The Catch 22 of Coverage

I read today in the Daily Mail that the BBC are planning to rethink their coverage of the EU after complaints that they are regularly one sided and too pro-EU.

At last a BBC I can get behind!

I have said on my blog before that I often feel that reportage of the EU is handled in a very one sided manner. Let me not even start on how I feel the BBC covers UKIP as a political party. When UKIP are polling just below, and sometimes just above the Liberal Democrats it's hard to understand why one party has every media resource thrown at coverage of the conference, from Live updates, multimedia reports, continuous streaming of interviews, speeches and so forth, while the other barely scrapes a mention. There is the argument that the Lib Dems are currently in power as part of the coalition. Of course this is undeniable and quite rightly the public would wish to know the policies and proposals being outlined by the Deputy Prime Minister. But even before the results of the 2010 general election, there has been a disproportionate amount of air time for the Lib Dems compared to UKIP in relation to where the parties regularly feature in opinion polls.

Of course, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Get bums on seats inside Westminster and surely our coverage would have to increase exponentially. But how does a party raise its profile when even supposedly unbiased public owned news organisations fail to treat the party with the same level of respect as is gifted to the "established" three? The BBC is an organisation that has for years strived, some may argue too hard, to be representative of the public. Whereas in countries such as France it is still shamefully rare to see black or asian television personalities, Harry Roselmack being, I believe, the first black news anchor on TF1, having debuted in 2006 (astonishingly late), in Britain the BBC, ITV and Channel Four have always fought to make sure the faces we see on the news are the faces we see on the street. Some might complain that perhaps the levels of "positive discrimination" have gone too far, but that is another matter.

Yet when it comes to Eurosceptics, as we are dubbed, and according to the majority of public opinion polls, accounting for around two thirds of the population, we are handled as if we are extremists and lunatics.
The BBC has at times come across as the mouthpiece for the EU. If not championing Brussels, then at the bare minimum the BBC seems to be resigned to the opinion that because the EU exists, what is the point of arguing against it.

There is seemingly a connection between the handling of anti-EU sentiment and the coverage of UKIP.
We are the second biggest party in Brussels, striving to become the largest after the next European elections and standing a good chance. Why then, when issues about the European Union are addressed, are we rarely given a platform other than on Question Time, which is essentially the televisual equivalent of sticking politicians in the stocks?

I also have direct experience of the attitudes of certain BBC staff I have encountered and others whom I have heard about. I was once informed how one member of the production team kept referring to UKIP as "BNP-lite", a vile and utterly disparaging comparison that bares no reflection to UKIP's libertarian views.

It is also increasingly common to label UKIP as "Right Wing" or even "Far right".

I myself am from a Labour background and do not associate myself with Conservative politics at all. UKIP serves largely as an umbrella organisation for people disenchanted with the fickle and unreliable policy making of the two main parties who are able to dominate politics and thus change direction and betray the voting public whenever they see fit as they are protected by the first past the post system.

I do not believe the terms right and left wing have any place in today's politics. A highly interesting article on the Libertarian Press website discusses how this linear description of politics is outdated and unhelpful to voters who deserve to be better informed. The article proposed replacing the left and right wing system with a more astute political compass with the four points differentiating between Socialist, Socially Liberal, Free Market and Authoritarian. On this political compass, Stalin and Hitler are found at exactly the same point, when history has them down at opposite ends of the spectrum.

While we cannot expect the newspapers (being partisan by nature and vessels for the privilege of opinion of a few wealthy magnates) to give us an unbiased report on politics, it is to the BBC as a publicly funded organisation we should be able to turn for a broad spectrum of opinion.

Yet from programming to news reportage the BBC increasingly occupies the same territory as the Guardian newspaper. (It has even been said by people within the BBC that all the young guns are observed in the cafeteria or walking into the newsroom with the Guardian tucked firmly under an arm).

The Guardian, which has carefully molded itself to occupy green and inoffensive territory of being seemingly inoccuous and friendly, is in fact possibly one of the most preaching and harshly critical, one-sided of broadsheets in the UK. Dressed up in hemp clothing, vegetarian recipes, folk festivals and a penchant for everything humanitarian, it is the one newspaper that will not only scathingly attack anything they deem as 'right wing' but also let it be known what you should be eating, watching, wearing and listeneing to.Whilst it is hard to protest against tips on allotment gardening as being culturally subversive, there is an increasingly accepted sense that there is a right and a wrong way to conduct your life, which is endorsed not just by the pitchfork waving Guardian, but also by the majority of BBC programming. The right way is eating only organic food, listening to PJ Harvey, growing a beard and wearing ethically sourced designer latex wide rimmed glasses. The wrong way is, amongst other things, disliking the EU and therefore voting UKIP.

Interestingly the biggest threat to purported freedoms and values, farming standards, animal welfare and ethically sourced latex wide rimmed glasses is probably Brussels. And the biggest champions of libertarianism, a reduction in bureaucracy,  real democracy and the welfare of fish, fishermen and farmers is UKIP. So while the Guardian waxes lyrical about buying local and eating in restaurants were the provenance of their ingredients and credentials of their suppliers is highlighted on their recycled environmentally friendly menus, the only way to really ensure local trade prospers and British farmers are able to turn out high quality, environmentally sound and economically viable produce, is by leaving the EU.

UKIP as a party struggles with image. This is without doubt a sorry truth. It is normal for a small, upcoming party, as a threat to the established powers, to be at the receiving end of mudslinging and dirty politics. But you don't expect the BBC to join in, albeit unwittingly.

Meanwhile the Green Party, with two MEPs and a coveted seat in the Commons, gets not only equal coverage to UKIP, with 13 seats and 3% of the vote in the General elections, but somehow manages to get the red carpet (or should I say biodegradable astro-turf) rolled out for free speech, despite only garnering less than one percent of the vote in 2010.

As I write this, yougov's daily poll reflecting voting intention shows the projected vote share as:

CON 34%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 10%

Yes, that's right. We are a full 2 per cent clear of the Lib Dems.

That is without the fair share of coverage and in spite of the propogation of negative reportage by main media outlets.

Just imagine what that poll would look like if we were given the fair and balanced and accurate coverage we rightly deserve.

I welcome with open arms this review commissioned by the BBC to be published sadly not until 2013.
But while it may be a small step forward in our favour, it is a giant leap that is needed if UKIP are really going to get parity of coverage.

The moral implications of bail outs and austerity

Morally bankrupt.

Bankrupt?

How little we have seen of the human impact of the ongoing financial crisis in the Europe.

Of course we have seen reportage of the human reaction, be they stern faced Ministers assembling around large oak tables, shooing away the clucking throngs of news journalists awaiting any shred of carrion to be tossed from the wreckage, or the gathering crowds of unhappy protestors, waving banners before being strewn with rubber bullets by an equally unhappy, yet duty bound police.

And yet then, when we read on, we learn that Greece has asked for that, despite being reprehensible for having committed such and such an oversight, while doom laden Spain is sure to encounter this in their fate leaving it to Germany to propose that, and so forth.

As such the anthropomorphic labelling of whole countries is enabling both journalist and reader to be removed from what should be the real news story of the unfolding Eurozone disaster, the true cost to the everyday citizen. The people angle.

But it has suited the European Union to convey this image and the largely national-leaning print press to extenuate it. Define the problem as an entire country’s fiscal profligacy and then the only tool for debt solution is the EU's favoured austerity that must be shouldered by all. In Brussels it allows for a convenient bypass of democratic wont in order to transact further powers within their scope, while for national governments and newspapers, it conjures a sense of national unity  by lauding an "all-in-this-together" sermon that allows the weakest in society to be most heavily burdened, despite being the furthest removed from the causes of the crisis. What is so ironic is that while in Brussels, Barroso readily condemns the very notion of nationalistic, populist barriers to deepening European integration, he relies upon it implicitly to sell the Troika imposed programme of cuts to a nation. Everyone must do their bit.

Mr Barroso, it was your fiscal policy and foolhardy adherence to a single currency, placing political will before economic sense, that both caused the problem and continues to prolong it, so why must Senor Garcia be forced to work until his joints are ground to dust while his children will be taxed for the ills committed by their predecessors? I am sure when the concept of a single currency without unified fiscal policy was being drawn up he wasn't consulted.

Every country that found itself in the same position as the Eurozone after the credit crunch in 2008 was able to find a solution. In Iceland, the economy hit such a wall that the country defaulted and devalued the Krona. Iceland is now recovering very quickly and is borrowing again on the world markets as a creditworthy entity.

You see the debate that has raged in newspapers across Europe about what to do with a problem like Greece depends heavily on viewing each and every man, woman and child on an Athenian controlled island as both part of the problem and therefore responsible for its solution.

If a person borrows money, they receive the amount directly and must pay it back according to the terms and conditions. If a country borrows money, the citizens are unlikely to be informed of the loan, its purpose and certainly not its terms and conditions. How then does central government, let alone the government of a third country, morally justify imposed austerity?

Yet the personification of Greece as the naughty member of the Eurozone allows the EU to paint the picture of the reckless neighbour who, finding themselves unable to pay for their mortgage, appeals to the bank for help to keep their house. They are relucantly granted a reprieve on condition of some very stern, and of course wholly warranted, terms and conditions. Therefore if Greece gets a bail out at the cost of imposed spending cuts and strict austerity measures, then Spain would have to subscribe to the same punitive conditions if their economy is also to be rescued. Of course Senor Garcia cannot see why his benefits are being stripped when he has done nothing but work hard all his life. Meanwhile Germany, who does not find herself in such a financial mess, can bang the fist on the table and make demands which will affect the retirement age of Kirios Papadopoulos. Of course when I say Germany I mean Merkel and her cronies and their Brussels-based counterparts.

In 1995 Germany strongly opposed an IMF bail out of Mexico arguing moral hazard in giving a €17.8 billion loan as it essentially worked out as a rescue package for the American investors who had shored up so much Mexican short-term debt. Now the boot is on the other foot and it is German banks facing losses if Greece is allowed to go under, with as much as €22 billion of Greek public debt held by German investors. Suddenly Frau Merkel repeats the tune of solidarity for Greek and EU ears, but will happily pour scorn on Athens as and when it will placate her own people.

It may suit Brussels, political leaders, newspapers and ministers to talk about Greece, Spain, Germany, Portugal and Ireland as if they are characters in philosophical problem. But the real moral debate is not who should be paying the debt, but how.

A knock on your door from Barosso can mean only one thing...

It's getting rather tiring talking about the same topics, week in week out.
But they simply cannot be ignored.
As soon as they disappear from newspapers, they are simply simmering under the surface of a fast-track primordial swamp waiting to evolve and re-emerge a more fearful beast.
More than £30billion of value of British companies was obliterated  by news that Spain, as predicted, will likely need a national, as well as the already agreed, banking bail out. And if the Eurozone's fourth largest economy is sucked into the mire, well, I've said it before and will say it again. The EU is screwed.
In fact the Global economy is going to be up the creek without a paddle. World stock markets fell by 2% in the wake of the news.
British banks with billions tied up in Spanish loans are now in a precarious position while the credit ratings of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany are all set for a downgrade, which ultimately will compound the problem, making the powerhouse economies of the single currency face higher rates of borrowing.
Italy is also heading towards a bail out with public debt totalling almost £1trillion.Ten Italian cities are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Currently Spain has been granted a bail out of up to £80 billion to shore up its banks, which are sitting on £122 of dodgy loans. But the latest news that the state also need an urgent cash injection adds an eyewatering £250billion onto that amount. Throw Italy into the mix and in total the Eurozone looks like it may need the previously predicted €2 trillion to get through to the end of the year. The bail out fund that took months to agree has only €700billion to it's name.
Let's see what that looks like as a number...

€2,000,000,000,000,000,000

Yikes!

Meanwhile the Troika, (IMF, ECB and EU) are about to arrive in Greece to turn the knife a little more and make sure their hugely unpopular and unsuccessful austerity measures are being obeyed to the letter.
Greece is likely to suffer much deeper recession that previously thought, with expectations that the economy will shrink by 7% ratehr than the forecast 5% demonstrating the swingeing cuts are driving the economy into the ground. But without progress, Greece is being threatened with not receiving the final part of its bail out of €31.5billion. Reports suggest the IMF will now refuse any further calls for aid.
I was surprised to learn that despite his pontificating from Brussels, Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso hasn't even set foot in Greece, the country he has overseen being brought to its knees, since 2009.

Commons census - The Dutch and The British

Figures released today from the latest conducted census have shown a population increase in at least 3.7 million in England and Wales.

Fifty five percent of that increase was fuelled by immigration between 2001 and 2011 - a jaw dropping 2.1 million.

The rest is due to rising birth rates and increasing life span. However, immigration has also played a part here, with higher average birth rates attributed to foreign born couples. One in four babies now born in the UK has a non-UK born Mum.

England is now the third most densely populated place in the EU, after Malta and the Netherlands. Well given that Malta is by nature a very small island, no bigger than the size of Bristol, I think we can discount that from the count. By virtue of its compact size, density is heightened. Even still, if you visit Gozo, you will see acres of unspoilt arable land.

England has around 402.1 people for every square kilometre of land, overtaking the figure of 398.5 in Holland and 355.2 in Belgium. The density of the population in England is almost more than four times that of France, which has 99.4 for each square kilometre.

So other than both having a Queen, a rocky history with the Habsburgs and a national zeal for football (they exhibit passionate opposition to the Germans even more than we do) we also find ourselves facing the same cultural questions.

The Netherlands is the 61st most populated country in the world with a population of 16,663,831. A mere drop in the ocean compared with the UK's burgeoning 56.1 million.

But like statistics often quoted for the UK, this marker relates to the Netherlands as a whole.

Britain is the 39th most crowded country in the world. But as 93% of immigrants go to England, it is England that matters in this context. Together with Holland, England is the sixth most crowded country in the world exlcuding islands and city states.

Between 1900 and 1950 the population of the Netherlands doubled from 5.1 to 10 million people, and then grew by another 50% thereafter. According to Eurostat, 2010 saw 1.8 million foreign-born Netherlands residents, 11.1% o the total population.

Such a dramatic change of cultural landscape has its repercussions. Apart from the fear of unsustainable pressures on housing, employment and public services comes the more tricky and sensitive issue of whether a country is the sum of its peoples, and that being the case, whether change is good.

Inevitably growing consertantion about immigration led to the rise of more immigration-centric policies. The Dutch Government's policy, overseen by Immigration Minister Laurens Rita Verdonk, paved the way for permits for "knowledge-migrants" who would earn a minimum gross income of €45,000 unless a doctoral student or postgraduate or university teacher younger than 30 years of age. The permit is granted for a maximum of five years, while foreign students get a residence permit of just one year, subject to renewal by the relevant educational instututions.


Newcomers to the country and those immigrants already settled are also subject to an integration exam, much like here in the UK. The Netherlands are the first country to insist permanent immigrants also complete the pre-integration course.

Many Dutch people however are also concerned about the scale of EU immigration. In reaction to European Commission proposals to enforce social security benefits to people working in a member state but living elsewhere, the Government has been denying this right, provoking the Commission to threaten the Dutch Social Affairs Minister Henk Kamp with legal action.

Which brings us on to the question of what EU member states can actually do to tackle the problems that a mass influx of immigration can potentially bring?

The difficulty with this subject is it falls victim too easily to protestations of xenophobia, despite simple mathematics and economics underscoring the sense of having a debate about the impact of a growing population.

Recent reports on Reuters suggest that as economic mire continues to trouble the Eurozone, so-called "Populist" concerns such as cultural ones have been usurped of their supremacy by valence issues such as fears about the economic crisis. Voters are apparently less bothered about immigration and are instead more worried about how the Euro crisis will affect the Netherlands.

But surely the two are intertwined?

Should we separate discussions about burgeoning populations and net immigration, or should they both be regarded under the same microscope? Is this not the safest way to tackle the tricky subject of immigration?

My tendency is to suggest the latter - certainly from a national point of view, though this is certainly not the vantage point of the Socialism-steered European Commission who wish to trample renewed calls for sovereignty in the light of ongoing economic crisis and iron out  any disjuncture between once allied member states. After all it is important for the very continuation of the EU for solidarity to supercede national interests - and how better to achieve this than create a single federal entity, both engineered and corroborated by the free movement of people?

The question now is what route the UK Government will take in light of these recent statistics.

Are we willing to burden share if economic migrants from, say, Greece, wish to come to the UK to seek employment or benefit from our social welfare system?

Since 1997 three quarters of employment created in the UK has been taken by immigrants.

The latest poll by YouGov shows that 70% of people want immigration reduced down to the level of emigration, effectively creating a one-in-one-out system of entry, surely reflecting an economic concern over and above a cultural one?

Are we even permitted to talk about the cultural ramifications of immigration? Is there a valid argument to be made?

It's a subject not often tackled here in the UK. Britishness has become almost such an abhorrent term that, other than during the Jubilee, it is by and lrge frowned upon (by nameless, faceless people) to raise the Union Jack outside your home as a perceived act of nationalistic hostility. (Who are these people that supposely think this, anyway? I've never met one, yet we are all aware of the connotations raising the British standard apparently engenders)

What level of insanity have we reached when flying our country's flag is perceived as racist?

In the UK we are not having the conversation in the open. Instead a perceived rot forcing us to shun patriotism is pervading common sense, meaning real discussion about immgiration is only taking place in sitting rooms and quiet corners of pubs, or by minority groups of society whom we would rather not voice their opinions at all.

Is that because the conversation is wrong in its very purpose?

No.

It's actually because we are a very welcoming society and so concerned to appear as such that, in a typical British fashion, to be seen to openly complain is, well, tasteless. Only a tiny, insidious little percentage of a percentage actually hold the sort of views that we fear we may be perceived as having if we open up this particular dialogue.

When left unspoken however, the argument is up for grabs by whichever niche section of society wishes to adopt it. Sadly it has become an issue in the UK far too readily associated with the BNP. They then have the power to attract support by laying claim to concerns that  are not being addressed by Government.

This very dialogue has been tackled head on, for better or for worse, by the peroxide-topped infamous figure of Geert Wilders and the PVV party in the Netherlands, to a rather astonishing level of success given the party's size all but five years ago and its present sway in Parliament today.

Now there are gaping differences between what the PVV stand for and what many British people stand for, however there is one aspect of uniformity. A shared desire to actually bring this debate to the fore.

There is growing unrest both over there and over here surrounding what can be done in support of the preservation of one's perceived country, its peoples and its ideals.

History has taught us that when such issues are ignored, they are more likely to become inflamed and then become very difficult for the middle ground to reclaim.

I vouch for an open debate on this matter, where British people are not afraid to show their true colours.

And you know what? I think we would all be quite proud of how open we are as a people, and not only 'tolerant' but actively welcoming and celebratory of our multicultural present.

Yet it is exactly this temperament that is at stake if we cannot talk about immigration sensibly.

Welcome to my club

How easy it is to jump onto the bandwagon of popular opinion.

For years, UKIP have been labelled everything from fanatically anti-European to xenophobic for holding the view that the European Union was bad for Britain. As recently as a couple of years ago, throughout the early months of my tenure as an MEP, I received accusations of scaremongering if ever I suggested the Eurozone was doomed. Those critics have fallen strangely silent of late.

Now politicians from across the political spectrum are championing a British exit from the EU, warning of the dire economic consequences of prolonging the single currency without fiscal unanimity and bandying about suggestions of an in-out referendum. All of a sudden our party line is trendy.

One thing is for certain. For the single currency to survive member states must forge closer economic bonds, to the extent of becoming a single federal entity (the argument is that the EU has borders, a flag, an anthem, a Parliament, an army, foreign policy, a currency and laws, so the only thing separating it from a federal state is the lack of tax raising powers). If this does not happen, the Eurozone will, eventually, implode, and in doing so, force the UK into a decade of depression.

Of course, the UK would resolutely not wish to be part of a federalised super-state. It raises the question of what sort of relationship we could have with a new Europe. UKIP has always championed a relationship akin to the current Swiss model, where free trade and continental cooperation remain priorities, despite not being a member. This is now being mooted by politicians who but a few months ago championed a more integrated European Union, only to find their subject today ridiculed by fate.

Either way the tapestry that has been woven by Brussels over the last five decades is unravelling at an alarming rate. Spain requires a £100 billion bank bail out to save her finances. The incomprehensible nexus that has formed between the Spanish state and the banking sector means the Government can no longer sensibly bail out the very banks that have been bailing out the Government. The Spanish Finance Minister has resolutely denied needing a bail out, but we’ve heard this before. Greece, Portugal and Ireland all said the same thing. In the UK, the Government recapitalised British banks to the tune of £1 trillion, a measure that was widely criticised on the continent as too closely bound to Anglo-Saxon capitalism. But it saved us from the economic disaster we are now seeing affect banks in the Eurozone’s largest economies – even in Germany. It’s estimated at least £200 billion must be injected into Eurozone banks to stimulate borrowing capacity, but in order for this to happen Germany must essentially underwrite all single currency loans.

It’s understandable that Germany doesn’t like the idea of so-called “Eurobonds”. Why would they? Holding them culpable of the debts of their neighbouring countries is hardly going to seem fair to the majority of Germans. Meanwhile Spain wants a bail out with no strings attached. Of course they would. They can see what has happened in Greece, where desperately ill people are queuing outside pharmacies for life saving medicines as stocks run dangerously low. Germany does not want Spain to get a free handout without agreeing to fairly stringent conditions. And thus we are left trapped in an ever revolving circle of national self-interest that is leading critics to cry out for the greatest seismic shift in political power ever seen by Europe – the move to federalise the Eurozone before the clock ticks down, despite such a schismatic resolution flying in the face of democracy.

What about the UK? What do we want? We need Eurozone banks to be protected. Barclays is exposed to Spanish banks to the tune of £26.5 billion. RBS is liable to £14.6 billion if they do collapse, while Santander, one of the high street’s biggest financial retailers, is actually Spanish owned. Then there’s our economy. In many respects inextricably intertwined with European markets, not just through EU membership but as the result of simple geographic positioning.

The most sensible answer would be the UKIP option. Leave the EU, enhance trade with traditional partners in the Commonwealth and demonstrate neighbourly cooperation and free trade with Europe as is the modus operandi of Switzerland and Norway.

As part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, a lunch with Commonwealth leaders was hosted at Buckingham Palace. We were reminded that our Queen is not just the head of state in the UK. She is Queen of Antigua, Barbados, Bahamas and Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica and New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts, St Lucia, The Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Australia, as well as being head of the 54 countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations, including India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa and Kenya. These are long established natural allies of Britain, countries with a diverse diaspora, different geographical landscapes and as a result, present true international trade opportunities.

This year Commonwealth GDP will soar past the Eurozone’s. While the Eurozone will grow by only 2.7% if it manages to avert fiscal disaster, the Commonwealth will be boosted by 7.3% growth.

I’m not bitter that my views are now being championed when for so long they have been slated. I would be a poor politician were my pride more important than my conviction. I just hope the newest recruits to Eurosceptic ideology have strength enough to hold as steadfast to their beliefs. For what Britain and Europe needs more than anything right now is a steady hand on the tiller.

Oil, banks and democracy - a potent blend

Oil carries with it so many connotations.
The social, moral and geo-political implications create a quagmire as opague and viscous as the crude substance itself.
When Ghana discovered oil off its coast line a few years ago there was a sharp intake of breath. Everyone saw what had happened in Nigeria. The Government were not prepared to fall into the same trap, creating a feral landscape where natives and multi-nationals go head to head over the black stuff, where misery is wrought across borders such as in Sudan, and where corrupt governmental allegiances and illegal wars exacerbate religious and ethnic divides. Where there is misery and oppression, there is often oil.

In the case of Spain, Italy and Greece however the interconnection between oil and misery is different.

Oil in Spain?

Yes. The Golden Stuff.

Olive oil.

For in Spain the price of oil olive has slid so drastically, caused by a sharp decline in domestic demand, a failure of potential foreign export markets to embrace the oil - such as the Far East, and a supply overload flooding the market. As a result, the EU has been forced to intervene. [Sigh]

Taxpayers' money is now being driven in to shore up the prices in order to maintain employment in rural areas that rely almost exclusively upon olive plantations.

We all know what happens when the EU intervenes, fixing prices and stockpiling resources.
Should we expect olive oil producers over the next few years to become completely dependent upon single payments?

The future of the Mediterranean economies in the Eurozone is bleaker than is being made out. In Spain, the Government are beginning to realise there is little they can do to avoid becoming the next Greece. The likelihood of the country needing an EU bail out is almost certain. Spanish banks have been propping up state finances to the tune of €316 billion borrowed from the European Central Bank. Those banks now emergency finance, to the tune of €23.5 billion, which the Spanish Government has been determined to find itself - creating an ironic cycle of debt that cannot be broken without outside stimulus.

Yet the people of Spain have already shown vehement opposition to the Government's own austerity measures, and with a quarter of the adult population now unemployed, who could blame them? Yet any EU bail out comes with a multitude of conditions that must be met - however unsympathetic to the plight of the normal person. This is the situation we are now seeing in Greece, where the democratic choice is an end to austerity, yet the EU refuses to climb down on the demands stipulated in return for propping up the single currency. One can be assured that if Spain ends up in a similar position, the opinion of the public would be known the world over.

In Ireland,  the public have gone to the polls to vote in a referendum on Irish approval of the "EU fiscal pact" set out last December. Prime Minister Enda Kenny has urged the nation in a televised address to back the proposals, in order to ensure the rug isn't pulled from under their feet, and for the time being, the propaganda appears to have worked with early results indicating voters would back the fiscal pact. Of course in Ireland they also have the added security of sterling propping up some Government debt after George Osborne signed off a £7 billion bilateral loan, but this also means our loan, which is due to be repaid with interest in the future, is at risk of falling into a fiscal blackhole if the single currency collapses.

The coping mechanism that has been rolled out during the course of the last four years has been for deeper integration and mutualised responsibility, yet this flies in the face of the will of the majority of voters in the EU,  be they Germans who do not accept their share of any burden or Greeks forced out of work, unable to access medicines and even food. The public conception is that closer EU integration has weakened national economies, rather than providing the reinforcement that it was purported to achieve.

Economics is more of an art than a science, it is often argued. It involves theorising, when nobody can understand or predict what any outcome may be, however well read they may be in the field or practised and proven in managing national debts. While one side of the argument would state that breaking the single currency up would cause a lot of short term pain but enable each country to forge an idiomatic platform upon which to compete and rebuild, others would argue that disintegrating the Euro would leave huge unaccounted for wounds of debt that would plunge the global markets back into disarray, creating shockwaves more severe than those witnessed in 2008 and the first global credit crunch.

One thing is for sure. The break up of the single currency would not be good for the EU. It would undermine the entire European project and pit disenchanted countries against one another, further enhancing the risk of member states applying to leave the EU, potentially resulting in the domino affect of the entire dissolution of the entireUnion. It is argued that nowhere in any treaty is exiting the single currency accounted for, further enhancing the risk of the break up of the Euro resulting in ejection from the EU itself - by law.

June is set to be an interesing month. If Greece runs out of money before the elections, and if Brussels are resolute in their stance that a bail out would not be provided without obeisance to their conditions, we could have a humanitarian crisis on our hands.

I hope, for the sake of the people of Greece, this is not the case.

Greek Enlightening?

There is something so poignant yet with an irresistibly aesthetic in the fact that the seat of ancient Western philosophy is currently the seat of political and economic disruption in Europe.

So much of what we have today - the structure of society and politics and the words we use to discuss it - found origins in Greek philosophical scripture.

From Plato's Republic to Aristotle's Politics, Greek thinkers conceptualised and theorised the ideal structure of society and role of law more than two and a half thousand years ago. What would they have to say about what has happened in Greece, and what would their opinion be on the European Union?

Looking at Aristotle's Politics, it is important to highlight that the philosopher believed human kind by nature to be a social and thus political animal. He did not mean that everyone wished to be out canvassing for this party or that, or even sit on councils or governing panels. As a biologist Aristotle was keenly interested in categorising species and observing how they lived. He observed that mankind had a heightened moral code rarely seen in other species, which lended itself to the creation of a complex social context. As such, he determined that the Polis, or city structure, was engineered by man to enable the species to flourish or achieve Eudaimonia.

In order to make the Polis work, everyone, he believed, should be educated with an eye to the constitution. For Aristotle, being co-citizens was not merely about mutual cohabitation under the same set of laws, for this was a matter of justice alone. Instead being a citizen was about participartion in rule and political deliberation.

However this did not necessarily constitute what we term democracy today. For Aristotle, extreme democracy would lead ultimately to anarchy, a theory borrowed from Plato's Socratic works. Instead, Aristotle felt that the rule of law was structured upon socio-geographic properties. Different societies, depending upon topographic features and thus industry and agriculture, and cultural relativisms, prospered under different systems, from extreme democracy to oligarchy to monarchy. Being the philosopher who defined value in his Nicomachean Ethics under the system of the Golden Mean (where a balance must be sought between opposing factors, such as an equilibrium between cowardice and foolhardiness) he saw perfect governance as a balance between monarchism, oligarchy, democracy and other social structures.

However what was vital in this Pragmatic Utopianism is the underlying belief that political rule must be in the interest of the ruled, and as such, abide by a teleological sense of aiming ultimately for what can be deemed 'good'. In order to achieve this, Aristotle envisaged an upper limit to a macro-governance of around one hundred thousand people. Within this subframe resided other micro-governed units, all the way down to the family home where he saw the relationship between man and wife as somewhat political in its ideal operation.


So what would he make of the European Union, and what would he say about the current situation in Greece?

“Polity” for Aristotle is the word to indicate rule by the many in what he defines as the correct system of government. By contrast, he refers to rule by the many in a diverging and thus “erroneous” system as “democracy.” Polity is therefore midway between democracy and oligarchy. Critics would argue that what we are currently witnessing in Greece is bordering on oligarchical rule, or quasi-democratic governance, where stringent measures laid down by ruling factions such as the EU, IMF and European Central Bank or the Troika are not taking into consideration the will of the people.

Aristotle argued that mistreating the people would lead to the overthrow of the oligarchy and thus the establishment of democracy. Perhaps what we are seeing at the Greek ballot box is an increasing mistrust of the authorities that have governed Greece since the outbreak of financial crisis and will lead to a European Spring, where psephological rebellion will overturn the powers held by Brussels.

Interestingly however, Aristotle also argues that erroneous systems of government are necessarily subsequent and not prior to good systems of government. Using this model perhaps Aristotle would argue that as an original concept, the European Economic Community established more than 50 years ago was just in its aims and provided a valuable function. But the system of governance that has developed, as derived from a proper and sensible model, has become distorted by influential factors that disallow the right form of government to prosper. Aristotle might perhaps perceive the biggest influence and thus corruption of EU level politics to be the size of the multitude it governs.

In Aristotle's writings, a city-state must be populous enough to be self-sufficient, but too large a state cannot have an easy system of governance as it cannot be effectively managed, with inadequate representation of or communication with its subjects. However Aristotle does not distinguish between foreign born and original residents. What is important, he believes, is having an appropriate number to be able to forge participation across society.

As such Aristotle also sets great store by education, debate and social inclusion in discussions and inquiry on a governmental level. One would imagine he would perceive the EU as not only too far-reaching in its geographical expanse and ambition, but too opaque, and as a product of its vastness, incomprehensible to its population.

What might be suggest in order to divert crisis from Greek shores?

It is highly likely that he would be an advocate for Greece leaving the EU. He might even go as far as to purport restructuring the governance of Greece into smaller, devolved democratic provinces within which nuclear self-sufficiency could be achieved in order to restore the competitiveness of the economy.

Despite unwittingly scribing a number of concepts and political theories that have been embraced by Brussels, it is hard to imagine that Aristotle would support the structure of the EU as it is today. His belief that different systems of governance are appropriate for different topographical regions, each with their own set of idiomatic concerns, would likely make him a supporter of the nation state over and above supra national entities. He would almost certainly disapprove of Common Agricultural Policy!

Under Aristotelian predictions, the EU would be setting itself up for a fall.
Indeed, recent elections in both Greece and France have witnessed the public making it clear that they no longer have faith in their ruling parties. The question that has been raised as a result of the recent polls is whether or not the EU will heed the warning. The people have spoken - but will they be heard?

According to Aristotle, the greater number of people living in poverty creates a sizeable enough catalyst to act as a stimulus for change. Levied against the inertia of a ruling class who do not allow for the participation of the greatest possible number of citizens, the result is a clash out of which democracy (or perhaps using a different term, anarchy) will come to the fore.

We have witnessed this in the Arab Spring, despite the development in that particular context yet to draw to a final conclusion.

Perhaps we will witness it in southern European states?

One thing however would be interesting if The Republic and Politics became the text books for a European constitution. Under an Aristotelean or Platonic model of governance, Barosso and Van Rompuy may well be exiled abroad and likely replaced by the likes of Roger Scruton,  A.C. Grayling or even Stephen Hawking.  We could call this new system of rule EUdaemonia.

The European Spring

It's not often I read an article in The Guardian with such zeal, especially not an opinion piece.

But today's column by Costa Douzinas, a professor at Birkbeck University in London who has authored and co-authored texts examining the philosophical underpinnings of law making such as human rights, was interesting indeed.

He talks about the possibility of a European Spring of revolution with forthcoming elections in France and Greece. We also have the English local elections tomorrow while Germany will see whether Merkel's leadership amidst ongoing crisis in the Eurozone retains kudos among the voterate. There is also the matter of a collapsed government in the Netherlands and forthcoming local elections in Italy.

The juxtaposition of polls in France, Greece, Germany and the UK alongside ongoing battles to save the single currency couldn't be sweeter for a political theoretician. It would appear in France that Nicholas Sarkozy may become a one-term president and yet another victim of the financial crisis as the public turns towards socialist Hollande's rhetoric against austerity rather than keeping faith in the Merkozy strategem that has so far dominated Eurozone fiscal policy.

Meanwhile, the general election in Greece will be the public's first opportunity to show through the ballot their verdict on their country's financial collapse, and it is likely we will see a surprising result that will prevent either of the two main parties from the past four decades gain an outright majority.

In Italy, local elections will act as litmus for the parachuted-in technocrat Mario Monti who replaced the disgraced Berlusconi last year, while a key regional election in northern Germany in Schleswif-Holstein will determine whether Merkel's popularity and reputation are finally beginning to falter despite relatively secure German faith in her competence to date.

Regarding the run offs for Presidency in France, many newspapers have reported Merkel's open opposition to her old ally's contender. The German Premier has criticised Hollande's posturing against the ongoing austerity programme that has largely been coordinated by Merkel and Sarkozy, threatening to rip up the deal and demand a re-write, a move that many believe could topple the powerful axis of Franco-German driven leadership of the Eurozone and potentially lead to a free-for-all across single currency members at a time when the leadership for a number of countries is set to change. Euroscepticism has crept into manifestos from left to right. What, or more to the point, who, results from elections in Greece is therefore potentially the first dramatic change of power and sentiment that will have been observed in a European country since the outbreak of the Euro crisis.

This is essentially what Mr Douzinas is warning, although unlike a number of other commentators, leaping to the defence of current ruling centre-right governments, he suggests it is the far left, and not the far right, who would become the decision makers in this keystone member state. However he does betray his concern that

"Part of this picture – its most worrying aspect – is the rush to the right by mainstream politicians who, imitating Sarkozy, compete to display their nationalist credentials. Coalition ministers Michalis Chrysochoidis and Andreas Loverdos have spread panic about immigrants as criminals and carriers of infectious diseases, and have set up detention camps in order to contain this "threat"...Meanwhile Athens' Mayor Kaminis has, with Chrysochoidis, organised campaigns to "cleanse" the city of migrants, while the coalition plans an anti-immigration wall on the Greco-Turkish border."


It's a highly interesting observation and one that we have seen mainstream media across Europe discuss with regards to elections in all of the member states.

What we need to address is the unspoken reality of both the creation of fiscal crisis and the subsequent way through the mess.


The majority of countries struggling under alarming debt have reached this stage due to high structural deficits; that is, essentially, the mathematical problem that the cost of running public services afforded by government borrowing far outweighs the income potential of the country in question.

Many theorists have come up with simple studies that support various ideas relating to financial crisis, many of which newspapers are not shy to publish.

I have read articles that muse over the fall in birthrate during depression times, the increase of marriage and reduction in divorce, and many other variations relating to consumer trends, from holidays to hoummous, to abandoned pets and soaring university entrance in countries with high youth unemployment.

Over all, a general picture being painted is that humans, on a collective subconscious level, realise the need to club together resources and reduce financial burden in periods of economic decline.

It surely makes sense. Animals living in the most extreme environments containing minimal resources often betray similar characteristics. Penguins for instance have only one mate, forge a large community and give birth to just one baby each. In boom times, certain species will see propogation exponentially increase as both survival rates soar and reduced competiton factors in its influence, thus the converse is likely to be true when the situation is reversed.

Something else that is true however, is that in times of scarcity, a natural social collective in the animal kingdom is ever more likely to fight off the threat from co-existing groups of the same species. When everyone is competing for the same resources, the tendency to share is greatly reduced and competition over what is available intensifies.

It is hardly surprising then, that in the midst of a financial crisis, anti-immigrant rhetoric also intensifies, yet rather than acknowledging the evident reasoning for this and working to satiate public concern before it topples over into xenophobia, governments continue to fail to address the problem.

It is not "racist" to determine that your nation's services and resources can only stretch so far, particularly during a time of struggle. This attitude does not betray latent opposition to other cultures or nationalities, nor should it suggest xenophobia. What it does do however is reinforce the concept of nationhood, but what is one to expect when the perceived borders of democratic control are divvied up along national frontiers? If those lines were  instead drawn macro-regionally, between counties for instance, loyalty would be emboldened on a smaller socio-geographic scale.

Perhaps the commentators, and Mr Douzinas, is right, and what is happening is a creeping empassioned attack based upon ethnicity and ethnography rather than on more level handed demography.

If the rhetoric from the two Greek coaltion ministers is true and is not based upon any conceivable proven fact, then the problem is severe when competing parties are reduced to conflating race with liability for being a vector of disease. Indeed such a supposition is the thin end of a wedge, and something I oppose from the bottom of my heart. However, and I would tentatively observe rather than ordain here, the notion that it is not uncommon for anybody coming from outside of a community, be it a returning native or a newly arrived foreigner, to bring with them the threat of an infection that is perhaps uncommon in a particular society, and thus potentially poses a greater threat.

I find myself torturously re-reading this to ensure that what I have written comes across as evidently objective and reasonable, lest to avoid any sort of ill intentioned criticism. But the point is, I shouldn't. This is afterall why we have jabs before holidaying in foreign countries, or have to present a yellow fever certificate for entry into others.Nobody would call such policy making racist or xenophobic. It is common sense. Yet the very fact that it has become so difficult to even word certain topics, being careful of references and examples one uses, so as to avoid any possible misinterpretation of offense, has become the root of a very real social and political problem.

Because it has become politically incorrect to talk candidly  about issues such as population size, limited resources, birthrates, immigration, migration and citizenship, voters who are not finding moderate concerns accommodated by the government or the main opposition party are seeking solace in marginal organisations who opportunisticly address such taboos and converet them  into valence issues.

I want to point out here however that the present climate is not just fertile ground for distasteful extremists.

More importantly smaller viable parties who have not had the opportunity to rise due to media control or hereditary voting habits are now finding an arena in which such issues often avoided by ruling parties but addressed on the sidelines are coming to a fore, and it is allowing the public to finally, democratically represent their misgivings in the political fora.

It is not always just a protest vote, but a genuine realisation that there are other political groups out their with sound policy making, fair judgement and very good ideas.

Voting is not like supporting a football team. Certainly when your sports team have a bad season you don't suddenly ditch them and start cheering for the premiership victors. But politics should not be like that. You do not have to vote Conservative or Labour simply because you have done so all your life. You have the opportunity, and dare I say it, the responsibility as an adult with a right to vote, to read through all the available manifestos and make a decision based upon honest and considered calculation.

UKIP are one such party who are on the rise. In all recent polls we are level pegging with the Liberal Democrats if not ahead, but still we won't get the same amount of coverage.

That is because the partisan press in the UK are backing one of the three main parties, and UKIP is a threat to them all. For that reason we are easy to throw stones at. But it is the very misguided critics out there who are quick to raise unsubstantiated and alarmist claims in order to defend the major parties that are actually creating a far right movement by not giving decent and responsible smaller parties like UKIP the platform for debate.

In my view, UKIP are not even on the right hand side of an assumed political spectrum, yet so often we are labelled as "far right" as an excuse to defend the parties that we threaten because they are failing to address voter sympathies. It has therefore become all too easy for issues such as immigration to be conflated with xenophobia, and yet nobody out there knows why.

Why can't we talk about this frankly without feeling worried that we are going to be judged?

Well a political scientist might just flag up similar reasoning to what I have just described. The combination of the mistakes of history and a public sense of guilt becomes easy fodder for political communicators to use to drum up a culture of fear over smaller parties in order to marginalise any party that is a threat to a ruling group. As a result, key electoral issues become matters of dangerous taboo.

If collectively across Europe, smaller, responsible and well-intentioned parties, whether they reside on a fictitious left or a fictitious right, grow in prominence and enable the formation of a European Spring, then I will be happy if it topples the hegemonic might of Brussels - with minimal fall-out.

However if they are not allowed to do this, what we will see is the creation of a blackmarket of political thought where less than savoury ideologies are allowed to prosper.

And so I implore voters across the European Union. Vote wisely, vote sensibly, but vote with your heart and mind. If that means breaking with convention, then have the conviction to do so. For that is the real measure of democracy.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but...

Today the European Commission will announce a 6.8% increase in budget - equivalent to €138 billion extra.

This is truly extraordinary when the majority of member states (25 out of 27, excluding the Czech Repubic and the UK who refused to sign up to the latest 'non-EU treaty' financial pact) are under mandate to enforce austerity measures imposed by Brussels. How then can the EU defend such an enormous hike in its own budget?

The swingeing austerity measures laid out by Brussels are crippling European economies, not saving them, with the constant cutting and adherence to the single currency project proving disastrous for the EU and global economy as a whole.

Today the ONS announced that the British economy shrunk over the last two quarters, plunging us back into recession, with the ongoing Eurozone crisis to blame.

Add to that the news that the UK will pay another £10 billion to the IMF ["It won't prop up the single currency, honest!"] and you've got to begin to wonder, what is going on?

It would appear that Brussels are the very deliberate architects of economic freefall in Europe. 

It cannot be simply a mistake that the financial crisis is continuing. Perhaps by creating financial disaster in Europe, while copious amounts of money fill up the EU coffers,  fiscal control is able to be diverted to the EU. Where there's money, there's power.

At one point commentators suggested the Eurozone crisis could spell the end for the EU. Far from it. 

If anything, the incredible transfer of power and money to Brussels over recent years as the crisis has taken hold has actually increased the dependence of the majority of member states upon the European Union and its associate bodies, such as the European Central Bank, European Investment Bank and so forth.

Which brings me on to the IMF.

It is shocking to witness the supposedly independent International Monetary Fund supporting the EU programme.

I do not only mean the financial impetus, including the recent call for an extra $430bn (£247bn), to which British taxpayers will contribute an extra £10 billion. 

There is the very tricky matter of the IMF, the EU and the ECB, forming a so-called Troika to effectively run the economies of disaster stricken member states. 

Part of the rules and regulations laid down by the Troika include setting up separate accounts for incoming bail out funds to ensure money is used only to save the Euro through debt repayment and is not spent structurally, in effect, helping the suffering population by a real injection of cash into the national economy.

What we are witnessing is mass unemployment spreading across Europe and a number of economies falling apart, led by an institution designed to "promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty."

Instead of actually providing financial aid to Greece, Italy, Portugal and so on, the IMF is instead driving funding into bank accounts set up to support the Euro, and thus EU ideology in Europe, while co-authoring regulations which perpetuate the ongoing crisis.

Even the USA has now refused to contribute any more to the IMF, saying they no longer supported the failing efforts to sustain the Eurozone.

What on earth is going on?

It is increasingly apparent that the IMF, led by the former French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is by no means independent. Of course Lagarde came in after the rather inglorious departure of Dominique Strauss Kahn. It is by no means implausible that his downfall and thus removal from power was all too easy to set up, given the man's penchant for promiscuity. Perhaps that is one conspiracy theory too many - but there are many out there who claim that what happened in that New York hotel room was a deliberate trap.  

Strauss Kahn may just have been a dirty dog who met his inevitable end. Or perhaps he needed to be removed in order to parachute in Lagarde, who would get the job done.

Despite calls from across the global financial sector to dismantle the single currency, instead the IMF have come out and warned against any member state leaving the Euro. It is interesting to point out that France is next in line to enter economic turmoil if the single currency crisis is not tempered. Perhaps the IMF and Christine Lagarde want to evade French financial freefall. But if that was the case, why is the IMF authoring and imposing the austerity measures that are keeping the crisis alive?

It is interesting that while the UK Government publicly vetoed the pact for financial regulation (again, not an EU treaty-despite the 'pact' involving the European Commission, 25 member states, the ECB...- as an EU treaty would have meant referenda across the continent, whose results would likely have seen the democratic obstruction of the pact's political intentions evident to the world stage). However the UK have recently agreed to pay an extra £10 billion to the IMF while our own economy has fallen back into recession, with the single currency to blame for contraction over the last two quarters.

Perhaps my imagination is too creative.

Has Britain, behind closed doors, agreed to support the federal unification of Europe by continuing to fund the bizarre operation being carried out by the EU and the IMF - as long as we can remain on the outskirts?

After all, the money being poured into the Eurozone from the IMF is helping Brussels to actuate these intentions, by breaking down the economies of  member states through destructive austerity measures, and then sweeping to their rescue by promising bail outs in return for  fiscal control by the EU and its related bodies. 

The Eurozone financial crisis is, in effect, enabling the final push for federalism to be made.

Of course in order to achieve this, Brussels needs money to uphold bogus bail outs in exchange for obeisance to their own fiscal mandate. Thus they contrinue to increase the EU budget, but that would not be enough.Brussels needs the IMF to extract money from the global economy to support the operation. After all, financially ruining economies in order to swoop in and take control by offering a golden handshake is an expensive business. So how is the IMF managing to continually pass the collection plate and get other countries to pour money in? Well the ongoing Eurozone crisis is not only a threat to the member states involved. In this hugely interlinked global marketplace, ongoing crisis in the Eurozone is a threat to economies across the world. Perhaps other countries are party to some sort of plan - or perhaps they simply have no choice, as a financial collapse in Europe would mean a heavy toll upon many countries' economic security. Now America has managed to get back on its feet, incidentally by doing the direct opposite of what is being carried out in Europe by providing stimulus rather than imposing austerity, they no longer want to be a part of what is going on in Europe. Although Obama has always championed a more deeply integrated EU, so it may just be that America is turning a blind eye but is unwilling to co-finance the operation any more.

I am sure many readers will be thinking 'what on earth is he on about?'

I am merely playing Devil's advocate -  asking the unanswered questions.

Why is the world allowing this mess to continue?

How is what the EU and IMF are doing not being condemned by the international community - and by this I mean what is overtly taking place, not my conspiratorial postulations.

The formation and fiscal controls of the Troika are perpetuating economic crisis, while 25,000 people in Greece are begging for food, yet no one on the world stage is saying anything.

Europe is not the developing world. It is not an impoverished continent with (manifestly) corrupt governance and (manifestly) tyrannical rule. It is a first world group of countries who should by now be well in the clear after the credit crunch that hit almost five years ago.

This furore has gone beyond a catastrophic mess and incompetent governance.

It is now so absurd that there is a distinct smell of conspiracy about it.

The Rights of Human Rights and the Wrongs of Government

Tomorrow and Friday the Council of Europe, representing 47 member states and over 800 million citizens, will meet in Brighton to discuss reforming the figure head institution of the European Court of Human Rights. At the helm of the discussion is Britain, who currently chairs the Council of Europe, although rumour has it that David Cameron himself will not be attending.

Surprising? Perhaps not so. A series of embarrassing and unpopular defeats for the Government by the ECHR, such as the ban on deporting Abu Qatada to Jordan, has led to widespread media outcry over the supremacy of European law over British law. Since the ECHR was established in 1959, 61 per cent of judgments have gone against the UK government.

David Cameron has often come out and publicly condemned decisions made in the Strasbourg court, and following pressure from his own backbenchers, has promised to dilute the powers of the European Convention on Human Rights over the domestic court system. Earlier this year, he stated that Strasbourg must not "undermine its own reputation" by overruling national courts and has put forward reforms including restoring powers to national courts, which will be discussed at the summit in Brighton this week.

However rumour has it that the latest draft of the planned reforms has massively watered down British suggestions, before the summit has even commenced.

The main thrust of the British authored reform proposals involve a change in the synergy between national law courts and the ECHR.

One proposal suggests Strasbourg should rarely rule over cases which have already journeyed through the entire domestic court process. Already, this demand has been effectively erased.

Instead the UK Government proposed a more advisory role for the ECHR, witht he jutification that this would reduce the need for certain cases to be taken to Strasbourg. Instead it would come under an agreement that the “interaction between the court and national authorities could be strengthened” suggesting closer adherence to the Convention in British law.

The suggestion was made to supposedly reduce the backlog of cases at the ECHR, where more than 160,000 cases are yet to be tried. In its first forty years, only 45,000 cases were presented to the ECHR, compared to the 61,300 the court was asked to consider in 2010 alone.

The British suggestion, which essentially is designed to allow individual states to some extent ignore court rulings and adopt their own positions, comes in the wake of the case of killer John Hirst, where the UK blanket ban on prisoners voting was ruled by the ECHR to be unlawful. The matter reached the Houses of Parliament where MPs voted by 234 to 22 in favour of defying the ECHR judgment and the issue was kicked into the long grass.

David Cameron’s stance is, one imagines, partially designed to make sure this issue, and other controversial media spinners, are kept out of the public eye and are thus non problematic for the Government. However fears that compensation claims of UK prisoners appealing to the ECHR could run into millions has forced the Government to reopen this thorny issue.

The biggest issue faced by both the UK Government and the ECHR is the perception of an existing democratic deficit, whereby unelected judges have primacy over elected decision makers.

Most people often make the mistake of conflating the European Court of Human Rights with the EU. The two are separate institutions. Yet all new signatories to the EU must sign up to the ECHR before accession. As an original signatory, the UK Government’s membership of both is in many respects like being a fully paid up member of two separate clubs.

Despite this, successive Governments have always denied calls of leaving the ECHR, although confusing parallel legislation, such as the proposal to create a British Bill of Rights, to subsume the Convention and create a more idiomatic text, has been recently debated.

The rights set out in the ECHR itself have not been debated. The sticking point has been over how those rights are adjudicated, the main thrust of this week’s proposed reforms, and how rights are counterbalanced and interpreted and ultimately, by whom. Most often trials have to conduct a sort of titration of juxtaposed human rights, leading to conflicts of opinion between judges and legislators. What perhaps is lacking is a democratic override, whereby Parliamentary sovereignty is at the top of the food chain, or indeed the UK Supreme Court. As such assurances have been made that a British Bill of Rights would be “ECHR plus” in order to subsume the extant legislation to which Britain agreed when it signed up to the Convention into the newly drafted Bill.

Currently the House of Commons is obliged to accept Strasbourg’s rulings, however unpopular the conclusions. Yet what is unlikely to happen would be a shift of supremacy to the Commons, whereby all unpopular rulings could be overturned. What the British Government are trying to bargain for instead this week is a shift in priority.

Yet what is perhaps the most interesting aspect in this narrative is the potential sting in the tail that could emanate from Brussels.

This week, Parliament, also in Strasbourg, are debating the EU accession to the ECHR. Despite new signatories having to sign up to the convention, the EU itself is not a fully fledged member. Technical anomalies have thus far postponed the full accession of the EU tot he ECHR, which amounts to judicial positioning rather than the application of European law into EU courts.

What is interesting, essentially, is this:

Currently the UK could conceivably opt out of the ECHR. However if the EU signs up in its own right, the only way out for the UK would be by leaving the EU. This opens the door for future debate on the equilibrium between national sovereignty and ECHR supremacy to be both intruded upon by Brussels, and essentially slammed shut.

No wonder David Cameron is trying to push through these reforms. It may well be the UK’s very last chance.

Enough is Enough

The tragedy unfolding in Greece has escalated to such a stage now that I am increasingly concerned by pan-European complicity in the austerity measures planned to save the Euro - a currency nobody wanted - which are putting so many human lives at stake.

I have talked about Greece repeatedly in this blog. It's been hard not to. It has after all been the focal point of European news for over a year.

But today's news about the suicide of a 77 year old retired chemist outside Parliament in Athens last night has to be talked about. In fact, it has to be shouted and screamed about.

This high profile case caught the public's attention and sparked further rioting in the country's capital. Petrol bombs were hurled at police and tear gas fired back.

The carefully written note was without doubt designed to strike a chord with society. In many people's eyes, the man unofficially named by the Greek press as Dimitris Christoulas, is a martyr.

The retired chemist, with a wife and a daughter, had sold his pharmacy in 1994.

He shot himself in Syntagma Square in the city centre just before 09:00. His note accused the government of cutting his pension to such an extent that life had become unbearable.

It read

"The government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state.

"And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting... I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don't find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance."

Hundreds of demonstrators turned out onto the streets outside Parliament on Wednesday evening, pinning notes to trees that read "Enough is enough" and "Who will be the next victim?"

Greece used to have the lowest suicide rate in Europe. In recent months it has soared, in Athens alone it has risen by 25%. The face of the country has changed. Shop fronts are closed up, homeless people are more evident, there's a sense of discord hanging in the air.

Early elections due in just over a month could bring about interesting results. The question is whether the results will be quashed by Brussels if they do not serve up on a platter an ideal puppet for the European Commission to manipulate in order to save their beloved single currency.

The situation in Greece is no longer about the Euro. It is no longer about free trade and rules on bendy bananas and protecting post war Europe through solidarity. It is about real people who cannot work, cannot live and cannot eat.

Almost a third of Greeks are at risk of poverty, with one in five of those unable to afford meat every other day.

Suicides increased by 18% in 2010 from the previous year, according to Reuters.

When the price to pay for a political ideology is people's lives - then the international community has a duty to stand up and say

enough is enough

The Young Ones

What sort of country are we leaving for our children?

What sort of society, what sort of culture, what sort of world will they inherit?

It's a question that is often asked.
But perhaps we should be questioning what sort of children are we leaving for our world?

With some of the worst youth unemployment figures in the developed world, Europe is home to a disengaged, disenchanted and disenfranchised generation who will soon be expected to take over the mantles of their nations.

Figures for youth unemployment are largely double the incidence of adult unemployment in many European countries. The economic slowdown is hitting the young the hardest, but we are yet to truly see the scars that will be left behind. Those will only become apparent in around a decade or so.

While Generation X, the post war baby boomers, may be held accountable for the strain on economies brought by capitalism, credit and unsecured loans, Generation Y have managed to squeeze through and are largely upcoming professionals who have completed education and are well on their way to careers. It's the next generation down, dubbed Generation Z. that we should perhaps be worrying about.

There is an increasing incidence of NEETs in Generation Z - Not in Education, Employment or Training. A lost generation who are likely to be living at home, and as such are delayed in becoming fully engaged young adults who are taking an active role in society. Together with their peers, they look at everyone else around them and perceive a world that is forn the most part inaccessible to them. They feel they must carry the burden of the mistakes of their elders on their shoulders, while they are stripped of responsibility, indepence and pride.

Youth unemployment is largely the product of structural factors, where there is simply no capacity to accomodate those entering into the jobs market for the first time in the system. This is then exacerbated by the sort of austerity measures we are seeing in Southern Europe that has put youth unemployment in Spain higher than in Greece, with both running over fifty per cent for 18 to 24 year olds.

Youth unemployment across the Eurozone as a whole was 21.6 percent in February, according to the European Union's statistics office, Eurostat. That accounts for hundreds of thousands of unexploited, underused and wasted capable people who are not only contributing to society, but are starting to feel like society is not contributing anything for them.

Youth unemployment is often the first symptom of a failing economy. Service industries are hit by the reduction in available spending money and the perceived threat of joblessness, causing people to stop going out and buying, or eating in restaurants. It is well noted that service industries are one of the biggest employers for this sector of the demographic. How many of us toiled in pubs and restaurants, or shops, during our youth? Yet with so many places affected by the recession closing or having to cut back significantly, the first area affected is often staff.

Meanwhile, job cuts in other areas are seeing better qualified, better equipped, and perhaps more motivated members of Generation X and Y taking up jobs that Zedders would otherwise have access too.

On top of that, large amounts of immigration, both EU and non-EU, is providing cheaper employment for already struggling businesses who are more likely to be tempted to take on a foreigner for less money.

Youth unemployment is not just about joblessness. Various studies have shown clear links between youth unemployment and antisocial behavior, alcoholism, mental and physical illnesses and suicide. Meanwhile a large number of the protestors involved in the riots that have spread across Europe and are likely to continue and escalate well into the summer, are unemployed youths who feel disconnected from society as a whole. You only have to look at pictures from the London riots and the most recent scenes in Barcelona to see the majority of people who took to the streets feeling that their voices were not being heard, came from the younger generations who feel they are unfairly having to bear the brunt of matters they could not possibly have contributed to.

Not only that, but economists have also argued that youth unemployment creates a scarring effect that reduces the capacity to earn throughout a person's life compared with someone who did not suffer long term unemployment at an early age. Therefore the majority of those young people stuck in an unemployment rut now will be blighted by a decelerated passage of progress compared to their counterparts who are able to traverse the current economic situation relatively harm free.

So what can we do to help Generation Z?

The primary driver of employment is growth, especially for those just beginning their careers who can be taken on baord and groomed and moulded into the future workforce of an industry. But with ongoing austerity measures designed to to tackle structural problems, growth is being sacrified on the altar of a quick fix recovery.

The other solution is to take these people out of the job market by placing them into training. While they may not be earning money, many believe the best solution is occupying them with studies which will also prepare them for participation in the workforce when the better days finally do arrive.

However, with structural state deficits as they are across European nations, governments are ill placed to pour money into the further education of a group of people who have already negotiated the school system and have either chosen not to enter further education, or have come out of it to find no job at the other end as well as potentially a large amount of debt already accrued in their bank accounts.

The situation isn't uniformly bleak across Europe. In Germany, young people's prospects for work have never been brighter. Yet this may also be a reflection on the higher number of young people engaged in education and vocational training.

It is essential countries like Spain and Greece need to ensure Generation Z are well rounded, fully engaged and highly skilled young adults, ready to compete in an ultra competitive global market place. However strategies to encourage youth into training schemes work best when they come with guarantees of employment at the end. However prolonging the amount of time spent in education is not the solution.

Whilst in Germany the length of a degree is similar to that in the UK, in Spain many courses take much longer. As a result, young people may be dissuaded from signing up to such a big commitment, with many degrees taking up to six years, when they are already demoralised by the society in which they live and as a result would be less likely to want to make such an investment when their prospects look bleak.

Meanwhile those attending shorter courses will likely come out the other side to see little change, and may feel even more let down by the system.

At the same time, austerity measures are seeing an increase in retirement age across Europe . It's ironic that at one end of the demographic you have people seeking work who are unable to find it, while at the toher you have people wanting to leave work but finding they must remain in employment for years to come. On top of that, regulations and directives from Brussels restricting flexibility in the workplace are preventing dynamic handling of the socio-economic situation from the bottom up. From the working time directive to the agency workers directive, legislation is costing companies billions in red tape and making it expensive to take on new staff.

It is also likely that such social regulation has also affected the expectations of Generation Z, who are becoming less willing than previous generations to perform what they deem menial tasks, or work for long hours for perceived little pay.

Meanwhile the generation in question has been brought up in a Western capitalist society where they know little other than a culture that demands recognition, luxury items and a certain lifestyle which in itself denigrades the usual forms of employment for those just starting their working lives. As a result, many 18 to 24 year olds look down their noses at employment opportunities in supermarkets or manufacturing plants. As a result, many of those jobs are taken up by migrant workers who essentially flee unemployment in their own countries, but by doing so, essentially shift the burden of jobs creation and welfare onto another country.

The cost of youth unemployment in Europe could be very high. This summer as Spain joins the ranks of Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece in economic turmoil, expect to see more riots from a disgruntled public on the streets, with a large proportion of protesters hailing from the 18-24 year old age bracket.

For every young person out of education and out of work, not only is an individual's capability wasted, but also their spirit. It is high time Brussels sought to rescind restrictive regulation that places a stranglehold on enterprise and curtail uncontrolled and exacerbatory free movement of people, if only to give the youth of today a chance while the going is tough.

Meanwhile as adults and as parents, it is our job as a society to keep the fire in their bellies alive, and thank or lucky stars when we have a solid income and a stable job.