Desperate Federasts dig up Blair again

No sooner has Bloody Blair settled back in his casket then desperate Federasts have wielded flying shovels to dig him up again. The publication of the Great Repeal Bill has brought it home to the die-hard remoaners that we really are leaving; Tim Farron, who can now use his child's Oyster Card again on the buses, the egregious 'Lord' Adonis (an American nickname, surely, like those given to black jazz musicians?) and now the late Mr Barrister Tony Blair all seem to be moronic enough to imagine the UK could have another referendum, just in case we've changed our minds.

The Late Mr Blair now claims that Herr Juncker and Herr Verhofstadt are willing to crawl naked down the central corridor of Westminster Palace and kiss the Speaker's bare arse if only the UK reconsiders her decision to take £10bn a year away from the Evil Empire. 

This desperation is risible. Guys, go and put Mr Barrister Tony Blair back in his casket and cover him up again.

EU's destruction of European food quality and cultivars

Young Alois, my Bavarian sparky, threw the last of his lunch away in disgust. "This apple tastes crap." Well, yes. They don't do South African or New Zealand apples here, so it was last year's, and since Austrian agriculture has been 'modernised' would likely be one of just half a dozen long-season high-cropping cultivars now grown and sold from Aberdeen to Athens. Yes, the EU means you can walk into a supermarket anywhere in Europe and buy the same variety of tasteless, textureless apple of uniform size and condition, and up to three years old. 

The same goes for tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes and virtually all of the greengrocery shelves. Milk and dairy quality remains superb, but rather for freshness than taste. You need to visit the bi-weekly farmers' markets to buy real, quality fresh fruit and veg here - or drive forty minutes across the border to the nearest Italian market town. Austria has sleepwalked into the same corporatist hell of consistent mediocrity that has destroyed British horticulture. 

It's not just the EU - it's the power of advertising, fear of uncleanliness and the triumph of the global petrochemical corporates. There's also a Disneyfication of what the natural environment should look like. I am insistent that the environment starts with flies; flies that cluster around cow stalls, thrive on dung and hug the meadows. Fly catchers such as the black redstarts now raising their second brood of the year in my rafters can get through 1.2kg of flies in a season; my cheeky wall-lizards, majestic fire salamanders, graceful grass snakes and adventurous slow-worms and all the other reptiles and amphibians sharing my space here all depend on insects / invertebrates. Once you get rid of your domestic livestock - two cows in the stalls, a pig in its sty, chickens in the yard, maybe a goat or two - you also lose the richness of your reptile and amphibian life. But such things, like outside lavvies, are considered too 'peasant', not consistent with the sophistication of a two-tonne 4x4 with chrome bull bars and a set of brown plastic wicker garden chairs.  

As I write, from my study window I see in the meadow below a roe hind has brought her two fauns from the copse to graze. The meadows are alive with a procession of butterflies, each type appearing in turn as its particular flowers come into bloom, more types of butterfly than I ever saw in a lifetime in England, but here the meadows are unsprayed, chem-free and with a riot of wild flowers that it takes five grand and the Chelsea flower show to achieve in the home counties. 

So the news that Germany is demanding that French agriculture 'modernises' is really not good news for anyone in Europe who values food quality. The only problem with French agriculture is that the farmers think it's their right to be rich. It really isn't. But their refusal to take steps that could 'rationalise' French cheese to six standard types and allow bread factories to sell extended-life baguettes for 14 days after baking is wholly commendable.

Austria has lost her native universal food quality, victim to the EU and the corporates. Only Romania and Bulgaria still maintain sustainable, environmentally good agriculture with a richness of taste and variety, largesse of produce and quality of life - and the manufacturers of EU subsidised tractors and cheap-lease heavyweight 4x4s are already moving in, the horses already on their way to the knacker. 

The EU's hatred of sustainable agriculture will destroy our environment

EU army Battlegroups take shape

There is a quiet and little known story about the way in which Austria's post-war army came into being. You will recall that Austria quickly established the narrative that she was a victim of Nazism rather than a participant, then signalled a future perpetual neutrality. Occupied by the allies until 1955, it was these narratives that left Austria as a sovereign and undivided nation. Germany had to wait until 1989. Even as early as the Summer of 1945, the first Summer of occupation, Austrian officers who remembered the pre-war army hatched a plan to recreate it under the noses of the occupiers. With an officer corps with experience gained in the Wehrmacht's battles from Finland to Sevastapol, Narvik to Tobruk, but who were 'clean' of Nazism, a police auxiliary was formed. While directing traffic, policing the black market and ensuring public order amongst hordes of DPs they were also receiving secret military training; arms were cached, secret command structures created, and so on. 

So when in 1955 the shortly-to-be-free Austria was taking over allied functions some kindly adviser must have said "You'll need an army, you know; not a big one, but enough to defend your neutrality" the country was able to say "Thank you. Here's one we made earlier .." Austrians in the know are secretly proud of this guile, at having fooled the big boys, but I'm not so sure that we didn't actually know all along what was going on and chose to let it roll. 

Although it seems like only yesterday that the EU issued an options paper for a new army, in fact it was the end of May when we reported it.  It seems they have now decided on a full-blown army under EU rather than national control; or rather, this was secretly agreed a long time ago and is only now being unveiled. My earlier comments now prove prescient. Hidden in a piece in Der Spiegel is this;

The most detailed element of future Franco-German relations is military cooperation. German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and her French counterpart have made significant progress - despite the recent revolving door at the French Defense Ministry. The convergence is taking place as part of so-called "Permanent Structured Cooperation" or PESCO, which refers to the process whereby those EU countries who wish to work more closely together can do so.

The hope is to test out the process for the first time on military issues, an area where the 28 EU member states waste millions each year due to a lack of coordination, particularly when it comes to purchasing new weapons systems. Brexit combined with the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. have acted as a catalyst when it comes to European defense cooperation.

The last significant hurdle is to be removed in Paris on Thursday. France had long been insisting that a key priority of military cooperation should be the battlefield effectiveness of the resulting force whereas the Germans are eager to include as many countries as possible. Now, both wishes are to be fulfilled: The cooperation, European Council President Donald Tusk said in June, is to be "ambitious and inclusive."

 Those interested in joining PESCO must commit themselves to five clearly outlined admission criteria, such as improved coordination of military procurement and constant defense spending increases. The plan also calls for more countries to participate in financing the EU Battlegroups. Formed a decade ago, there has been little appetite for actually deploying them in part because those countries supplying troops to the Battlegroups have thus far had to bear the costs on their own.

I can only imagine that the UK was sick on the day they decided all of this. 

A bonfire of pointless Euro tenders

Any firm bidding for contracts of more than petty value with the public sector will have faced the daunting hurdles of Euro Procurement. The public sector has made a religion out of compliance with all the tedious, bureaucratic, costly, time-wasting, inefficient foolishness required by Brussels in inviting Romanian horse-knackers, Sicilian mafioso and Lithuanian bordello chains to bid on equal terms with UK firms for local, domestic contracts such as building a new school or making dinners for its pupils.  

Tussell (£) reports that in 2016 the UK public sector advertised 17,000 tenders with a value of £301bn that were open to EU firms. The MoD was the largest Euro Advertiser with 700 contracts worth £13bn. Construction and IT are probably the biggest categories of work, but even suppliers of civil service paper clips must bid against Bulgarian wire-benders; 9,000 supply contracts in 2016 worth some £38bn.

Ho, you may huff. At least all that contract money wasted on Kermits and Huns will come back to John Bull. But actually no. The whole lengthy, complicated, expensive, time consuming process that employs the time of thousands of public sector workers is utterly and absolutely pointless. A Parliamentary briefing paper (6029,2015) finds that just 1.3% of public contracts go to European firms - and that UK firms win just 0.8% of other EU public contracts. We'd save billions just by abolishing the inane process - billions more than the public sector saves by compulsory Euro procurement. 

The public sector must be free to decide where best value in procurement lays.* Whether this is the EU, the US, the far East or Grimsby. Without Compulsion. And a bonfire of The 2015 Public Contracts Regulations. I dare say no-one would actually notice if we binned the thing right away and redeployed all those redundant public sector workers into wiping old people's bottoms or something useful. 

*Yes, this is a Suffolkism. For the rest of you read 'lies'