t’ have much to say. They’re simply not interested.

It’s shocked me that this week, in the run-up to the European Parliament elections on Thursday, people here are still going on about MEPs abusing their system of expenses in Brussels. Are they really serious? The shocking level of excess from British parliament MPs uncovered over the past several weeks makes the limited about of Brussels MEP abuse in a transparent expenses system look like child’s play. And nevermind the fact that it was UKIP MEPs, who were elected on an anti-EU platform saying Brussels was full of crooks, who ended up being the ones abusing the system!

It goes to the heart of the problem this country faces. Britain is suffering from a drought of ideas, wandering in a period of post-imperial trauma where it hasn’t figured out its place in the world, and doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to do so. While dithering over small, insignificant issues like MP salaries and expenses, nobody here is thinking about the big issues or engaging the public in a real honest conversation about Britain’s future.

And that, in the end, is the real crime being perpetrated by this country’s leaders against its people.

Emperor Silvio

2009-05-29T16:57:00.009+01:00

It’s been many times that this blog has predicted the imminent political demise of Silvio Berlusconi, but with the Italian leader now openly cavorting with a 17-year-old girl and throwing bizarre teen slumber parties in Sardinia, has the most powerful man in Italy finally overstepped the mark?

This week I’ve been watching old episodes of I, Claudius on DVD, an old miniseries the BBC produced about the Roman Empire (specifically the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the first four emperors of Rome). It’s a fantastic series, and it’s been interesting to see how differently the British portray the Romans from the Americans (I never knew the Romans were so effete!). I have to say that watching this tale of decadent, power-mad Italian emperors has seened a bit familiar as I concurrently watched “Noemigate” unfold in Italy this week.

Really this is just the climax of a long unfolding scandal. After months of increasingly criticizing her husband in public for his philandering and his choice to put forward bikini-clad bimbos as Italian Senators, Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, finally decided she had had enough this month and publicly demanded a divorce from the eccentric prime minister. At first Italians weren’t paying all that much attention to the affair, as it was typical of the high drama involved in the prime minister’s personal life. But when Ms. Lazio revealed what the final straw had been, everything changed. She was finally leaving the 72-year-old Berlusconi, she said, because he has been unabashedly and publicly carrying on a relationship with a 17-year-old girl.

Incredibly, Berlusconi doesn’t deny it – though he insists the relationship has not been sexual. The young model at the centre of this storm, Noemi Letizia, has hardly been low-profile either. Giving an interview to the newspaper Corriere del Mezzogiorno, she giggled, “I often sing with Papi Silvio at the piano, or we do karaoke”. As the FT’s Tony Barber noted earlier this week, it’s hard to know who to feel more sorry for in this sad spectacle - Lario, Noemi’s ex-fiancé Gino Flaminio who was dumped once the prime minister came-a-calling, or the entire 60 million Italian people.

The official line from the prime minister’s office is this: Berlusconi knows Noemi’s father Benedetto Letizia, a functionary for the city of Naples, and he started a friendship with the young girl after meeting her through him. But the story the cast-away Flaminio told newspaper La Repubblica on Sunday – and the far more likely scenario - is that the prime minister first called Ms. Letizia last fall after seeing her picture in a modelling catalogue. Then, given that Berlusconi is the most powerful man in Italy – controlling both the government and the media – the parents kept silent about (and possibly even encouraged) the budding relationship between the two, and Noemi wasted no time in dumping Flaminio. Both Flaminio and Noemi's aunt have said Berlusconi and Mr. Letizia never knew each other before he decided to call their home to arrange a "meeting" with Noemi.

Berlusconi then invited Noemi and a schoolmate to a party at his private villa in Sardinia where other teenage girls were present. But finally, when Berlusconi showed up at the Noemi's 18th birthday party earlier this year, his wife decided she would end their marriage, which at 19 years began even before Noemi was born (and that was already Berlusconi’s second marriage!).

Now this is hardly the first time Berlusconi has embarrassed his country with his behaviour. His past sins include humping a random stranger in the street, manhandling the presidents of Russia and America at the G20, and his notorious pinching of every female bottom within a ten foot radius. And each time it happens, Berlusconi’s adversaries inside and outside Italy are driven to exasperation by the fact that his approval ratings only seem to go up. Even after a British corporate lawyer was convicted last month of accepting a $600,000 bribe from Berlusconi and then covering up the crime to protect the prime minister and his Fininvest holding company (Berlusconi himself cannot be tried because he passed a law last year that gives him immunity from prosecution), the Italians still support him. And yet in any other Western European country Berlusconi would have been driven from power long ago for any of these discretions.

Even the Catholic church is too intimidated to criticize the most powerful man in Italy. The Italian Bishops Conference this week refused to comment on the matter, and when asked the bishops would only say that each person’s conduct was a matter “of individual conscience.” Oh really? That’s a new one coming from the Catholic Church!

Of course in the end the problem isn’t just about Berlusconi’s sex life, or his unbridled arrogance. It’s the fact that nobody seems to be paying any attention to Italy’s deep structural problems. The country’s economy is in a shambles. Reconstruction after an earthquake in central Italy left 70,000 people homeless has yet to begin in earnest.

The leader one Italian opposition party recently compared Berlusconi to Nero, fiddling while Rome burned. Yet Italians have convinced themselves that Berlusconi, though he may be increasingly losing his grip on reality, is the only man who can hold the country together. The situation bears more than a little resemblance to the BBC miniseries that’s been occupying my evenings this week.

Still, After All, a Centre-Right Country

2009-05-28T15:39:00.004+01:00

Europe could be forgiven for thinking that now that Americans have put their government entirely in the hands of Democrats, the nation itself has made some sort of fundamental ideological shift. But as the opening stages of President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination show, the American political spectrum is still firmly grounded to the right.

Following the retirement of Justice David Souter, generally considered to be on the left side of moderate in his votes on the court, Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a moderate appellate court judge who would be entering the highest court in the land with more experience on the bench than any of the current justices. The media has focused largely on Sotomayor’s personal history, having been born to Puerto-Rican parents on a housing estate in the Bronx. She would be the first Hispanic person to serve on the court, and only the third woman.

Bizarely the right has latched on to this detail of her background to make the case that she is a “liberal activist judge,” even though her judicial record, largely moderate or unclear, doesn’t seem to reflect this. Apparently for the right, the fact that she is a Hispanic woman who was born poor means she'll make it illegal to be a white man and redistribute wealth. Obviously!

Funny enough, when arch-conservative justice Clarence Thomas was up for confirmation, his history of having been born a poor black man was considered an asset by the right.

Perhaps this kind of talk from the hard right was inevitable. In fact it wouldn’t even be worth talking about were it not for one other interesting development – in selling their supreme court nominee, the Obama Administration’s talking points have been actively stressing Sotomayor’s conservative credentials.

The Obama administration has wove a conservative narrative around Sotomayor, using much of the same language as Bush did to sell his supreme court nominees, in order to appeal to middle America. The administration has been at pains to point out how moderate she is, pointing out at every opportunity that she voted with conservative judges 95% of the time. They’ve also pointed out her anti-abortion rulings, such as when she upheld a ban on federal funds going to family planning groups that provided abortions overseas, or when she ruled in favour of a group of Connecticut anti-abortion protesters who asserted that police used excessive force against them at a demonstration.

Does anyone else find this a little bizarre? Barack Obama was elected in a landslide victory. The American public kicked the Republicans out of both the House and the Senate, handing the entire government over to the Democrats. Currently only 21% of Americans identify as Republicans. You would think that was a pretty big mandate for change right? So why does the Obama administration (and Congressional Democrats, as evidenced by their recent cave on closing Guantanamo Bay) seem to be bending over backwards to please a practically non-existent Republican party?

Can you imagine George W. Bush, when he nominated his two Supreme Court Justices, issuing talking points about how frequently they voted with their liberal colleagues, or highlighting cases in which they voted for abortion rights? The very idea is laughable. When the Bush administration went to sell their nominees they used the language of their base, talking about how Alito and Roberts represented “solid American values” and touting the conservative credentials, especially when working to sell the nominees to the religious right (at some points they even seemed to be implicitly promising that the two would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade).

And yet George W. Bush entered office having lost the popular vote, put into office by a Supreme Court ruling. By the time he was nominating his justices he was already spiralling down to the lowest approval rating of any US president in history. But was there serious talk of him selecting a moderate justice as a copromise with liberals? None.

And even though W appointed two unabashedly conservative justices (to join the other two ultra-conservative justices Scalia and Thomas already on the court), it seemed to go without saying before Obama made his selection that an unabashedly liberal justice wouldn’t even be a consideration. Given that following Bush’s appointments the court is now skewed fundamentally to the right (4 conservatives, 2 liberals and 2 moderates without Souter), adding another moderate to the mix isn’t going to significantly change the conservative direction of the court. If it’s unquestioned that a Republican president can appoint a conservative justice but a Democratic president can only appoint a moderate, it won’t be long before the idea of a “liberal justice” goes the way of the dodo. Rachel Maddow had a funny metaphor discussing this on her show Tuesday night.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Throughout the Obama presidency it’s been incredible to watch how many times the Democratic president and congress have caved in to an imaginary opposition. But here’s the explanation – while the political opposition may be imaginary – the popular opposition is not.

On a global political spectrum, the US political spectrum is still positioned firmly to the right. For instance in Europe, the Democrats would be centre-right and Republicans would be the hard right (and sometimes even the far right). This pretty much reflects the political ideology of Americans, a formula which has long favoured Republicans in US elections. This is, after all, a country where “liberal” and “Left” are still dirty words that most Democrats are loathe to identify themselves as. Even after Bill Clinton’s New Democrats shifted the party to the right (followed by Tony Blair doing the same with Labour across the pond) the Democrats seem to constantly be on the defensive, unable to stand up for progressive policies even when they occupy the presidency. Now that the Democrats control both the legislative and executive branches for the first time since the Carter administration, it seems their old curse is again rearing its ugly head. Even when they’re in power, Democrats are unable to push progressive policies on a fundamentally conservative population.

So Europeans shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that the American political spectrum is inching back their way. For 40 years the only thing that’s gotten Democrats elected into the White House is the ineptitude and corruption of their predecessors (two Bushes and a Nixon), and once they've put him there there’s been little achieved for the Left.

Strangely, even when the American left is in power, they remain isolated, ineffective and ignored.

Should Britain Become America?

2009-05-22T15:12:00.006+01:00

As the debate over the “complete overhaul” of British democracy has unfolded this week, I’ve been surprised (ok maybe not all that surprised) at how quickly the conversation has turned to starry-eyed wistful gazing across the pond toward Washington. Despite there being plenty of examples of democracies that function better than Britain’s just across the English Channel, it seems that virtually every article about the possibility of a “quiet revolution” in the UK following the expenses crisis now contains an inevitable comparison to the US system. An increasing number of (mostly Tory) MPs are also making the comparison. Considering the fact that it took an enterprising American journalist to finally expose the expenses system for what it is, perhaps its not surprising that the British are looking across the pond for guidance at this humiliating time. But is it a productive exercise?

Putting aside the fact that I’m not sure how helpful it is to be comparing a parliamentary system to a congressional system, I’ve also noted a lot of inaccuracies being stated about the supposedly awe-inspiring success of American democracy. Granted, I’ll be the first to admit that American government is much more efficient, logical, stream-lined and accountable than UK government. But considering the dysfunctional state British democracy has found itself in, I’m not sure that’s saying much! Still, I thought it would be helpful to look at the arguments comparing the two governments. To be honest I think it might be more productive to do a side-by-side comparison with some continental parliamentary democracies like Germany’s or the Netherlands’, but I’m not exactly an expert on those – plus you’ve got to give your readers what they want!

Argument: A written constitution as in the US would prevent power concentration
My Response: Yes and no

Much of the trouble with British government is that it is the only democracy in the world that is completely uncodified. It is also the mother of modern democracy, and because it was formed slowly over centuries and inventing as it went along, it operates on a set of assumptions and traditions rather than on a constitution. Therefore the Queen is the head of state and technically can still wield some significant power, but it is ‘understood’ that she won’t use it.

The effect of this over the long term has been that the lack of a constitution has allowed governments to make up the rules as they go along. Since World War I, prime ministers have taken more and more power away from the broader parliament and concentrated it in the hands of the government. The result has been the emergence of a sort of “presidential prime minister” who has most of the same powers of a unitary executive yet is not directly elected, instead being nominated by his party. This has left backbench MPs with pretty much nothing to do, functioning just as a rubber stamp for the government. I can tell you it makes British politics pretty boring to watch, because there isn’t any conflict on an executable level. There is one government - composed of the prime minister and his cabinet - which makes all the decisions. The rival parties merely form “shadow cabinets” with no actual power, so all they can do is say what they would do if they were in power. The monarch no longer executes any authority, leaving the prime minister as the sole, unchecked authority. The UK doesn’t even have a Supreme Court to check the government’s power!

Many in Britain have pointed out that in the US, the constitution has acted as a bulwark against those who would wish to monopolize power, maintaining a system of checks-and-balances with three theoretically co-equal branches of government - the executive (president), the legislative (congress) and the judicial (the Supreme Court). While it is true that this has been the sacred formula of US government, it is also true that the presidency has grown unprecedentedly powerful since World War II, turning into the so-called “imperial presidency”. More and more power has been taken away from congress and instead given to presidential agencies, and more and more is done these days by executive order. And when you have an acquiescent congress of the same party as the president - as existed during the Bush Administration - congress becomes in practice little more than a rubber stamp itself. Still, the rubber-stamp congress of the past eight years was more of an anomaly, whereas the rubber-stamp nature of the British parliament seems to be built into the system.

Argument: There are too many people in the British parliament
My Response: Well duh!

Here’s an embarrassing comparison for you - there are 535 members of the US congress representing 307 million people, and there are 1,384 members of the UK parliament representing 62 million people. Seems a little screwy no? In fact, British citizens are the most over-represented people in the world. And it gets worse. The majority of those parliamentarians (738) serve in the House of Lords, a historically unelected, hereditary institution for the landed aristocracy. The UK’s method of dealing with this strange relic over the past century, rather than majorly reforming the House of Lords or getting rid of it, has been instead to just strip it of almost all its powers and giving them to the House of Commons. Today the House of Lords is basically useless (other than a select few “Law Lords”, the UK equivalent of the Supreme Court), and its seats are handed out to anybody who have donated money or composed some catchy tunes.

Most of the members of the House of Lords don’t even bother to show up to the chamber. Many have called for the House of Lords to be replaced with a US-style popularly-elected regional senate. I would point out, however, that US Senators weren’t popularly elected until the mid-20th century. Before that, they were chosen by their individual state’s legislatures. At the time it was thought that this kept them out of the dog-and-pony show that is political campaigning and made the upper chamber a more deliberative, intelligent body. Personally, I think the US senate would function better if members were elected by state legislatures once again.

Argument: British MPs should be as independent as their American counterparts.
My Response: Maybe

It might surprise some Americans to learn that British MPs marvel at the way American congressmen and women are allowed to be so independent of their party. It may not seem like it sometimes, but the US congressional system actually allows independent lawmakers to vote their conscience in a way that would be impossible in the UK. The whips in the British parliament are extremely powerful, and it’s basically impossible to vote against your party. In fact on the rare occasion that party members vote against their leader in a parliamentary democracy it often causes the downfall of the government. Many here in the UK have been arguing over the past week that the independence of US congressmen makes them more directly accountable to their constituents. While this may be true, rogue lawmakers can often make passing legislation extremely difficult, and a lack of party unity can slow progress in the US congress to a glacial pace. I would strongly disagree with the some in the British media who have claimed this week that the US congress works much quicker than the British Parliament. On the contrary, my observation has been the many independent egos needing to be wooed in the US means legislation can be much harder to pass than in the UK where an all-powerful government can railroad things through with a simple rubber stamp from MPs. While this may seem anti-democratic, it does mean that the UK government can act (and respond to crises) much quicker than in the UK.

Argument: MP candidates should be selected by a popular primary as in the US, rather than by the party.
My Response: This leads to celebrity politics and mob rule

Another increasing demand this week is that MP candidates should be selected in party primaries like in the US, rather than being put forward by the party to which they belong. After this exciting (and egregiously long) US presidential season of two years, I can see why Brits might be a little jealous that they don’t get the excitement of these primaries deciding party candidates by public votes. But I would posit that these primaries do not result in the selection of the best, most able candidates but rather the most recognized, attractive, personable and pandering. The whole idea of public primaries was another thing that didn’t emerge until the mid-20th century in the US. Before then candidates were selected by local party officials just like in the UK. Slowly various state parties started offering the public the chance to cote for the nominee, and after public pressure soon every state had followed suit. In my view this has lead to an increase in personality-driven politics, the selection of candidates based on their ability to charm people or their name recognition rather than on their actual skills and merits.

Some here in the UK have argued that forcing sitting MPs to undergo a challenge to their seat in a local primary would make them more accountable to voters and dislodge the complacent or ineffective. But this has not been the case in the US. With the exception of the 2006 and 2008 elections, which were in extraordinary circumstances, usually 98% of sitting congressmen are re-elected in each US election.

Argument: The prime minister should be popularly elected and serve a fixed term.
My Response: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

Gordon Brown has now been prime minister for nearly two years, and yet he was never directly elected by the British people as a whole. That’s because no prime minister in any parliamentary system is ever popularly elected to that position, he or she is chosen by the MPs of whichever party obtained a majority in the election. Because Tony Blair led Labour to a re-election in the 2006 elections (and then stepped down in the summer of ’07 handing the reigns to Gordon Brown), Labour does not have to call another election until June of 2010. Many have argued that allowing leaders to pick and choose when they’re going to call an election gives them an unfair advantage (because they can call it whenever would be most politically advantageous) and allows leaders to serve without a mandate from the public.

I’ve been increasingly hearing this rather silly argument from people, but what they’re proposing is giving the UK a president. But that’s a different system of government! The fact is the prime minister does operate with a mandate from the public whether he was the face of the party during the last election or not, because the people elected the party and he is the representative of that party.

When people propose this idea, I don’t fully understand what it is they’re suggesting. The UK is a parliamentary democracy, like every other country in Europe with the exception of France. This is the way parliamentary democracies work. And in my opinion, a system in which elected MPs select the leader of a country rather than the public is better able to place the most skilled, able people into the leadership rather than the most attractive, personable or convincing. One only needs to look at the last eight years in the US to see how the public can often make very bad decisions when selecting a leader, preferring someone they could “have a beer with” (the famous quote from exit polling of people who voted for Bush in 2000) over someone who seemed smarter than them. Increased direct democracy – as Tory MP Douglas Carswell is advocating for - does not always lead to a better-functioning democracy. In fact it usually ends up being much worse. Just look at the paralysis of government in Switzerland, or California’s inability to pass desperately needed budget cuts by public referendum this week.

In the end, it would be hard to argue that the British government doesn’t need reform badly. And the reform should really come in the drastic category and not through the little tweaks that some MPs are suggesting. There’s differing theories on which of the party leaders would be best-equipped to do this (Brown is universally acknowledged to have basically no chance of winning the next election, so why not drive home drastic reforms in the next year as long as he’s got nothing to lose?). But in any event, Britain would be best advised to look to other parliamentary democracies for ideas rather than to the US. Parliamentary democracy can and does work. At the moment, it just doesn’t work in Britain.

Panic at the Parliament

2009-05-20T15:27:00.005+01:00

I woke this morning to my clock radio blasting some BBC commentators hailing the “revolution” unfolding this week in the UK. Nothing jolts you out of bed like a little social unrest! While all this talk about how the expenses controversy is going to completely change the way the British government works may be a bit of hyperbole, after hearing a first-hand account of yesterday’s tumultuous events from The Times’ parliamentary sketch writer Ann Treneman last night, it does seem that, just maybe, a little political earthquake is indeed unfolding this week in Westminster.

Treneman had stopped by a gathering of young journalists in Soho, fresh from watching the dramatic resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin. The announcement was the result of increasing demands from a paniced parliament in the face of a steady drip-drip-drip of news about the ‘second home allowance’ expenses British MPs have claimed over the past four years. The revelations, being published in the Telegraph newspaper, are the result of a years-long effort by journalists to get access to the data under the newly-enacted Freedom of Information Act in the UK (sidenote – not called a “foya” here, but instead an “F.O.I.” – crazy Brits!). The parliament fought tooth and nail to resist releasing the list of expenses claims, a fight led by the Speaker of the House, who oversees the finances department that approves the expenses. But in the end the media won, the expenses are being published, and resignations could turn from the trickle seen thus far to an avalanche. Already it looks like Gordon Brown could lose a big chunk of his front-benchers, and the other parties seem equally culpable. Tory leader David Cameron called an emergency press conference early in the week to compel all members of his party to immediately write checks paying back the taxpayer for their expenses, or be immediately expelled from the party.

But no matter howThe Speaker of the House position in the British House of Commons is not akin to its American equivalent, a position currently occupied by Nancy Pelosi. The British speaker is in charge of the functioning of the house but not its policy, deciding when and for how long people can speak and running the everyday procedural minutia of the Houses of Parliament, in which he lives. It’s generally considered to be a neutral role above politics. But as the shocking revelations about expenses came pouring in, there was increasing pressure for parliament to do something, anything, to quell the growing tide of public anger. They chose to take the speaker’s head on a platter to the bleating mob. In reality, this is unlikely to satisfy them.

Through the allowance designed for work-related expenses for the MPs to maintain a second home in London (in addition to their house in their home constituency), it’s been revealed that MPs have claimed thousands of pounds for big-screen TVs, remodelling, vibrating chairs, Persian rugs and even “moat maintenance”. In the most egregious cases, several MPs have been shown to have made a profit off the taxpayer by expensing the mortgage on one home, then switching the “second home” status to their other house, selling the first home and making a tidy profit.

American Comparison

From my vantage point I can’t decide which I find more absurd, the ridiculous claims made by a minority (the British media seems to have lost this detail) of MPs, or the ridiculous system of remuneration this country has designed for its governing officials. The trouble really started back when the last Conservative government, unpopular and heading for a likely election defeat in the mid ‘90s, didn’t have the political courage to give MPs a necessary inflationary pay raise. So they instead invented a clandestine system of expenses for MPs to pay for their accommodation in London. MPs today make £64,766, not exactly poverty level but certainly not enough to maintain two homes. Compare this to the $174,000 (£120,000) made by their counterparts across the pond in Washington. And here’s where my inevitable American comparison begins.

I have to say I’ve learned about the second home allowance system here with a mixture of bemusement and incredulity. It’s a little confusing to me why all of the MPs need a London home at all. This is a (comparatively) tiny country, and most of its citizens live in the Southeast region around London. Certainly at least a third of the MPs live within a distance at which it is not unreasonable to expect them to commute in three or four days a week. Yet these MPs, even some of the ones who represent London, have actually been charging taxpayers for a second home!

In the US congressmen and women represent constituencies literally thousands of miles from Washington. In fact the nation’s capital doesn’t even have a voting member of congress (as it is a district and not part of any state), so unlike London there isn’t a single voting congressman who lives and works in the same city (compare that the UK – where 73 out of the 646 MPs represent London).

But despite the geographic distances that all 535 American congressmen and senators have to travel to be in Washington, guess how many of their Washington homes are covered by the US taxpayer? Zero. There is no such thing as a “second home allowance” in the US. Instead, US congressmen must pay for their DC residences out of their own pocket. If they want a nice second home in DC and they have the private financial resources to do it, they’re welcome to. But most opt for makeshift accommodation in DC which they rent, not own. In fact many congressmen live together in modest apartments. The most famous example is the four high-powered senators Chuck Schumer, William Delahunt, Richard Durbin, and George Miller that share a house together.

The only items US congressmen are able to expense from the taxpayer are costs for their offices, not their homes. This would include their constituency offices in their home state, the personnel to run them, and postal charges for official business. All of those expenses are available to public scrutiny.

Now granted, politics in the US is big business in a way that it is not in the UK. Quite a few members of the US Congress were millionaires before they entered office, as increasingly that is the kind of money required to get one elected in America. Rather than amassing their fortunes from the taxpayer, US politicians often amass them from corporations in the form of campaign contributions. And everyone knows that the time a US congressman really makes money is once he leaves office and takes a lucrative position at a lobbying firm, using his connections and the rule allowing all former congressmen access to the house and senate floors. But efforts to fix these issues are currently underway by the Obama administration, including a mandatory waiting period of several years before an exiting congressman can work for a lobbying firm.

Today a new system is being debated in the House of Commons that would reform the expenses system, but its hard to see how any reform can work without a pay increase for the MPs. With the toxic atmosphere toward parliament on the part of the public and the media at the moment, its hard to see how any such pay raise could be voted in. Yet as the Times’ Daniel Finkelstein pointed out yesterday, it is counter-intuitive that the public seems to be, “looking at the MPs we've got, deciding they are all inadequate and determining that therefore we should be paying them less.” As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

The West is Back

2009-05-19T17:48:00.007+01:00

One of the big flaws of this blog is that I have a tendancy to forget to write updates after I write about an upcoming event, so I thought I’d just give a quick update on the Eurovision results. Yes it is a little silly that this is my third entry about Eurovision in a week, but indulge me for a moment! I admit I’m unjustifiably fascinated by it.

As expected Norway came away the winner, but what was perhaps not expected was the huge margin by which they won (the largest in Eurovision history). In a distant second came fellow Scandinavian country Iceland with a lovely slow song called “Is it True,” and in third place was, inexplicably, Azerbaijan (huh??).

Western Europe can be pleased that it’s once again in the running, but lest people start to object that it seems to be only the Nordics that still have a shot from the West, take a look at the next few rankings. The UK came in an impressive 5th place, a far cry from the low scores it had the last few years. With Andrew Lloyd Webber penning this year's entry, it shows that a little effort can pay off. And France came in 8th, pretty good considering its entry was one of the only songs not in English and was decidedly Gallic and un-Eurovisiony in nature (Patricia Kaas definitely brought a touch of class to the proceedings!)

Some of the contest’s lowest scorers did much to show that the new voting system has ended the Eastern Europe dominance. Much to my dismay, Ukraine came in a dismal 12th (I favoured it because I met Svetlana in London awhile back but if I’m honest it wasn’t of the highest musical calibre – but what a show!). The Czech Republic was the only country to score the dreaded nul points, proving that even their Slavic heritage and Eastern geography couldn’t save them from the discerning eye of the new judging panels. Latvia, which had decidedly the worst entry in the whole competition, somehow managed to get 7 points.

So it would appear the new voting system worked. Norway should certainly put on a good show next year. Hell, maybe I’ll even see if I can get tickets. I’ve still never been to Norway. As for how the show was for the UK without broadcasting legend Terry Wogan, I couldn’t tell you. I was watching the show at a party and couldn’t hear any of Graham Norton’s narration, anyone catch it?

As regards the fears of violence on the Moscow streets over a gay rights protest, it appears nothing got out of hand, though the police were predictably heavy-handed. It appears they also made arrests of the Orthodox and skinhead counter-demonstraters as well though.

Eurovision Riot in Moscow?

2009-05-15T11:38:00.003+01:00

Moscow is alive with excitement for tomorrow night’s Eurovision final, but the real drama could unfold tomorrow afternoon if violence breaks out at an illegal gay rights march in the city. With Western cameras thronging the city for the yearly song contest, Russian authorities seem astonishingly blasé about the very real possibility of some embarrassing scenes on the day of the final.

The notoriously kitsch song contest has for years been a favourite of gays and lesbians, in fact it’s often been said that the only people left in the UK who still watch Eurovision are gays (an exaggeration I’m sure). Wherever the contest is held, gays usually flock to the city to see it live. Moscow has been no different, with local hotels reporting a large number of European male couples booking rooms. But Russia is without a doubt the most gay-unfriendly place to have hosted a Eurovision Song Contest since gay rights came to the forefront of public consciousness.

Russia has ranked up there with the nations of the Caucasus and Poland for being one of the worst countries to be gay in Europe. The post-Soviet legacy has left Russian gays attacked from many sides. During the communist period homosexuality was demonized as a “Western capitalist decadence,” and many Russians see gay rights advocates as foreign intruders into Russian society (even if the activists are Russian themselves). Homosexuality was an actively prosecuted crime in Russia until 1993. At the same time the Russian Orthodox Church, which has grown increasingly powerful since the fall of Communism, considers homosexuality to be one of the worst sins imaginable. Add to that a sizable neo-Nazi presence in Russia and you have three groups ready to disrupt any gay pride march tomorrow with violence. Even the police have said they will get tough with any protest, and stories were rife three years ago of police beating marchers during an attempted pride march. Gay rights activists have an enemy in the Russian media as well, which frequently equates homosexuality with paedophilia and refers to gays as dangerous people. The Pew Research Centre has found that only 20% of Russians believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society. Gay activists are still actively prosecuted in Russia for, “homosexual propaganda towards minors” in one instance merely for holding a sign that said “homosexuality is normal”.

Gay rights activists have applied to have a march in Moscow on Saturday but their request was denied by the city’s mayor, who has described gay pride parades as "satanic”. But the activists say they will go ahead with their March tomorrow, sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with Eurovision bringing the world’s eyes (many of them Western gay eyes) to the capital. The march is set to be the largest gay mobilisation in Russia’s history, prompting the mayor to legally authorize several counter demonstrations by the Orthodox Church and neo-Nazis. The roughly 1,000 estimated gay rights activists who will march tomorrow (many of whom will be Western foreigners) will be met by 1,000 members of United Orthodox Youth. Bizarely, the counter-demonstration by the Orthodox Youth is legal, the gay march is not. The leader of the Orthodox Youth is openly saying that violence is likely.

And if the past is any indication, the result could be very embarrassing for Russia, or at least the elements in Russian government that want good relations with the West (a demographic that seems to be quickly dwindling). Two years ago the UK media reported on the story of British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who was badly beaten by skinheads at the first attempted gay rights parade in Moscow in 2007. After being beaten he was arrested by the police who allegedly taunted him with homophobic jokes while letting his assailants go free.

The top levels of Russian government have appeared to be completely ambivalent to the potential for violence tomorrow, but if the images are bad it would certainly be a blow for the country’s relations with the West and it could possibly even cause the expulsion of Russia from Eurovision. After Russia has poured money into this year’s contest (the most expensive in Eurovision’s history), this is probably not the outcome they were looking for. Then again, lately Russian leaders don’t seem too bothered about offending the West.

Prince Charles and the "Monstrous Carbuncle"

2009-05-13T21:33:00.005+01:00

Earlier this week I was surprised to open the door and find a royal messenger holding a letter from Prince Charles. Of course I assumed it was my invitation to be knighted as “Best American Blogger in Britain,” but alas it was for my flatmate, who is head of the resident’s association in my building. That position probably doesn’t do much to account for why he gets letters from Prince Charles, but allow me to explain.

I live across from the Chelsea Barracks, a moderately-sized British army barracks that was sold and vacated last year. It now stands empty, with only two garish dormitory towers and a military chapel left as a reminder of its former use. The towers haven’t been torn down yet because of an ongoing conflict between the buyers - the Qatari royal family - and the neighborhood residents. Qatari Diar bought the property from the Ministry of Defence for £959 million, making it Britain’s most expensive residential development site in history at £70.3m per acre.

The Qataris have hired famed architect Richard Rogers to develop a modernist residential community that would be 50% affordable housing. The proposed projects would include tall buildings that would block the sunlight of neighboring buildings like mine (apparently the courtyard would be put permanently in shadow).

Earlier this year it was reported that Prince Charles wrote to Qatar Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani asking for Rogers’ design to be scrapped in favour of a more traditional scheme devised by classicist Quinlan Terry. Prominent London architects were outraged and called on the Prince to but out. But given that the site is right next to the Royal Chelsea Hospital and Sloane Square, many in this posh traditionally conservative area have been horrified by the though of a modern development towering over the venerable Chelsea.

The prince was then invited to speak at the to speak to the Royal Institute of British Architects last night, exactly 25 years after a highly controversial speech he made there 25 years ago blasting modern architecture and shooting down an idea to build an extension to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square that resembled Paris’s Pompidou Centre. He famously likened the idea to seeing a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend". That plan was scrapped quickly after those comments, and London modernist architects have never forgiven him for it. That’s why many were surprised that the Prince, who is often described as being inappropriately activist for a British royal, was invited back this year, and several architects boycotted the speech. You can judge for yourself in hindsight how a Pompidou Centre would have looked in Trafalgar Square.

This is where my flatmate entered the scuffle. Suspecting the Prince would make for a welcome ally in the residents' quest to stop the skyscraper development, so he sent him a letter. Surprisingly the prince wrote back quite fast, and the response came on Monday, one day before he was slated to speak to the institute. Though many thought he might take the opportunity of his speech to lambast the Chelsea Barracks development plan, we could tell from his letter on Monday that he had no such intention. The letter said that the prince's letter to the Qatar royal family was leaked to the press and was not meant to be public, and essentially that the prince was going to stay out of the controversy. Sure enough, last night saw a contrite, milder prince who even apologized for his remarks 25 years ago.

So, it looks like no prince ally for the Chelsea residents, at least not for now. And it remains to be seen whether the prince's contrition will heal his rift with the architects. But the war between classicists and modernists is far from over The modernists insist the classicists are trying to build fairy tale villages, and the classicists say modern architecture is cold and quickly outdated. Personally, I like them both.

As for the prince, he spent most of his speech actually railing about how new buildings should be eco-friendly. When it comes to pet issues, it's clear this "activist prince" moved on from architecture to climate change long ago.

Welcome to the New World of Eurovision

2009-05-12T17:19:00.005+01:00

After a dramatic year of threatened boycotts, banned songs and host storm-offs, Eurovision 2009 in Moscow is at long last upon us. With a new voting format and a politically sensitive location, this Saturday’s finals could prove to be one of the more interesting in a long while.

Last year’s finals in Belgrade were the last straw for many who had grown frustrated with tribal voting patterns that seemed to have completely shut out Western Europe from ever possibly winning the phone-in public voting final round. The Slavic countries of Eastern Europe have tended to vote for each other since they entered the song contest after the end of the Cold War, and for some this pattern explained why Russia’s sub-par entry-on-ice from Dima Bilan handily won last year (though admittedly none of the 2008 entries were very good). Long-time British Eurovision host Terry Wogan – a veritable institution for Eurovision in the UK - was so exasperated last year with the voting pattern that he quit his hosting job live on air!

The system’s critics alleged that the voting had turned completely political rather than recognizing “talent” (talent being a subjective word when it comes to Eurovision!). Its defenders argued that if Western Europe wanted to be competitive in the song contest again, it needed to field real entries rather than joke acts that seemed to deliberately mock the contest, such as Ireland’s singing puppet last year and Britain’s Scooch in 2007.

Fearing an eventual withdrawal of the founding Western European countries from the contest (which France, Germany, Spain and the UK do pay for after all), Eurovision has changed the voting format this year to be 50% from a public vote and 50% from a panel of music industry experts in each country. So, for instance, the winner of the UK’s vote package will be decided by a combination of the results of the public phone-in vote and the decision of a British music industry panel who are charged with disregarding the nationality of the acts and looking only at talent. We won’t know until Saturday whether these panels will also fall into patterns of national prejudice, but people seem to be confident that they won’t. This year the odds-makers have picked Norway as the favourite to win, with Alexander Rybak’s folksy song “Fairy tale”.

“We Don’t Want a Putin”

Of course last year’s voting patterns aren’t the only controversial aspect of this year’s contest in Moscow. Ongoing tensions between Russia and the west have made this year’s location uncomfortable to say the least. After Russia’s invasion of Georgian-occupied territory in August, several estates including Latvia, Estonia and Poland announced they would boycott the Moscow Eurovision. Since then they seem to have softened their stance, as they are all now taking part. Georgia was also supposed to take part, but their entry was deemed too political and was banned by the European Broadcasting Union, which runs the show. The song that won the Georgian finals, “We Don’t Wanna Put In” by Stephane & 3G, seemed to deliberately parody a popular pop song in Russia by The Putin Girls called “We Want a Man Like Putin” (no joke, watch it it’s hilarious). The Georgia song also contained the thinly veiled lyrics “We don’t wanna put in, the negative move, it's killing the groove” in the chorus. The ban on the song is the first time the EBU has ever blocked an entry to the song contest for political reasons. But it was clear the organisation was worried about offending this year’s host, especially when Putin himself may be in the audience.

Of course the publicity the song has received from the controversy is probably more valuable than actually appearing on Eurovision. The song is now huge in Italy (which doesn’t participate in Eurovision because it doesn’t want to pay) and the song is number two in the UK's Music Week pop chart. It’s also getting radio play across Europe.

The Songs

It looks like Russia’s Channel One is pulling out all the stops for the Moscow show, which kicked off last night at Moscow's Manezh Exhibition Centre. Reportedly it’s going to be the most expensive show in Eurovision’s history, though the actual budget won’t be revealed until after. Comparisons are obviously being made to the over-the-top Beijing Olympics in China, another international showcase event by an emerging BRIC power.

As previously mentioned, the hands-down favourite this year with the bookies is Norway, but Greece, Turkey and Ukraine are considered to have a good shot as well. Much of the talent this year is made up of female ballad singers, and there is (sadly) little of the tongue-in-cheek camp of the past two contests. The UK’s entry, “My Time” is a light theatrical ballad penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and sung by previously unknown Jade Ewan (though UK entrants are almost always previously unknown, and almost always still unknown afterwards!).

However on the continent they often field entrants who are already famous singers. France’s entry Patricia Kaas is a well-known Gallic chanteuse who has sold millions of records. Malta’s entry Chiara is a sensation in her home country and this will be her third try for the Eurovision crown (she narrowly lost to Israeli transsexual Dana International in 1998).

Beyond the ballad belters there are also a number of orchestral folksy entries. Front-runner Norway will have a set or violins, Estonia is featuring a six-piece female string group, and Slovenia even has a string quarter with barely any vocals. Sweden and Bulgaria are both featuring operatic singers.

After receiving much criticism for its puppet entry last year (it didn’t help that Dustin the Turkey puppet was featured as a mascot for the ‘no’ vote in the Irish referendum on the EU Reform Treaty),

Ireland has gone with a more serious entry this year with a girl rock band – who I saw perform at a Eurovision preview party in London a few weeks back and loved. Perhaps this year’s entrant is reflective of Ireland’s newly humble attitude toward Europe?

Sadly there’s only a few high camp entries in this year’s lineup. Turkey's entry “Dum Tek Tek” has been the most commercially popular, as it’s scantily-clad dancers were deemed “too sexy for TV” by Turkey’s authorities. Spain’s Soraya and Ukraine’s Svetlana Loboda will both feature scantily clad go-go boys (Ukraine’s was also at the preview – it was a little raunchy!). Strangely it is last year’s host Serbia that is providing the only comic entry, with an accordion-backed funny tale about materialism called Cipela.

The semi finals will be held tonight and Thursday, and the final will be held Saturday night, all at 8pm CET. The show airs in most every country in Europe on the national broadcaster, but sadly not in North America. But never fear, you can watch the show live on the Eurovision 2009 web page!

The Greenest Way to Travel

2009-05-07T22:00:00.001+01:00

I’m on the Eurostar at the moment heading back from a few days working in Brussels, so I thought it would be appropriate to write about this news item I just saw come across my RSS feed. While airlines still struggle to find any way to reduce their carbon emissions, it seems Eurostar is achieving reductions at a remarkable rate. Last week it announced it has achieved its target of a 35% per passenger reduction in emissions (from a 2007 baseline) two years early, and has now lowered its 2012 target for emissions reductions.

The train company, which carries passengers under the English Channel between London, Paris and Brussels, credited increased passenger numbers, a switch to nuclear energy supply for the Channel Tunnel and a series of on-train energy efficiency measures with the early success of its Tread Lightly initiative.

The results were released in a new sustainability report which also featured the results of a survey of over 1,500 travellers in the UK, France and Belgium showing that demand for high-speed rail continues to rise sharply. More than 40% of respondents said they regard the environment as a priority when making travel decisions.

A journey on the Eurostar train generates just one-tenth of the carbon dioxide emissions of an equivalent flight, with a return journey between London and Paris generates 6.6kg of CO2 per passenger compared with 102.8kg per passenger by air. In fact Eurostar estimates that since the advent of the Chunnel Eurostar travellers have emitted an estimated 40,000 tonnes of carbon less than they would have if they had gone by plane.

Of course none of this takes into account the enormous convenience of taking a train rather than a plane. When I take the Eurostar I breeze into the station a cool 15 minutes before my train departs, and since I can leave and arrive in city centres there’s no time loss getting out to distant airports. Add to that avoiding the hassle of checking luggage and the low occurrence of delays, and I think it’s clear why I always prefer to take a train even if it will end up being longer than the air journey.

How do you say ‘high-speed’ in English?

Despite these enormous advantages, the fact remains that once I cruise into London at super velocity, that is where my high-speed journey ends. The UK has no true high-speed rail lines apart from the one coming from the continent, and even those high-speed compatible tracks south of London were just completed in 2006 (before then the Eurostar trains could only go at true high speed once they crossed into France). If I needed to continue on from London to cities as close as Manchester or Edinburgh the most efficient thing to do might be to take a plane. The fact that people are flying from Manchester to London is pretty absurd, but with the British rail system in a dilapidated and neglected state, there really isn’t any good alternative.

Even so, the trains across the pond in North America make the British trains look like marvels of modern technology. The rail network in the US has been largely abandoned, left to rot over decades as the government made a conscious decision to subsidize gas prices rather than invest in public transportation. There isn’t any proper high-speed rail line in the US - Acela in the northeast certainly doesn’t count, slower than a car at 60mph because of track limitations, costing about twice the price of a normal train just to save about 20 minutes.

Last month President Obama unveiled a plan for developing high-speed rail lines in ten travel corridors in the US as part of the stimulus package, a plan that would both create jobs and update the nation’s crumbling rail network. Republicans mocked the inclusion of high-speed rail plans in the stimulus, deriding it as a waste of taxpayer money. I don’t know how to explain that logic, but I do know that the reality is it will be many, many years before any of these project are ready and functioning. In fact it’s been estimated that it would take 20 years for the US to get to where continental Europe is today in the area of high speed rail. It would take less time in the UK, but it would still be a long wait. In fact just about anywhere where the population speaks English, trains are creaking along quite inefficiently. Yet whether it’s on a TGV, ICE, AVE or Thalys, You can go from Holland to Germany to France to Spain all at ground speeds of up to 200mph/321kph.

The fact is that air travel is a necessity in a globalized world, and it can’t be limited without a viable alternative. Such an alternative may not exist for long-haul flights, but one certainly does for short-haul flights, particularly for those in densely populated areas like Western Europe or the Northeast US. High speed rail may be expensive (around $20 million per mile), but as the Eurostar and other lines has shown, the project can easily make the money back, and saving thousands of tons in carbon emissions in the process.

Cameron Set to Leave Europe's Centre-Right

2009-05-06T12:07:00.006+01:00

The European Parliament elections traditionally have a low level of interest in the UK, but David Cameron’s decision to form a new European grouping with far-right parties in Brussels may make next month’s elections a little more interesting.

The details are still being worked out, but it looks certain that Cameron will push ahead with a plan to take the Tories out of the European parliament’s centre-right grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), and form a new eurosceptic party. The plan would unite the Tories with several far-right parties across Europe, one of which warns that homosexuality will cause the “downfall of civilisation.”

It’s a strange move considering that the Tories are not a far-right party but rather a centre-right one, and that some of the European parties they will be joining with more closely resemble philisophically the British National party (BNP) than themselves. It is even more strange considering the Tories are probably poised to take over the British government next year, and yet they are bolting from the EPP which is composed of the governments of Europe’s most important countries including the parties of Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy.

According to The Independent on Sunday, separation talks with the EPP have been completed and 20 MEPS from seven countries have signed on, giving the new grouping enough members to receive EU funding as a party. That grouping will include the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS), the party of the infamous Kaczynski twins who until recently were president and prime minister of the country. That party has banned gay rights marches for being "sexually obscene” and a prominent member has warned that Barack Obama's victory would mean "the end of the civilisation of the white man". The grouping will also reportedly include a Latvian hardline nationalist party.

So what do all these parties have in common? Seemingly, only that they don’t think the EU should exist. The only problem is that Tory party is hardly of one mind on that subject. Cameron pledged to leave the EPP in his 2005 campaign for the Tory leadership, winning over the Conservative right wing and giving him the edge to defeat David Davis. So Cameron could be in hot water if he reneges on his promise. On the other hand many Tory MPs and MEPs are very worried about this decision to leave the EPP, fearing it will leave the Conservatives as an isolationist party outside the mainstream of Europe.

At the event launching the Conservative’s 4 June election campaign yesterday, Cameron was clearly trying to make the upcoming vote a referendum on Gordon Brown’s handling of the economic crisis. “With every Conservative vote, the message will be simple, 'Enough is enough - you're the past'," he sad at a community centre in north-east England, referring to Gordon Brown. "With every day that passes, this government is running our country into the ground. Borrowing eye-watering amounts of money, presiding over social decline, letting our politics descend into the quagmire.”

Labour would be wise to quickly educate voters about Cameron’s plans for the far-right European alliance, reminding them that though they may be dissatisfied with Labour, they may be cutting off their nose to spite their face by casting a vote that could indirectly create a new far-right block in Europe. However, considering the reticense of any British politician to talk about Europe (It was telling that Cameron’s speech today focused almost entirely on domestic issues in the local elections rather than the EP), I think it’s unlikely Labour will be able to get this message out clearly over the next month.

Weekend in Andalucía

2009-05-05T20:24:00.012+01:00

This weekend was a bank holiday both in the UK and on the continent, putting me in the enviable situation of having a four-day weekend since I work for a London-based publication reporting on Europe (May 1st is May Day on the continent, but the UK always takes the first Monday in May off instead). I used the occasion to take a trip to Andalucía with my friend Lori, taking in the Costa del Sol, Malaga and Granada.

The region of Andalucía in southern Spain is stunningly beautiful, and steeped in history as it was the last bastion of Muslim power in Western Europe before the momentous conclusion of the reconquista in 1492. Having been under Muslim rule for about seven centuries, this fault line of Europe has historically been the stuff of legends. Moorish castles are scattered throughout the landscape and on the hills above the main cities, while the reconquista brought with it massive, intimidating cathedrals from the 16th century meant to show the Andalucians who the new boss in town was.

We started out our trip on the Costa del Sol, a stretch of beach south of Malaga made notorious over the past decades as a place for British tourists to get drunk and get sunburnt. Both of us being American, we were actually quite intrigued by the prospect of doing an authentic ‘Brits behaving badly’ beach trip on the continent, so we decided to stay in the town with the worst reputation for such things, Torremolinos. But perhaps because of the recession, of maybe because of the low value of the pound, we didn’t really get what we were promised. Torremolinos was actually rather quiet, filled mostly with Spanish elderly people rather than boozed-up Brits. In fact on Friday at the beach we didn’t even hear one British accent, the tourists that seemed to be most represented there were the French (French outside of France? This trip was blowing all sorts of stereotypes!). Friday night the Brits seemed to come out of the woodwork at the bars and clubs, but even then not until very late and there weren’t as many of them as we anticipated.

Analysts have been predicting that Brits will be taking fewer trips abroad this year, opting for domestic trips instead because of the collapse in the value of the pound. If our experience in Torremolinos was any indication, this seems to be in evidence. If this continues one wonders what will happen to places like this, towns whose economies depend on British tourism. Southern Iberia is to England what Florida is to the Northeast US (both in terms of tourism and retirees, and of course plenty of uninspired architecture, pictured right). What would happen if New York and Florida had different currencies and suddenly New York’s collapsed? It wouldn’t be good news for Florida retirement homes, I can tell you that!

Saturday we headed into Malaga, a city often skipped over by tourists but one with an equal amount of interesting Moorish history to its neighbours Granada, Seville and Cadiz. It’s actually the second largest city in Andalucía after Seville, and a very happening place in terms of nightlife. Malaga also has a Moorish fortress on a hill overlooking the city, but of course it’s overshadowed by the nearby Alhambra in Granada. Still, we decided to have a look at it as a little preview of the big cheese to the North. It does boast some spectacular views, especially of the bullfighting ring below (pictured left). It’s actually much older than the Alhambra, originally built in the 8th century during a brief period when Malaga was an independent kingdom, and then added to while it was part of the larger Kingdom of Granada.

Of course we couldn’t resist the siren song of the Alhambra for long so that night we took a bus up to Granada. There are definitely two very distinct sides to Granada. When we arrived Saturday evening it seemed as if there was no one in the city over 25. It’s a big university town, and as we walked around we just saw hordes of college-age kids messing about. It was funny because we went from feeling very young in Torremolinos to feeling very old in Granada.

However the next day it was like an entirely different city. Sunday happened to be the Festival of the Crosses, when crosses made of different materials are displayed around the city and the women all wear their traditional Sevilliana (flamenco) dresses. It was definitely a very atmospheric time to be there. Walking around the narrow steep streets of the Albaicin, the city’s old Moorish quarter, hearing flamenco guitars and seeing women dancing with castanets to celebrate the holiday, was a bit surreal. We then headed to the gypsy hill, where flamenco dancers still perform in caves where many of the gypsies live.

Then it was time for the big cahuna, the massive Alhambra palace perched above the city. The complex is one of Europe’s most famous attractions, composed of an original 11th-century fortress at the front called the Alcazaba, a sumptuous palace that was home to the Nasrid rulers of Granada, opulent gardens stretched across a Cliffside, the remains of a large town within the fortress that once contained 40,000 people, and finally the anachronistic palace of Charles V, built by the grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand when he thought he would make Granada the capital of the newly united Spain (he changed his mind and moved to Valladolid, leaving the palace unused). Hugely important things happened at this palace. In the throne room in the Nasrid Palace, the last Sultan of Granada, Boabdil, held tense negotiations with the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. In the end the Catholic monarchs triumphed and the Christians took the fortress, the last bulwark of Islam in Western Europe, displaying the Christian flag from the bell tower at the top of the Alcazaba to signal the defeat.

Perhaps the most thrilling site in Granada for me though was the burial chamber of Ferdinand and Isabella in the cathedral (pictured right). Astonishingly the two monarchs are interned in simple lead coffins in a small space, along with their daughter (Juana the mad) and her husband Philip the Handsome. Above the tomb massive stone funerary effigies of the four of them can be found, but amusingly the one for Philip and Juana are much bigger than that for the far more famous Ferdinand and Isabella, because it was built during the rule of Charles V who was eager to establish the legitimacy of his parents. Buried here are two of the most important couplings in European history, linking the four most powerful dynasties of Europe at the time (Burgundian Valois, Habsburg, Aragon and Castile) and creating a Habsburg empire that included parts of modern-day Spain, Portugal, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Mexico, and Peru. It's amusing that the four of them are buried together, considering they all hated each other and at various times tried to have one another killed or imprisoned. And you thought you had family drama!

All in all it was a good trip, and the weather was amazing. It was a bit of a bummer stepping of the plane to a cold and rainy London. I’ll be working in Brussels the rest of this week though, so it’s just a brief stopover in Londontown really!

Who's Going to Pay?

2009-04-23T19:59:00.003+01:00

Yesterday was “budget day” here in the UK, a day of huge significance to the British calendar and psyche with events lasting the whole week. Whereas in the US the budget is usually unveiled without a whole lot of fanfare or media attention (with the notable exception of Obama’s first budget this year), in the UK there’s a big hullabaloo around it, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (for the most part the equivalent of the treasury secretary in the US) walking from 11 to 10 Downing Street clutching a ceremonial briefcase containing the all-important document, which will by that point already have been ceremonially presented to the Queen the day before. He then delivers an address to the parliament which is the first public unveiling of the plan, and that evening he makes a televised speech to the nation explaining his rationale. This is followed the next several nights by speeches from the leaders of the opposition parties.

It’s perhaps telling that yesterday’s budget day was so momentous and yet as usual, St. George’s Day today (England’s patron saint's day) was completely ignored. I didn’t even realize it was St. George’s Day until I happened to notice a sad little steel drum performance celebrating it in Hammersmith this afternoon while getting lunch.

Budget Day is always a big deal here, but this year it was attracting a particular amount of attention. Everyone knew that this was going to be a momentous budget, both in terms of the dire state of the economy the Labour government would have to reveal and in terms of the drastic measures everyone assumed were going to need to be taken. But despite being primed for eye-popping numbers by the bank bailouts last year, The City seemed to be absolutely shocked by the astronomical amount of debt Chancellor Alistair Darling announced yesterday. UK debt was set to reach a whopping £1.4 trillion in 2009 - equivalent to almost 80 per cent of the UK’s economy. Collapsing tax revenues, the chancellor admitted, will mean he will have to borrow £175 billion in 2009,12.4 percent of GDP. That will be the biggest annual deficit for the UK ever in peacetime.

And yet Darling seemed to offer little in the way of spending cuts or tax rises in order to pay off that debt. His announcement of a tax hike to 50 percent for people making over £150,000 may have raised eyebrows (while not uncommon on the continent such a tax rate in the UK hasn’t been seen in a very, very long time), but cynics in the UK suspected it was a cheap ploy to distract the media from the larger issue – the huge amount of debt announced. The budget included no rise in the tax rate for the middle class, and the reality is that those who make large sums of money are usually pretty adept at getting out of paying tax rises, so the 50% tax rate is likely to raise little revenue. The British media seems to have almost uniformly assumed that the Labour Party will not be in power much longer, but perhaps the real question now is what exactly will the Tories be inheriting if they take over the government next year? Eventually someone’s going to have to pay for all this expenditure, as necessary as it may be, and who is going to deliver the bad news to the middle class that they are going to have to chip in? It’s a surefire election loser, but with his plummeting poll numbers it would have been interesting to see Brown fall on his sword and broadly raise taxes to pay for the debt, knowing it would guarantee a Labour defeat in the upcoming election.

Tea-Bagging Across the Pond

Interestingly, the same issue is being wrestled with across the pond in the US. Barack Obama’s budget will allow the Bush tax cuts on the rich to expire, and will increase the tax burden on the top two percent of income earners. The rest of the population will either see their tax rate remain the same or decrease. Of course this didn’t stop legions of blue-collar “tea-bagging” protesters from turning out on the streets last Wednesday (“tax day,” in the US, a day perhaps of equivalent symbolic importance to ”budget day” in the UK) to decry Obama as a fascist who will tax all Americans into oblivion. Left-leaning media outlets have been at lengths to point out that 99 percent of the people out at those protests won’t see their taxes go up at all under Obama’s plan (although the people organizing those protests, Fox News and lobbying groups like Freedom Works – which interestingly enough also represents AIG – will). The American left used to scream in frustration that the working class was being hoodwinked by Republicans who used an appeal to social issues to get the working class to vote against their own economic interest. Now with the tea-bagging protests, the left has been observing is disbelief that Republicans now seem to be able to convince them to vote against their own economic interest based on an appeal to economic issues somehow as well. It's a strange country.

But despite the left's dismissal of them as mindless sheep, perhaps the tea-bagging protesters are on to something. While it is true their taxes aren't going up right now, they know that with the huge amount of expenditure being spent to rescue the global economy from collapse, someone's going to have to pay for it. And really, why not the tea-baggers? More than a few people have pointed out that these are the same people who enthusiastically supported the Iraq War and the huge expansion of the government with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Now they're taking to the streets to protest the fact that they might possibly be asked to pay for it.

These are extraordinary times, and they will likely call for extraordinary levels of sacrifice from all people. Sooner or later, the middle class is going to have to contribute financially to solving the mess. The problem, on both sides of the Atlantic, is that nobody wants to be the one who has to tell them that.

The Roaming Battle Rages On

2009-04-22T22:16:00.005+01:00

The European Parliament held what in effect will be its last consequential Strasbourg plenary session before June's election today, and there was a lot put on the table. One of today's items up for a vote was a measure to further limit the amount EU mobile phone operators can charge their customers when they are roaming in other EU countries. The parliament passed the measure, and it is well on its way to becoming law.

The parliament had already capped the roaming rates for calls back in 2007, capping rates at 45 euro cents (£0.39) per minute to make a call and (£0.19) per minute to receive a call. Before that some mobile operators were charging as much as £1.50 a minute to make a call while roaming in the EU. This new legislation goes even further and will require mobile operators to lower the roaming cap down to 35 euro cents (£0.30) to make a call within the EU. It would also set a cap on sending a text within the block at 11 euro cents (£.09). Given that T-Mobile now charges me £0.40 per text message I send while roaming in the EU, this is a significant cut. Additionally, the legislation will cap mobile internet data charges to 1 euro per megabite and force companies to round to the nearest second when charging for roaming rather than to the nearest minute. (Interesting sidenote: in Switzerland T-Mobile is still charging me about a pound per minute to use my phone, as they're not part of the EU).

This has been a pet issue of mine for awhile, but a few British MEPs making statements in parliament today got me thinking about the issue in a way I hadn't before. Conservative London MEP Syed Kamall addressed the chamber and made the argument that while this legislation may benefit the people in that room (MEPs, civil servants, journalists, businessmen), it could actually harm the poor, who rarely leave their own country and have no use for lower roaming charges. His fear, he said, was that the mobile operators would have to pass the lost profit from roaming costs on to the domestic customers, "robbing the poor to give to the rich." A teenager living on a council estate in his constiuency, he argued, was going to be charged more money so that an MEP can chat away on his mobile while in France.

While I do have to begrudgingly admit that yes, most Europeans don't use their mobiles for roaming (Kamall cited a figure that said 70 percent of European mobile users don't roam at all in a given year), really his assertion that somehow it is only the rich elite who would have any need for a telephone while in another EU country is rather strange. This is, after all, supposed to be a common market. Should it really be assumed that someone is some kind of monied aristocrat just because they leave their country every once in awhile?

But even beyond the logic of his original assertion, it also seems odd to be so concerned about a company passing on costs it shouldn't have been collecting in the first place. The mobile companies have been making a huge profit off of these roaming charges. According to the European Regulators Group, European mobile operators make up to 20 times more profit on customers when they're roaming as when they are in their home countries. It actually only costs the operator a few cents per minute to connect these calls, and even less if it's the same company (a T-Mobile UK customer roaming with T-Mobile Germany for instance). The high charge of roaming is not to make up for the expensive cost of connecting a customer's call when they're abroad, but rather it's been a cynical way to get loads of cash out of two small groups that won't raise a fuss about it: the occasional holiday traveller who doesn't think about money when he's on vacation, and the frequent international business traveller who probably doesn't even see his phone bill because his company pays for it.

In the end, Kamall's insistence that the MEPs are selfishly voting in legislation that benefits themselves and not Joe Six-Pack back in their constituencies doesn't hold water. It would be a legitimate argument if the rates the mobile operators were charging really reflected what it costs them to connect the call, but that is clearly not the case. They've instead been making a hefty profit off of a vulnerable group that can't complain about it. Even though we international travellers may be few in number, we can't be expected to subsidize everyone else's artificially low rates by being forced to pay exploitative roaming charges.

The new rates are set to take effect 1 July, so just in time for people's summer holidays. As Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane said earlier, "Today's vote marks the definite end of the roaming rip-off in Europe."