We internet veterans have seen it all before ...

Many seasoned web users will recall when Netscape Navigator was the browser to have, when your modem had to dial the BT internet number, usually managing to connect after about six tries, when newsgroups were the means of downloading huge 56k jpg pics, sometimes downloading an entire image in fewer than ten minutes. Your modem would drop the connection every hour or so, and data lines were so congested that even a page of plain HTML 1.0 text would take several minutes to load. 

So the dire state of the web today - the results of a mash between secure browsers, greedy Flash, ad-blockers and the attempts of commercial sites to overcome them, is really nothing new. The Telegraph crashes Firefox every other time I load it, one can't watch a streaming video and look at the Evening Standard at the same time (browser locks) and the machine sends at least three crash reports a day back to Firefox HQ.  

Even Blogger is becoming unusable - capcha routines that frustrate participation and make commenting a chore, and unexplained faults that just freeze the screen (oops - there's another one!).

Is this all some great plan to get us out in the open more? Because really I'm as brown as a nut already from working outside and graft hard on house renovation during all the lighter hours. C'mon computer folks - the internet wasn't made for mono-tasking. We're quite capable of placing an eBay order, watching the news and making backgammon moves on the same screen at the same time - so sort yourselves out. 

Unimaginative Federasts trying to repeat Greek treatment

Dreary and unimaginative Brussels Federasts are keeping true to form - and are repeating every one of the dirty tricks used on Greece and as described by Yanis Varaufakis. Do these tedious little Eurocrats really have nothing else in their toolbox?

The Telegraph carries a report that details the dirty dealings. First, the outrageous gangster demands and the bullying to agree them. Then a total refusal to provide fiscal and legal justification. Then threats to unilaterally suspend the talks unless the UK agrees to their demands. All to a background of propaganda fed to the Remoaner press that the UK 'isn't coping' - a meme that has gulled even the gifted.

The grubby Federasts even appear to use photo opportunities to try to wrong-foot the UK. However, we have many years of watching our national football team deal with this sort of tactical dirty play from johnny foreigner, and every football-watching Brit will see the sly shin-kicks, ball handling and shoulder-barging for what it is.

So, second session in and I remain hopeful. 

Has Brit Brexit strategy has got Brussels on the back foot?

The next Brexit negotiations resume tomorrow - with an increasingly nervous Brussels starting to whine that David Davis and his team are not following their rules. The EU has already published a whole series of comprehensive position papers in damning detail and is starting to realise too late that this may not have been the best idea. 

The Federasts imagined that they would dominate the whole process to the extent that we would have no choice but to fall in with their programme, but so far what we have done is largely to question the basis of their published positions; what exactly are the legal grounds on which they make their grasping financial claims? How precisely have these sums been calculated?

We have responded to their citizenship / movement proposals but they say we don't go far enough. Shrug. However, having now published their own comprehensive proposals, they can hardly row back on promised rights; to do so would be to appear unbearably spiteful. So they're stuck. 

They simply can't accept that this is a bi-lateral negotiation and we're an equal player in the game, with our own plan and agenda. Our refusal to obey their rules has got them on the back foot, and a nervous and unstable Brussels is starting to aim bitter barbs at Britain. I can find nothing so far for which to criticise David Davis and his team. 

If we get a petulant Federast temper tantrum tomorrow evening, it will be a good indication that things are going well.

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' 

From the Desk of Mr Barrister Tony Blair

As with Nigerian 419 scammers, Mr Barrister Tony Blair doesn't himself address anyone. Such people imagine that heading a polite written request for £5,000 or an excuse for killing 100,000 people with the words 'From the desk of ...' or 'From the office of ...' adds gravitas to their own actual insignificance. Guys, it really doesn't. 

So we have Chilcot clarifying that the truth for Mr Barrister Tony Blair is what he believes it to be, and that he approached War in the same way an advocate defending a man charged with waving his todger about on the Central Line. For Mr Barrister Tony Blair, an emotional and persuasive appeal always trumps stuff like actual facts, real intelligence and credible evidence. And that probably goes for his Desk, his Office and any other objects that speak for him. 

But just as learned counsel don't actually deceive the court when they aver that their client claims he was just shaking raindrops from a newly purchased Bratwurst in that tube carriage, and that this could indeed have been the case, that there exists a reasonable doubt, so Mr Barrister Tony Blair wasn't actually deceiving us when he claimed with all his emotional wringing that Iraq might represent a threat. 

The difference is more than a £500 fine. Iraq is a nation drenched in innocent blood and spattered with detonated body parts, home to pain, suffering, desperation and despair, the source of Islamist hatred, and a graveyard for an entire generation. And for that we must thank the Desk of Mr Barrister Tony Blair, 419 scammer and blagger extraordinaire, a man who avoids jail as an eel eludes the hand. 

Coffee needed. I've got a vomity taste in my throat.

Summer migrant surge exposes multiple EU failures

Well, you've read about it here many times. The many millions of young, male, African economic migrants moving North to make the move into Europe, driven by low child mortality rates achieved 15- 20 years ago that have caused a massive population bulge of young men for whom failing, despotic and corrupt African economies can provide no work. Global 3G phones and cheap Chinese crocs and clothing have convinced these poor sods that, from their 8th century barrios, without work, educational or social skills, they can fit right into a 21st century Europe. Even the UN, an organisation now dedicated to the destruction of the old-world nations, admits they're just economic migrants.

So far this year 84,000 have reached Italy and Europe's southern sphincter is tightening. Austria is upping its Brenner Pass border control, France continues a state of emergency and the Visegrad nations continue to flip a middle finger to Brussels. It's five years too late, but just about everyone now realises just how badly the EU has failed in controlling migration. Everyone except the deluded morons in the Berlaymont, of course, who even now see nothing wrong. Any fix at source - in Libya - is also now likely to be achieved by an informal group of European nations as the EU continues to be paralysed by hubris, failure and delusion.

Michael Gove generally visits the prestigious Mayr clinic on Lake Wörthersee each year to have his colon flushed out and to eat weed soup, and I'm sure Sarah Vine appreciates the work he puts in to keep his bowel in good condition - she writes in the Mail that she fears 'dark forces' rising in Italy over migration that may imperil the annual Gove arse-hosing. God save us.

Car lease bubble to burst?

It's the same all over Europe. No-one buys a car for cash any more. The roads are full of cars under five years old most of which seem to have been bought on retail leases, those three or five year deals with low or no deposit, low monthly lease cost but with punitive damage and mileage conditions and a vastly inflated bubble payment at the end of the term should drivers perversely want to buy their cars rather than take out a new lease. 

Here they all go for those vast-tyred monsters that come as close to looking like like a Humvee as road-legal cars can get. With thick chrome roll bars and Bengal plate slab decks. And they pretend they own them. 

What I can't understand is what the car makers' leasing companies, who presumably own all the three year old returned cars, actually do with them. If they released them all on the market then second hand prices would plummet with a tsunami of perfect condition pre-owned cars and fewer people would take the new lease options - so where are they? Shipped overseas? In some vast desert store like the entire 1970s USAF fleet of aircraft? I think we should be told.

For scale, the driver is standing under the front spoiler. Essential for the Munich school run.

That dodgy 'secret' K&C cabinet meeting

In my view the High Court was quite correct to forbid Kensington and Chelsea Council from holding a formal cabinet meeting from which press and public were to be excluded. The Guardian brought the case. 

Firstly, the cabinet has plenty of opportunities to have private meetings - under the name of majority group, leader's meeting, or even outside the Council as a Party event. There is only one reason for meeting formally as a Council cabinet - and that's to take decisions. Now there are circumstances, defined by Schedule 12A of the 1972 Local Government Act, under which cabinet agenda reports can be classed as 'Exempt' and press and public can be excluded from meetings. The reasons are pretty tight. K&C didn't even attempt to use these grounds, for there was no written report to consider. Instead they sought to use a part of the Council's standing orders that covered preventing public disorder. 

So with no report tabled - open or exempt - why the need for a formal cabinet meeting? I suspect that they were intending to take a decision, that a report had been written, and that cabinet could agree to take it without prior publication to all councillors on grounds of 'overwhelming urgency'. If they just wanted a private discussion, why a formal cabinet meeting?

There is something very dodgy about the behaviour of K&C cabinet members here. Sadiq Khan, though, is just making silly little boy's political capital with his request to Mrs May to put the Council under special measures - he knows full well this is reserved for cases of egregious corruption such as the Muslim mafia takeover of Tower Hamlets. London's mayor has just proven himself to be a junior league failure, not fit to play with the big boys. He will be a one-term wonder. 

However, the council's new Tory cabinet needs to up its game to prove it can do the job. 

Khan - a failing one-term wonder

EU is failing again in the Western Balkans

If I could draw a cartoon it would be the statelets of the western Balkans fighting in a furious 2020 dustball of fists and boots whilst an EU President as shamefaced as a labrador who has copiously fouled the bedroom rug looks on, with the caption "You had one job ..."

The EU's foreign policy is a litany of failure, yet these hubristic Federasts want their own army to reinforce that failure; whilst they poke Putin in Ukraine, the Western Balkans are being lost to Russian expansion and Salafist pollution, corrupted through Turkish influence with Saudi money into a hotbed of radical Islamism. Reports in both the Republican American Interest and the Lefty Der Spiegel  catalogue the loss of interest by the EU in further Balkans accessions and the loss of interest by the Balks (if they can be so termed) in the EU; latest polls indicate that just 18% of Serbians really want to join the Federation. As Russia protects Christian orthodox nations, newly groomed Islamist statelets throw up new Saudi-funded mosques staffed by Saudi-supplied imams, to radicalise a new generation of Islamist terrorists. 

The Washington Post thinks it is a failure of democracy, that Balkans statelets are 'halfway democracies' and offers reasons for this. The paper misses the biggest reason of all. That the EU has the role of democracy mentor and monitor, and that the EU is in itself the most profoundly anti-democratic of regimes. It's like giving the job of Civics teacher to Pol Pot. What sort of lesson do the Balkans get from a corrupt Brussels EU regime that believes that the secret ballot and universal suffrage are obstacles to be over-ridden, that plebiscites can be repudiated and overturned, that solemn treaties can be broken for political ends and that threats, bullying and hubristic posturing are equated with statesmanship?

We should not forget that the Balkans are exporting their violent men who return even more skilled in crime and violence; Islamists fight for ISIS and pass back and forwards through a complicit Turkey, Albanian cocaine gangs dominate Europe, Serb people traffickers cross Europe in trucks filled with Afghan migrants. The reason why Austria can't put cigarette prices up to over €4,50 a pack is the ease with which white brands are smuggled from Balkans factories. Now that Croatia is part of the EU, there are a quarter million more Croatian passport holders than there are Croatians; well, who speaks enough Serbo-Croat to know? 

I have little doubt that the western Balkans will blow up again, and the dirty EU labrador whose fault it will be will wring its paws and ask for British peacekeepers and US ground attack aircraft to clear their shit up.

The one key factor in EU migration

You will all be used by now to everything from constipation to Summer lightning being blamed on Brexit; the remoaners know no limits in seeking to establish Brexit as the cause of every ill. Cow dries up? Crop fails? Late hail? Ewe aborts? Brexit. A few hundred years ago the same people blamed witches for everything that went wrong with their lives. Today they blame Brexit. 

EU staff are fleeing the NHS in terror, apparently. If you read the Guardian, you'll get a picture of the UK as a fearful panic nation in which stoic Hungarian nose-surgeons brave being spat at on the bus for talking funny. It's utter rubbish of course; the Guardian is an open sewer and its content just as palatable. Now the Indescribablyboring runs its own 'Brexit panic fear brain-drain exodus'  made-up news story. Sigh.

There's really only one factor that determines more than any other the level and pressure of inward EU migration to the UK; the £ - € exchange rate. When it stood at €1.35 - €1.43 to the £, every raspberry was picked, every ward swabbed and every bathroom tiled. Now it's €1.13 and housing costs in London and the South East are through the roof, EU workers are asking 'what's the point?'

If politicians had known they could reduce EU migration so effectively by weakening the pound, they would have done it before.  If the Peso hit $0.50 rather than $0.05 then Mr Trump would not have to build a wall. People simply don't uproot and migrate unless it's worth it. Until Greece defaults, the entire Italian banking system folds, Deutsche Bank drops or Spain goes bust, and so long as the pound is weak, our EU gastarbeiter will drift home.

Labour Party tower block 'murderers' condemned

Well, the government haven't politicised the faulty tower blocks, but Communist squib John McDonnell has done so - saying victims of the Grenfell fire were murdered by political decisions. Before he condemns so widely he might like to look at the political control of the councils which have covered their tower blocks with lethal materials;

Portsmouth	Conservative
Brent	Labour
Camden	Labour
Manchester	Labour
Plymouth	NOC
Hounslow	Labour
Doncaster	Labour
Norwich	Labour
Stockton on Tees	NOC
Sunderland	Labour
Islington	Labour
Lambeth	Labour
Wandsworth	Conservative
Barnet	Conservative

 Who are the potential killers now, John? And I'll bet when the DCLG release even more names that Labour councils predominate.

Also, can anyone explain why the government should face a £600m bill for correcting this danger? Why should not these councils dip into their own very substantial (£19bn from CIPFA) reserves to pay for it? Is this not exactly what council reserves are for?

Freedom Day

A year ago as the dawn Sun peeped over a valley rich with the Summer scent of new-cut hay I tuned into the Referendum results and got the shock of my life. No less stunned were the gloomy, funereal faces of the newscasters admitting the result. 

Since then much has happened. We have seen-off court cases, a hostile house of Lords, internal sabotage and a constant pissy whine from the old political establishment. Much remains to be done. We pray the resolve of our nation's leaders does not falter, that the sniping, bullying and undermining of the EU is overcome.

Yet I take comfort from the election, in which 86% of voters cast votes for Brexit parties, and from a recent You Gov poll that puts Leavers at 78% in total against 22% die-hard remainers. And every spiteful, bullying put-down from the hubristic EU Federast capos actually gains more and more of us to the Leave cause. 

The real Freedom Day will come in 2019 when we are free of the shackles of this despotic little Federation. But for now, this is a good anniversary to remember. 

Kensington duffer sacked

The forced resignation of Kensington and Chelsea Chief Executive Nicholas Holgate was on the grounds of the Council's appalling response to the aftermath of the Grenfell fire. More on this shortly. The yappy dags of the mainstream media though can't resist adding their own made-up reasons; "and for ignoring the repeated warnings of the fire risk" snaps the Mail, "and for neglect of the poor and of social housing" whines the Guardian. 

Across the country things are structured for the blue-light services to form the 'hard' response to civil emergency but for local authorities to co-ordinate the 'soft' side; power, water, sewerage, food, housing, transport, clothing, bedding, pets, banks, schools. Each council is given a substantial annual grant to maintain an Emergency Planning function including regular training; 'gold' 'silver' and 'bronze' commands in association with neighbouring councils are put in place. So when something like Grenfell happens, the machine swings smoothly into place. 

Except of course it didn't. K&C's response was non-existent. Holgate was an utter failure, a decorative popinjay, who left it up to churches, mosques and sharp-elbowed residents to organise food and clothing banks, blankets and so on. And despite K&C being replete with flats, Holgate's morons were sending DPs to council housing hundreds of miles away. In the event a group of six neighbouring councils had to step in to do what K&C was not - in the process excluding Holgate from the management of a crisis in his own borough. Even the departments of State each set up a stand on the estate and dispatched staff to serve the DPs - but not K&C council. 

It was quite right that this duffer was booted out. It also reminded me of the incompetence of the mayor of New Orleans in the days following the disastrous floods there. Such people must go. They earn their inflated salaries on the basis of a modicum of competence. When found wanting, they must be cast into the darkness.  

Update
=======
I've just found Simon Jenkins in the ES whose own piece mirrors my view:-

It was total humiliation. Yesterday, as the dust began to settle around the Grenfell Tower site, six London borough bosses met to co-ordinate rescue efforts and struggle to repair the reputation of local government. They did not include the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, on whose patch the tragedy occurred. In the chair was the chief executive of the City Corporation, John Barradell, with “leadership roles” for Westminster, Southwark, Ealing, Hounslow, Bromley and Harrow. I am told they did not even meet in the royal borough.

So, it's to be 'hard' Brexit then.

Confirmation from the Federast Empire that Brexit means exit from the customs union and single market will have disappointed a number of 'soft' Brexiteers. The statement came yesterday at the start of Brexit talks between the Kingdom and the Empire. And I use those terms with reason.

Imagine, some time after 1870, if the kingdom of Bavaria told the king of Prussia and Emperor of Germany that they wanted to leave the German federation, please, and go back to building castles and selling cuckoo clocks and lager. Prussia's anger would not only make it certain that Bavaria was excluded from the Zollverein but would take the hit on increased clock and lager costs, on principle.

But doesn't this just make our team's job easier? If this means any grant of UK aid to the Federation - though not the absurd €100bn of aid the EU are asking for - must be linked to a trade deal that replaces some of the elements of the foregone customs union and single market? That any agreed UK aid to the EU is conditional?

And surely, if yesterday's pronouncement from Barnier means we're already on WTO terms by default, we've got nothing to lose by walking away without agreeing a grant of aid to the 27?

Can anyone explain?

Grenfell Tower

Around 6am, 5am UK time, last Wednesday morning I started watching Grenfell Tower burning. It was clear from the footage that the fire progressed on the outside of the building. "Cladding" I said to my plumber. A bit of digging about found the portfolio pics on the website of Studio E architects, of Tooley Street; they confirmed that an aluminium sandwich panel was specified. The architects have since taken down their website and are keeping a very low profile. Their residential portfolio has also disappeared from their RIBA page. 

It's all about energy efficiency. This was a concrete tower block with inadequate insulation and single glazed steel or aluminium windows. To slash heat loss, new external wall insulation and double glazed windows have been a standard solution since the start of the century, and to that extent no problem. EWI on low rise and domestic buildings usually means dark grey PE or Polyethylene foam in blocks up to 150mm thick stuck and screwed onto the existing facade. On low rise this is then usually rendered to give a 15mm thick crust that stops people poking holes in the foam with their fingers (but useless against woodpeckers, who now prefer making nests in EWI than in trees). 

We've all known for years that PE foam was a fire risk, and it's always therefore been replaced by 120mm - 200mm of mineral wool for higher buildings. However, repeated wet work - layers of render coats - at heights is costly and problematic, with the risk of injury if the adhesive bond between render and rockwool fails and chunks fall off. In place of render on highrise buildings the industry instead uses rainscreen cladding, designed to be fairly but not absolutely waterproof. So a void is left between the cladding and the rockwool to allow some rainwater to drip down and be drained without soaking the EWI. Again, not a problem if the rainscreen cladding is not inflammable and if fire-stopping and drainage at each storey is incorporated. 

What we know from the photographs and news reports is that rockwool was used - correctly - for the insulation but so it seems was the inflammable PE foam - if only in a 5mm thick layer in the middle of an aluminium sandwich for the rainscreen cladding. Suspicions that fire-stopping was left out - which would make drainage behind the facade much cheaper and easier - would explain a chimney effect for the fire spread. 

Now, none of this is specialist construction design and engineering. Just about everyone in construction knows the problems with PE foam - and personally I won't even use it for low rise not just because it burns so easily but because it's completely vapour impermeable and stops buildings from breathing - and just about everyone knows the importance of fire stopping between dwellings. 

When those responsible for the design and execution of these works face the consequences of their errors it will not be enough to claim that since the government hadn't banned one material or another they are in the clear. All of us in positions of responsibility in construction have an absolute duty of care and design teams - CDM, designer, engineer, supervisor, PM, QS - are constituted in such a way as to provide post-hoc evidence of exactly how such decisions were made. You can be sure that since last Wednesday each one of them will have printed out and assembled every email from this job, every periodic report, every meeting, every bit of written evidence and will now each be constructing a narrative that minimises their own culpability. Lawyers will have been briefed. We must now all wait and allow the enquiry to do what it must. 

Grenfell Tower cladding drawing from Studio E architects

   

German Nordstream II investors running scared

The unexpected inclusion of sanctions measures against Euro firms assisting Russian energy exports in a Bill supposed to penalise Iran in the US has caused panic amongst the Euro corporates. The Local reports that Merkel's spokesman said that she 

'shared the concerns raised by Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern who charged in a joint statement on Thursday that the measure brings a "completely new and entirely negative quality to European-US relations". In a hard-hitting statement, the German and Austrian said they "cannot accept the threat of extra-territorial sanctions against European companies that participate in the expansion of European energy supplies" adding that this would "violate international law". They accused Washington of using the sanctions to squeeze Russian gas supplies out of Europe in favour of US energy exports. "The aim is to secure jobs in gas and oil industries in the US," said Gabriel and Kern.'

The major panic seems to be with the Nordstream II  scheme - owned by Russia's Gazprom but with substantial investments from Uniper, OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, BASF's Wintershall and Engie. All now face penalties wherever Trump's administration can reach them. 

Nothing to do of course with the EU's signalled intention to fine Google €1bn this year, of course, and if US penalties equal this figure it will be purely coincidental.

Watch out BMW and Audi ...

BREXIT IS DEAD - Der Spiegel

Der Spiegel seems pretty certain - the Germans have won, with the help of global corporatism and the Tory Party, and Brexit is dead.

We''ll come crawling back in a few years begging to be let back in, they say. And they warn that re-admission will mean Britain's utter humiliation - they want to grind our face in the dirt under the heel of the jackboot. We cocky Brits will learn who is boss.

Hey ho.