Titanic Memorial Cruise

Perhaps it's me, but why? I notice the itinerary doesn't include the 'full sinking experience' (yet)



Update: Just seen that the Mail had an article about this in September, where passengers will be dressing up as characters from the film.

Tory Non-EU Immigration Cap Under Threat

From guess who?

Thousands of Indian workers will be allowed into Britain under a new European Union trade deal that threatens to overturn the Coalition's pledge severely to limit immigration.

A planned "free trade agreement" with India, to be signed this December, will give skilled Indian IT workers, engineers and managers easy passage into Europe in return for European companies gaining access to India's huge domestic market.

Many Conservative politicians fear the trade deal will undercut the wages of British managers and make a nonsense of a promise to cap immigration from non-EU countries.

The UK will be bound by any final EU agreement...

All of which leaves the Tories in a bit of a bind, but then it's only to be expected when the real Government lies elsewhere but you have to pretend all the time that it doesn't.

Tory Membership Plummets

I'm slightly late to this, but I notice Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi has had a difficult couple of days. After a poor performance on Question Time last night, especially this answer to a good question on pre-election promises:



I see that she also struggles to answer simple questions on Tory membership numbers, which surely as a Chairman she should know as a matter of bread and butter basics:



Intruidged, and suspicious for the reasons behind her reluctance, I quickly found the answer:

Tory membership down by a third... since Cameron became leader...dropping from 258,239 to 177,000.

ConHome acknowledges that it is a steep decline. Oh dear this Cameron Tory revolution is going well, isn't it?

Incidentally Charles Kennedy thinks Warsi is out of her depth:

UK To Share Nuclear Deterrent With French

I blogged back in August about the desire of the EU to have a common defence strategy in response to reports on Britain and France possibly sharing warships. (Incidentally The Talking Clock has a video on EU battlegroups).

Today the Financial Times has a piece on the continuation of this process - the astonishing possibility of effectively sharing our nuclear deterrent (my emphasis):

An agreement being negotiated by the UK and France would see British nuclear warheads serviced by French scientists and break with half a century in which neither country has collaborated on its independent deterrent.

Ahead of a summit in three weeks, the governments are close to agreeing that Britain would use a French laboratory to help maintain and service its 160 nuclear warheads, officials in both countries say.

Naturally the FT doesn't mention the EU aspect of this (it usually sits in Guardian territory on all matters EU), but it continues:

Britain and France run completely different deterrent systems with all details kept secret. The scheme would give Britain access for the first time to France’s Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, which maintains about 300 warheads in the French force de frappe.

In effect, the CEA would service UK nuclear warheads, raising concerns among politicians in both countries about whether their governments were maintaining an independent deterrent.

Too right it would raise concerns. The FT then quotes a French Defence Analyst who doesn't appear to be bereft of glee:

François Heisbourg, a French defence analyst, said sharing warhead research would assume “that the British break their very special relationship with America in that field”. This would require considerable “confidence on the US part”.

Given Cameron's poor military history knowledge, he probably will fail to understand the significant of this.

What is clear is that the pace of EU integration is not akin to that under Labour but has instead been accelerated. Not a surprise to anyone who has followed Tory EU policies for any length of time.

Tell It Like It Is

A wonderful exchange between Harry Beckough, a 97 year old Conservative member who's experienced war, and the patronising and useless Sky presenter Kay Burley:



hattip: political scrapbook

The Smell Of Rubber?

Earlier today, after a series of unsuccessful email correspondences with O2, a campaign was launched against O2's continuing involvement with 10:10, including the support from UKIP leadership candidate Nigel Farage.

Yet again it appears that a corporation has underestimated the power of the blogosphere, here's an update from Richard:

"Hi Richard

When we joined this campaign, we were not aware of the contents of the video. But as soon as we came to know about the video, we've withdrawn our support from that campaign. I'm sorry as I know it may have hurt our customers emotionally but O2 didn't did this intentionally. As I belong to a online customer service team, I won't be able to talk much about this matter.

Thanks
Ashwani
O2 Customer Service"

Whoops, I can smell the burning of rubber as O2 engages that reverse gear rapidly. As always, the question is, why does it have to take this sort of effort before companies' listen to their customers?

Update: A demonstration of 'right hand doesn't know its left hand' it seems from O2 in the latest update. The formal position from O2 is more supportive of 10:10. However as Richard rightly points out this makes them more isolated. Surely they can't maintain that position much longer?

Update II: I'm not an O2 customer but my wife is, so she has sent the following complaint. Let's see how we get on:

Dear Sirs,

Account Number: ********

As a loyal O2 customer of around 12 years, I was greatly disturbed by a recent video released by the 10:10 group - a campaign movement which tries to encourage a 10% reduction in personal emissions. Whilst I welcome any moves to encourage more efficient use of energy, my reaction on first seeing this video was of profound shock. The core message was particularly nasty – go green or your children die.

I’m sure you will appreciate therefore that I was disappointed to discover that O2 is listed on the 10:10 website as a sponsor. No doubt in light of that, you will appreciate my concerns that customers money is being used to fund what is in effect a counterproductive and deeply unpleasant film which leaves nothing to the imagination in the ‘killing’ of children.

Please can you confirm that you will disassociate yourself from this film, and the 10:10 campaign, as soon as possible.

Yours faithfully

Update: My wife has a response:

I'm sorry about the video and we have taken your feedback very seriously.

We were unaware of the effect this video would cause our patrons around the world. It was made for the good intention of supporting climate change and pollution. This video was removed by 10:10 and a written apology was made public.

I'm once again sorry. If there's anything else I can help with, get back to us or click on the link below:

http://www.o2.co.uk/support/generalhelp

Regards

Rochelle
O2 Customer Service

Telefonica O2 UK limited, Registered in England No 1743099. Registered
Office: 260 Bath Road, Slough, Berkshire SL14DX.

War Of The Supranationals

As you are probably aware Article 6 (2) of the Lisbon Treaty states:

The Union shall accede to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Such accession shall not affect the Union's competences as defined in the Treaties.

This means that it is not only a desire but a duty for EU institutions to accede to the European Convention of Human Rights which is supervised by the European Court of Human Rights based in Strasburg. The EU institutions will be subject to rulings by the non-EU Council of Europe.

But of course the accession has not been that simple so far. The negotiations have been protracted and...quite frankly a bit of a mess. (The now defunct blogger Julien Frisch has some good posts on the various problems here.)

However, the ECHR blog points me to a recently released working paper on the accession question (downloadable here) which highlights some other anomalies and questions that need resolving. This one caught my eye:

The difference to cases involving secondary EU law is that violations can only be remedied through a Treaty amendment following the procedure set out in Article 48 TEU. Normally such an amendment requires the consent of and ratification by all Member States*. This means that the EU institutions cannot remove the violation by themselves. They are dependent on the Member States.

This has already been acknowledged in the Matthews case, where the EU Act on Direct Elections was held to violate the right to free elections of Article 3 of the First Protocol to the ECHR and the United Kingdom as a Member State of Member State of the EU was held responsible for that violation.

For the question of the correct respondent, we should therefore apply the solution found above: where a Member State acted, that Member State is the correct respondent; where the EU acted, it is the EU. This should be independent of whether the alleged violation is found in primary or secondary law.

I'm sure having read that some of you have worked out where this is going. Not only can another unaccountable institution effectively force changes in the Lisbon Treaty but a successful human rights challenge, that as a consequence forces the EU to invoke article 48, could be enough to trigger a referendum in this country (if Cameron finally gets round to passing a 'referendum lock'. No wonder he's reluctant).

This scenario is probably unlikely - a few weasel words will probably allow him to wriggle out of any 'referendum lock' but it does highlight the potential consequences of the Lisbon Treaty, and that the more we integrate, the harder it becomes for the Tories to 'pretend' they are euroceptics. Something has to snap.

*It's worth noting that the infamous self amending part of Lisbon - Article 48 - has 'implicit' and 'explicit' clauses. All bar one are explicit, i.e. any self-amendment to the Treaty requires the UK Parliament's permission (along with the other 26 member states), however the notorious 48.7 clause is implicit; basically Parliament always agrees to amendments unless it specifically objects.

When Headlines Seem Too Good To Be True

Great, I thought, the revolution has come early, but instead it's about Pakistan and al-Qaeda.

”I Like To Compare EU With Soviet Union”

From RT:

The European Union should not be expected to last forever, believes British politician and member of the EU Parliament Roger Helmer.

”I do not think that the European Union can last forever,” Helmer told RT. “I like to compare it to the USSR, we should not do the comparison too far, but I think there are a lot of factors.”

He also has some interesting comments on his party's stance on the EU, which he reiterates on his blog here. He is clearly disillusioned with his own party, one wonders how long before he takes Geoffrey Howe's "tragic conflict of loyalties" advice.

Downfall Spoof

Last night I knocked up my first ever downfall spoof, regarding the 10:10 No pressure video - which has spectacularly backfired. I was surprised one hadn't been done yet, I know the idea's rather cliched but I'm quite pleased with it though there are a couple of mistakes or things I'm not entirely happy with. But anyway here it is:



I didn't have time to do a post on here last night about it, so I just left a link on the EUReferendum forum. Anyway James Dellingpole has picked up on it:

"And it’s a good ‘un".

Thanks James.

Note: for those wondering why it's on metacafe not youtube it's because of copyright issues on youtube

Update: my video has been removed from metacafe. I'm trying to upload it elsewhere

Update II: I've uploaded my video again via Eyetube. Many thanks to those involved with the site.