Posts mit dem Label Britain werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Posts mit dem Label Britain werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Donnerstag, April 26, 2012
Freitag, Januar 20, 2012
the British educational system.... trained to be spanked! :-)
some... ;-) develop even a thing for spanking! (inside joke...)
Sonntag, Dezember 11, 2011
Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie on Language......
.... well more Stephen Fry's meandring thoughts on Language and Laurie's desperate attempts to hold the thoughts together :-)
Try to keep up! :-)
Try to keep up! :-)
Sonntag, Februar 13, 2011
Dienstag, Februar 01, 2011
Mittwoch, Oktober 13, 2010
Der englische Mittelstand ächzt unter Camerons Spardruck
Tages Anzeiger 12.10.2010
Der englische Mittelstand ächzt unter Camerons Spardruck
Von Philipp Löpfe.
Die Regierung von David Cameron verlangt von den Menschen grosse Sparopfer und will gleichzeitig den Gemeinschaftssinn fördern. Ist das zynisch oder nur dumm?
Auf der britischen Insel wird derzeit ein soziales Experiment mit realen Menschen durchgeführt: Die neue konservativ-liberale Regierung will mit drakonischen Sparmassnahmen den Staatshaushalt sanieren und gleichzeitig die Menschen zu mehr Freiwilligenarbeit an der Menschheit anhalten. Anstelle von «Big Government» (aufgeblähte Regierung) soll so die «Big Society», eine faire und gerechte Gesellschaft entstehen, in der man sich wieder gegenseitig hilft.
Die Idee für eine «Big Society» ist nicht neu. «Frag nicht, was der Staat für dich tun kann, sondern frag dich, was du für die Gesellschaft machen kannst», hat bereits John F. Kennedy in seiner legendären Antrittsrede proklamiert. An diesen Geist will der britische Premierminister David Cameron anknüpfen. Dummerweise haben sich in den rund 50 Jahren, die zwischen ihm und Kennedy liegen, die gesellschaftlichen Umstände massiv verändert.
Andere Situation in den USA
Die Vereinigten Staaten waren in den 60er-Jahren geprägt von einem breiten Mittelstand. Die Menschen hatten einen sicheren Job, verdienten.....
Der englische Mittelstand ächzt unter Camerons Spardruck
Von Philipp Löpfe.
Die Regierung von David Cameron verlangt von den Menschen grosse Sparopfer und will gleichzeitig den Gemeinschaftssinn fördern. Ist das zynisch oder nur dumm?
Auf der britischen Insel wird derzeit ein soziales Experiment mit realen Menschen durchgeführt: Die neue konservativ-liberale Regierung will mit drakonischen Sparmassnahmen den Staatshaushalt sanieren und gleichzeitig die Menschen zu mehr Freiwilligenarbeit an der Menschheit anhalten. Anstelle von «Big Government» (aufgeblähte Regierung) soll so die «Big Society», eine faire und gerechte Gesellschaft entstehen, in der man sich wieder gegenseitig hilft.
Die Idee für eine «Big Society» ist nicht neu. «Frag nicht, was der Staat für dich tun kann, sondern frag dich, was du für die Gesellschaft machen kannst», hat bereits John F. Kennedy in seiner legendären Antrittsrede proklamiert. An diesen Geist will der britische Premierminister David Cameron anknüpfen. Dummerweise haben sich in den rund 50 Jahren, die zwischen ihm und Kennedy liegen, die gesellschaftlichen Umstände massiv verändert.
Andere Situation in den USA
Die Vereinigten Staaten waren in den 60er-Jahren geprägt von einem breiten Mittelstand. Die Menschen hatten einen sicheren Job, verdienten.....
Donnerstag, September 23, 2010
Dienstag, August 03, 2010
Mit Kindersklaven zu Wohlstand
Tages Anzeiger Online
Mit Kindersklaven zu Wohlstand
Von Stefan Eiselin.
Eine neue Studie der Uni Oxford stellt die bisherige Wirtschaftsgeschichte in Frage: Nur dank massivem Einsatz von Kindern konnte Grossbritannien zur ersten modernen Wirtschaftsmacht aufsteigen.
Jane Humphries hat Hunderte von statistischen Quellen aus 600 Autobiographien ausgewertet. Und dabei eine Entdeckung gemacht, welche die bisherige Geschichtsschreibung auf den Kopf stellt. Kinderarbeit war demnach weitaus wichtiger für die industrielle Revolution als bislang angenommen. Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts habe es in Grossbritannien über eine Million Kinder gegeben, die in Fabriken geschuftet hätten, so die Professorin der Elite-Universität Oxford. Damit hätten sie 15 Prozent der erwerbstätigen Bevölkerung ausgemacht.
Damals wuchs Grossbritannien gerade zur ersten modernen Wirtschaftsmacht der Welt heran. Vor allem an Wasserläufen auf dem Land schossen neue Fabriken aus dem Boden. Für sie gab es viel zu wenig Arbeitskräfte: Die in den....
Mit Kindersklaven zu Wohlstand
Von Stefan Eiselin.
Eine neue Studie der Uni Oxford stellt die bisherige Wirtschaftsgeschichte in Frage: Nur dank massivem Einsatz von Kindern konnte Grossbritannien zur ersten modernen Wirtschaftsmacht aufsteigen.
Jane Humphries hat Hunderte von statistischen Quellen aus 600 Autobiographien ausgewertet. Und dabei eine Entdeckung gemacht, welche die bisherige Geschichtsschreibung auf den Kopf stellt. Kinderarbeit war demnach weitaus wichtiger für die industrielle Revolution als bislang angenommen. Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts habe es in Grossbritannien über eine Million Kinder gegeben, die in Fabriken geschuftet hätten, so die Professorin der Elite-Universität Oxford. Damit hätten sie 15 Prozent der erwerbstätigen Bevölkerung ausgemacht.
Damals wuchs Grossbritannien gerade zur ersten modernen Wirtschaftsmacht der Welt heran. Vor allem an Wasserläufen auf dem Land schossen neue Fabriken aus dem Boden. Für sie gab es viel zu wenig Arbeitskräfte: Die in den....
Donnerstag, April 29, 2010
Bröckelnde Macht des britischen Parlaments
27. April 2010, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Bröckelnde Macht des britischen Parlaments
Unterschätzter Wandel der Verfassungswirklichkeit in Grossbritannien
Die britischen Wähler zögern, einer der beiden dominierenden Parteien ein starkes Regierungsmandat zu geben. Die Souveränität des Parlaments leidet unter dem verbreiteten Misstrauen. Die ungeschriebene Verfassung steht unter Reformdruck.
Peter Rásonyi, London
Der durch eine Fernsehdebatte der Parteiführer ausgelöste Exploit des ewigen Dritten in der britischen Parteienlandschaft, der Liberaldemokratischen Partei, sorgt im Vereinigten Königreich für Furore. Die fast täglich erscheinenden Umfragen positionieren die Partei weniger als zwei Wochen vor dem Wahltermin zumeist auf dem zweiten, mitunter gar auf dem ersten Platz vor der Labour Party und den Konservativen, was sich bis vor kurzem auch die optimistischsten Liberaldemokraten nicht erträumt hätten. Sollte die Partei den derzeitigen Anteil von rund 30 Prozent bis zur Wahl halten, käme es mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit erstmals seit 1974....
27. April 2010, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Bröckelnde Macht des britischen Parlaments
Unterschätzter Wandel der Verfassungswirklichkeit in Grossbritannien
Die britischen Wähler zögern, einer der beiden dominierenden Parteien ein starkes Regierungsmandat zu geben. Die Souveränität des Parlaments leidet unter dem verbreiteten Misstrauen. Die ungeschriebene Verfassung steht unter Reformdruck.
Peter Rásonyi, London
Der durch eine Fernsehdebatte der Parteiführer ausgelöste Exploit des ewigen Dritten in der britischen Parteienlandschaft, der Liberaldemokratischen Partei, sorgt im Vereinigten Königreich für Furore. Die fast täglich erscheinenden Umfragen positionieren die Partei weniger als zwei Wochen vor dem Wahltermin zumeist auf dem zweiten, mitunter gar auf dem ersten Platz vor der Labour Party und den Konservativen, was sich bis vor kurzem auch die optimistischsten Liberaldemokraten nicht erträumt hätten. Sollte die Partei den derzeitigen Anteil von rund 30 Prozent bis zur Wahl halten, käme es mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit erstmals seit 1974 und zum vierten Mal seit einem Jahrhundert zu einem «hung parliament», in dem eine Minderheitsregierung oder eine Koalition mehrerer Parteien regieren müsste.
Eine «normale» Demokratie
Die meisten Briten sind von dieser Entwicklung überrascht. Die Konservativen und ihnen nahestehende Medien sind schockiert; der sicher geglaubte Wahlsieg steht plötzlich in der Schwebe. Sie haben deshalb eine harte Kampagne gegen die Liberaldemokraten eingeleitet und reden eine angebliche Finanzkrise herbei, sollte das Land die ausgetretenen Pfade des Zweiparteiensystems tatsächlich verlassen. Ein näher rückendes «hung parliament» zeugt indes von einem Wandel, der viel tiefer als die Frage geht, wer die nächste Regierung bilde. Für die Liberaldemokraten und ihren von den Medien plötzlich zum Star erkorenen Führer Nick Clegg bietet sich die Jahrhundertchance, die «ewige» Forderung eines faireren Wahlsystems, das den Parteien eine dem Wähleranteil entsprechende Vertretung im Unterhaus ermöglichen würde, durchzusetzen.
Doch der Wandel geht auch über eine blosse Wahlrechtsreform hinaus. Trotz allen Versuchen der beiden dominierenden Parteien, die jahrhundertealten Traditionen der ungeschriebenen Verfassung zu bewahren, hat sich die Verfassungswirklichkeit in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten dynamischer verändert, als dies gemeinhin wahrgenommen wird. Laut Patrick Dunleavy, einem Politologen an der London School of Economics, ist Grossbritannien auf dem Weg zu einer «normalen» liberalen Demokratie. Der in Oxford lehrende Staatsrechtler Vernon Bogdanor dokumentiert in seinem vor der Wahl erschienenen Buch «The New British Constitution» (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2009), wie die von den grossen Verfassungstheoretikern des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts Walter Bagehot und Albert Venn Dicey gepriesene Verfassung des Vereinigten Königreichs im Grunde bereits untergegangen ist, ohne dass sich die Konturen des neuen Verfassungsstaats schon gefestigt hätten.
Reformen unter New Labour
Die Liste der für die Verfassung relevanten Reformen, welche New Labour nach der Machtübernahme 1997 einführte, ist lang. Die Unabhängigkeit der Bank of England von der Regierung wurde gestärkt, Schottland, Wales und Nordirland erhielten nach der Abhaltung von Referenden eine autonome Verwaltung und eine gewählte Volksvertretung. Durch ein Referendum wurde die Direktwahl des Londoner Bürgermeisters eingeführt. Die Europa-Wahlen wurden auf ein Proporzwahlrecht umgestellt. Mit der Human Rights Act wurde die Europäische Konvention der Menschenrechte erstmals in Grossbritannien einklagbar. Die Zahl der Erblords im Oberhaus wurde reduziert. Mit der Freedom of Information Act wurde die Transparenz der Regierung erhöht. Der Einfluss der Regierung auf die Richterwahlen wurde beschnitten. Schliesslich wurde der Supreme Court geschaffen, der vom Oberhaus die oberste Gerichtsbarkeit übernimmt und damit dem wichtigen Prinzip der Gewaltentrennung entspricht.
Bei all den Reformen wurde peinlich genau darauf geachtet, dass die Souveränität des Parlaments formal erhalten blieb. Tatsächlich haben aber praktisch alle Reformen in oft widersprüchlicher und unvollkommener Weise zur Folge, dass die Kompetenzen des Parlaments beschnitten wurden. Den tiefsten Eingriff in die Souveränität hatte bereits 1972 die Anerkennung des Rechts der Europäischen Gemeinschaft gebracht, was bis heute gründlich verdrängt wird.
Institutionelle Fragen spielen auch im laufenden Wahlkampf keine grosse Rolle. Das notorische Desinteresse der Briten an Verfassungsfragen gründet in der ungeschriebenen Verfassung selbst, welche dem Parlament absolute Souveränität zugesteht. Es gibt keinen übergeordneten Verfassungstext, der vor dem Zugriff des Parlaments geschützt wäre. Es gibt keine Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit, die ihm Schranken setzen würde. Die einzige Kontrollinstanz sind die politische Kultur, das tägliche Kräftemessen der Parteien beziehungsweise das wachsame Auge der Öffentlichkeit, welche die regierende Partei am nächsten Wahltermin abwählen kann. Wenn das Parlament alle Regeln jederzeit mit einfacher Mehrheit ändern kann, sind grundlegende Gedanken über die Verfassung von bedingter Bedeutung. Doch die Anzeichen mehren sich, dass das Vertrauen in die selbstregulierenden und kontrollierenden Kräfte der politischen Kultur und des politischen Establishments auf einen kritischen Wert gesunken ist.
Der Spesenskandal als Signal
Nur vor dem Hintergrund der seit Jahrhunderten behaupteten Souveränität des Parlaments ist nachvollziehbar, aus welcher Abgehobenheit heraus jene zahlreichen Abgeordneten und Lords stürzten, die durch die Enthüllungen des Spesenskandals durch die Tageszeitung «Daily Telegraph» im vergangenen Mai blossgestellt wurden. Viele haben bis heute nicht verstanden, wie das Volk sich das Recht herausnehmen konnte, ihre Spesenabrechnungen zu prüfen und zu bewerten. Gegen die im Nachhinein eingeführten Kontrollen, Beschränkungen und Rückforderungen ergingen Dutzende von Einsprachen empörter Parlamentarier. Noch nie in der jüngeren Geschichte gab es so viele Rücktritte von Abgeordneten wie vor dieser Wahl.
Der Spesenskandal dokumentiert den Verlust von Ansehen und Macht des britischen Parlaments. Dessen absolute Souveränität wird zwar wie so viele Institutionen in Grossbritannien zum Schein bewahrt. Westminster könnte theoretisch alle Reformen jederzeit rückgängig machen. Doch Akzeptanz und Legitimation dieser Machtfülle sind gesunken. Die beiden dominierenden Parteien vermögen immer weniger Wähler für sich zu gewinnen. Ihr Stimmanteil ist von zusammen 97 Prozent im Jahre 1951 auf knapp 70 Prozent bei der letzten Wahl 2005 geschrumpft (siehe Infografik). Gleichzeitig ging die Wahlbeteiligung auf 60 Prozent zurück. Labour regiert derzeit mit 55 Prozent der Sitze in Westminster, aber mit nur 36 Prozent der abgegebenen Wählerstimmen und 22 Prozent expliziter Zustimmung durch die Wahlberechtigten.
Die Abgabe von Kompetenzen in Schottland, Wales und Nordirland war eine Reaktion auf die sinkende Akzeptanz des langen Arms von Westminster in diesen Ländern. Labour und Konservative sind dort immer schwächer vertreten; die Konservativen haben derzeit einen einzigen schottischen Vertreter im Unterhaus. Auch in England ist eine wachsende regionale Polarisierung zu erkennen. Die Konservativen sind in weiten Teilen des ärmeren Nordengland nicht mehr mit Abgeordneten vertreten, und Labour ist in den meisten ländlichen Wahlkreisen des reichen Südostens chancenlos. Trotzdem beanspruchen Parlament und Regierung starke zentralisierte Kompetenzen im ganzen Land.
«Hung parliament» als Chance
Während die alte Verfassung bröckelt, ist die neue erst undeutlich zu erkennen. Die fortschreitende Beschränkung der parlamentarischen Souveränität, Dezentralisierung und mehr Bürgernähe sind Stichworte, welche die Richtung der Entwicklung weisen dürften. Der Prozess ist noch lange nicht abgeschlossen. Sollten die Konservativen im Mai eine absolute Mehrheit der Unterhaussitze erringen, dürfte er einstweilen erlahmen. Der Parteiführer David Cameron hat sich als entschiedener Gegner institutioneller Reformen profiliert. Das Wahlmanifest der Konservativen nennt zwar den Bedarf, das «zerbrochene politische System» zu reparieren und das Vertrauen wiederherzustellen. Die Vorschläge beschränken sich aber auf Nebenaspekte. Eine Wahlrechtsreform wird abgelehnt, und die Vision der «grossen Gesellschaft» anstelle des «grossen Staates» bleibt wolkig.
Sollten die Konservativen zur Regierungsbildung auf die Unterstützung durch die Liberaldemokraten angewiesen sein, werden diese eine Wahlrechtsreform durchzusetzen versuchen. Der Erfolg ist keineswegs sicher, denn das Drohpotenzial ist wegen der Möglichkeit der Regierung, jederzeit Neuwahlen einzuleiten, begrenzt. Während der drei kurzlebigen «hung parliaments» im 20. Jahrhundert haben sich die Liberalen jeweils nicht durchsetzen können.
Die Reformchancen sind grösser, sollte Labour als stärkste Partei aus der Wahl hervorgehen und mit Hilfe der Liberaldemokraten eine Regierung bilden. Premierminister Gordon Brown hat, reichlich spät, im Februar ein Gesetz vorgelegt, das ein Referendum über eine Wahlrechtsreform vorsah, aber nicht mehr verabschiedet wurde. Im Wahlmanifest verspricht Labour Verfassungsreformen, um die «tiefe Krise im Vertrauen in die Politik» zu überwinden. Dazu gehören Referenden über das Wahlrecht sowie über die Ersetzung des Oberhauses durch eine gewählte zweite Kammer. Die Dauer der Legislatur soll festgeschrieben werden, und es soll eine geschriebene Verfassung geben. Das Misstrauen der Liberaldemokraten gegenüber den Versprechungen Labours ist verständlicherweise gross, doch scheint die Partei Reformen gegenüber weniger abgeneigt zu sein als die Konservativen. Brown hat sich zuletzt persönlich dafür engagiert. Eine Abschwächung des Mehrheitswahlrechts könnte letztlich auch im Interesse von Labour sein, da sich die Partei ihrer Stärke nicht mehr so sicher sein kann.
Grossbritannien hat 18 von der harten Hand Margaret Thatchers geprägte Regierungsjahre unter den Konservativen, anschliessend 13 Jahre New Labour hinter sich. Beide Epochen waren von ungewöhnlich starken Mehrheiten der jeweiligen Partei im Unterhaus geprägt. Beide brachten tiefgreifende wirtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche und politische Umwälzungen und eine lange Phase der Prosperität. Folgt man den gegenwärtigen Meinungsumfragen, so scheinen die Wähler zu zögern, Brown oder Cameron ein ähnlich starkes Regierungsmandat zu verleihen. Die Gegenposition der Liberaldemokraten, mit einer breiter abgestützten und legitimierten Regierung die schwere Zeit der Wirtschafts- und Haushaltkrise zu meisten, entspricht zwar nicht der jüngeren britischen Tradition. Sie verbreitet aber offensichtlich auch nicht jenen Schrecken, den Konservative und Labour den Wählern einzureden versuchen. Grossbritannien wandelt sich rascher, als die starren Rituale des politischen Alltags auf den ersten Blick glauben machen.
Bröckelnde Macht des britischen Parlaments
Unterschätzter Wandel der Verfassungswirklichkeit in Grossbritannien
Die britischen Wähler zögern, einer der beiden dominierenden Parteien ein starkes Regierungsmandat zu geben. Die Souveränität des Parlaments leidet unter dem verbreiteten Misstrauen. Die ungeschriebene Verfassung steht unter Reformdruck.
Peter Rásonyi, London
Der durch eine Fernsehdebatte der Parteiführer ausgelöste Exploit des ewigen Dritten in der britischen Parteienlandschaft, der Liberaldemokratischen Partei, sorgt im Vereinigten Königreich für Furore. Die fast täglich erscheinenden Umfragen positionieren die Partei weniger als zwei Wochen vor dem Wahltermin zumeist auf dem zweiten, mitunter gar auf dem ersten Platz vor der Labour Party und den Konservativen, was sich bis vor kurzem auch die optimistischsten Liberaldemokraten nicht erträumt hätten. Sollte die Partei den derzeitigen Anteil von rund 30 Prozent bis zur Wahl halten, käme es mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit erstmals seit 1974....
27. April 2010, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Bröckelnde Macht des britischen Parlaments
Unterschätzter Wandel der Verfassungswirklichkeit in Grossbritannien
Die britischen Wähler zögern, einer der beiden dominierenden Parteien ein starkes Regierungsmandat zu geben. Die Souveränität des Parlaments leidet unter dem verbreiteten Misstrauen. Die ungeschriebene Verfassung steht unter Reformdruck.
Peter Rásonyi, London
Der durch eine Fernsehdebatte der Parteiführer ausgelöste Exploit des ewigen Dritten in der britischen Parteienlandschaft, der Liberaldemokratischen Partei, sorgt im Vereinigten Königreich für Furore. Die fast täglich erscheinenden Umfragen positionieren die Partei weniger als zwei Wochen vor dem Wahltermin zumeist auf dem zweiten, mitunter gar auf dem ersten Platz vor der Labour Party und den Konservativen, was sich bis vor kurzem auch die optimistischsten Liberaldemokraten nicht erträumt hätten. Sollte die Partei den derzeitigen Anteil von rund 30 Prozent bis zur Wahl halten, käme es mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit erstmals seit 1974 und zum vierten Mal seit einem Jahrhundert zu einem «hung parliament», in dem eine Minderheitsregierung oder eine Koalition mehrerer Parteien regieren müsste.
Eine «normale» Demokratie
Die meisten Briten sind von dieser Entwicklung überrascht. Die Konservativen und ihnen nahestehende Medien sind schockiert; der sicher geglaubte Wahlsieg steht plötzlich in der Schwebe. Sie haben deshalb eine harte Kampagne gegen die Liberaldemokraten eingeleitet und reden eine angebliche Finanzkrise herbei, sollte das Land die ausgetretenen Pfade des Zweiparteiensystems tatsächlich verlassen. Ein näher rückendes «hung parliament» zeugt indes von einem Wandel, der viel tiefer als die Frage geht, wer die nächste Regierung bilde. Für die Liberaldemokraten und ihren von den Medien plötzlich zum Star erkorenen Führer Nick Clegg bietet sich die Jahrhundertchance, die «ewige» Forderung eines faireren Wahlsystems, das den Parteien eine dem Wähleranteil entsprechende Vertretung im Unterhaus ermöglichen würde, durchzusetzen.
Doch der Wandel geht auch über eine blosse Wahlrechtsreform hinaus. Trotz allen Versuchen der beiden dominierenden Parteien, die jahrhundertealten Traditionen der ungeschriebenen Verfassung zu bewahren, hat sich die Verfassungswirklichkeit in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten dynamischer verändert, als dies gemeinhin wahrgenommen wird. Laut Patrick Dunleavy, einem Politologen an der London School of Economics, ist Grossbritannien auf dem Weg zu einer «normalen» liberalen Demokratie. Der in Oxford lehrende Staatsrechtler Vernon Bogdanor dokumentiert in seinem vor der Wahl erschienenen Buch «The New British Constitution» (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2009), wie die von den grossen Verfassungstheoretikern des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts Walter Bagehot und Albert Venn Dicey gepriesene Verfassung des Vereinigten Königreichs im Grunde bereits untergegangen ist, ohne dass sich die Konturen des neuen Verfassungsstaats schon gefestigt hätten.
Reformen unter New Labour
Die Liste der für die Verfassung relevanten Reformen, welche New Labour nach der Machtübernahme 1997 einführte, ist lang. Die Unabhängigkeit der Bank of England von der Regierung wurde gestärkt, Schottland, Wales und Nordirland erhielten nach der Abhaltung von Referenden eine autonome Verwaltung und eine gewählte Volksvertretung. Durch ein Referendum wurde die Direktwahl des Londoner Bürgermeisters eingeführt. Die Europa-Wahlen wurden auf ein Proporzwahlrecht umgestellt. Mit der Human Rights Act wurde die Europäische Konvention der Menschenrechte erstmals in Grossbritannien einklagbar. Die Zahl der Erblords im Oberhaus wurde reduziert. Mit der Freedom of Information Act wurde die Transparenz der Regierung erhöht. Der Einfluss der Regierung auf die Richterwahlen wurde beschnitten. Schliesslich wurde der Supreme Court geschaffen, der vom Oberhaus die oberste Gerichtsbarkeit übernimmt und damit dem wichtigen Prinzip der Gewaltentrennung entspricht.
Bei all den Reformen wurde peinlich genau darauf geachtet, dass die Souveränität des Parlaments formal erhalten blieb. Tatsächlich haben aber praktisch alle Reformen in oft widersprüchlicher und unvollkommener Weise zur Folge, dass die Kompetenzen des Parlaments beschnitten wurden. Den tiefsten Eingriff in die Souveränität hatte bereits 1972 die Anerkennung des Rechts der Europäischen Gemeinschaft gebracht, was bis heute gründlich verdrängt wird.
Institutionelle Fragen spielen auch im laufenden Wahlkampf keine grosse Rolle. Das notorische Desinteresse der Briten an Verfassungsfragen gründet in der ungeschriebenen Verfassung selbst, welche dem Parlament absolute Souveränität zugesteht. Es gibt keinen übergeordneten Verfassungstext, der vor dem Zugriff des Parlaments geschützt wäre. Es gibt keine Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit, die ihm Schranken setzen würde. Die einzige Kontrollinstanz sind die politische Kultur, das tägliche Kräftemessen der Parteien beziehungsweise das wachsame Auge der Öffentlichkeit, welche die regierende Partei am nächsten Wahltermin abwählen kann. Wenn das Parlament alle Regeln jederzeit mit einfacher Mehrheit ändern kann, sind grundlegende Gedanken über die Verfassung von bedingter Bedeutung. Doch die Anzeichen mehren sich, dass das Vertrauen in die selbstregulierenden und kontrollierenden Kräfte der politischen Kultur und des politischen Establishments auf einen kritischen Wert gesunken ist.
Der Spesenskandal als Signal
Nur vor dem Hintergrund der seit Jahrhunderten behaupteten Souveränität des Parlaments ist nachvollziehbar, aus welcher Abgehobenheit heraus jene zahlreichen Abgeordneten und Lords stürzten, die durch die Enthüllungen des Spesenskandals durch die Tageszeitung «Daily Telegraph» im vergangenen Mai blossgestellt wurden. Viele haben bis heute nicht verstanden, wie das Volk sich das Recht herausnehmen konnte, ihre Spesenabrechnungen zu prüfen und zu bewerten. Gegen die im Nachhinein eingeführten Kontrollen, Beschränkungen und Rückforderungen ergingen Dutzende von Einsprachen empörter Parlamentarier. Noch nie in der jüngeren Geschichte gab es so viele Rücktritte von Abgeordneten wie vor dieser Wahl.
Der Spesenskandal dokumentiert den Verlust von Ansehen und Macht des britischen Parlaments. Dessen absolute Souveränität wird zwar wie so viele Institutionen in Grossbritannien zum Schein bewahrt. Westminster könnte theoretisch alle Reformen jederzeit rückgängig machen. Doch Akzeptanz und Legitimation dieser Machtfülle sind gesunken. Die beiden dominierenden Parteien vermögen immer weniger Wähler für sich zu gewinnen. Ihr Stimmanteil ist von zusammen 97 Prozent im Jahre 1951 auf knapp 70 Prozent bei der letzten Wahl 2005 geschrumpft (siehe Infografik). Gleichzeitig ging die Wahlbeteiligung auf 60 Prozent zurück. Labour regiert derzeit mit 55 Prozent der Sitze in Westminster, aber mit nur 36 Prozent der abgegebenen Wählerstimmen und 22 Prozent expliziter Zustimmung durch die Wahlberechtigten.
Die Abgabe von Kompetenzen in Schottland, Wales und Nordirland war eine Reaktion auf die sinkende Akzeptanz des langen Arms von Westminster in diesen Ländern. Labour und Konservative sind dort immer schwächer vertreten; die Konservativen haben derzeit einen einzigen schottischen Vertreter im Unterhaus. Auch in England ist eine wachsende regionale Polarisierung zu erkennen. Die Konservativen sind in weiten Teilen des ärmeren Nordengland nicht mehr mit Abgeordneten vertreten, und Labour ist in den meisten ländlichen Wahlkreisen des reichen Südostens chancenlos. Trotzdem beanspruchen Parlament und Regierung starke zentralisierte Kompetenzen im ganzen Land.
«Hung parliament» als Chance
Während die alte Verfassung bröckelt, ist die neue erst undeutlich zu erkennen. Die fortschreitende Beschränkung der parlamentarischen Souveränität, Dezentralisierung und mehr Bürgernähe sind Stichworte, welche die Richtung der Entwicklung weisen dürften. Der Prozess ist noch lange nicht abgeschlossen. Sollten die Konservativen im Mai eine absolute Mehrheit der Unterhaussitze erringen, dürfte er einstweilen erlahmen. Der Parteiführer David Cameron hat sich als entschiedener Gegner institutioneller Reformen profiliert. Das Wahlmanifest der Konservativen nennt zwar den Bedarf, das «zerbrochene politische System» zu reparieren und das Vertrauen wiederherzustellen. Die Vorschläge beschränken sich aber auf Nebenaspekte. Eine Wahlrechtsreform wird abgelehnt, und die Vision der «grossen Gesellschaft» anstelle des «grossen Staates» bleibt wolkig.
Sollten die Konservativen zur Regierungsbildung auf die Unterstützung durch die Liberaldemokraten angewiesen sein, werden diese eine Wahlrechtsreform durchzusetzen versuchen. Der Erfolg ist keineswegs sicher, denn das Drohpotenzial ist wegen der Möglichkeit der Regierung, jederzeit Neuwahlen einzuleiten, begrenzt. Während der drei kurzlebigen «hung parliaments» im 20. Jahrhundert haben sich die Liberalen jeweils nicht durchsetzen können.
Die Reformchancen sind grösser, sollte Labour als stärkste Partei aus der Wahl hervorgehen und mit Hilfe der Liberaldemokraten eine Regierung bilden. Premierminister Gordon Brown hat, reichlich spät, im Februar ein Gesetz vorgelegt, das ein Referendum über eine Wahlrechtsreform vorsah, aber nicht mehr verabschiedet wurde. Im Wahlmanifest verspricht Labour Verfassungsreformen, um die «tiefe Krise im Vertrauen in die Politik» zu überwinden. Dazu gehören Referenden über das Wahlrecht sowie über die Ersetzung des Oberhauses durch eine gewählte zweite Kammer. Die Dauer der Legislatur soll festgeschrieben werden, und es soll eine geschriebene Verfassung geben. Das Misstrauen der Liberaldemokraten gegenüber den Versprechungen Labours ist verständlicherweise gross, doch scheint die Partei Reformen gegenüber weniger abgeneigt zu sein als die Konservativen. Brown hat sich zuletzt persönlich dafür engagiert. Eine Abschwächung des Mehrheitswahlrechts könnte letztlich auch im Interesse von Labour sein, da sich die Partei ihrer Stärke nicht mehr so sicher sein kann.
Grossbritannien hat 18 von der harten Hand Margaret Thatchers geprägte Regierungsjahre unter den Konservativen, anschliessend 13 Jahre New Labour hinter sich. Beide Epochen waren von ungewöhnlich starken Mehrheiten der jeweiligen Partei im Unterhaus geprägt. Beide brachten tiefgreifende wirtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche und politische Umwälzungen und eine lange Phase der Prosperität. Folgt man den gegenwärtigen Meinungsumfragen, so scheinen die Wähler zu zögern, Brown oder Cameron ein ähnlich starkes Regierungsmandat zu verleihen. Die Gegenposition der Liberaldemokraten, mit einer breiter abgestützten und legitimierten Regierung die schwere Zeit der Wirtschafts- und Haushaltkrise zu meisten, entspricht zwar nicht der jüngeren britischen Tradition. Sie verbreitet aber offensichtlich auch nicht jenen Schrecken, den Konservative und Labour den Wählern einzureden versuchen. Grossbritannien wandelt sich rascher, als die starren Rituale des politischen Alltags auf den ersten Blick glauben machen.
Montag, Februar 22, 2010
Oil may be there, but bringing it to market is another matter
The Times
February 18, 2010
Oil may be there, but bringing it to market is another matter
Robin Pagnamenta: analysis
Billions of barrels of oil may lie trapped in the rocks deep beneath the ocean floor of the South Atlantic, but finding them and bringing them to market is likely to be a big struggle — vastly expensive and fraught with political complications.
A study by the British Geological Society suggested that the region could contain up to 60 billion barrels of oil — a similar-sized deposit to the North Sea. But such figures may give little sense of how much is recoverable using existing technology.
No drilling has been carried out in the Falklands since 1998, when Shell and Lasmo drilled six wells in an area to the north of the islands, not far from where the current drilling programme is set to start next week. Traces of crude were discovered in all but one of the wells — where gas was found instead — but the following year the global price of oil fell to $10 per barrel, ending the commercial logic of further exploration.
Since then there has been much speculation about the prospects of oil in the Falklands but little real activity on the ground — that is until last year when Desire Petroleum, a small, independent oil explorer, announced that it had contracted a rig and planned to tow it to the Falklands from the North Sea for a drilling campaign this year. Three other similar-sized companies are planning to share the £250 million costs of the campaign, which is due to start in a few day’s time.
The drilling site lies in relatively shallow waters about 400 metres (1,300ft) deep and between 30 and 60 miles north of the islands.
Two of the other companies, Falkland Oil and Gas and Borders & Southern, are prospecting in another region that lies to the south of the islands in deeper and more challenging waters up to 1,200m (3,900ft) deep. There is a reasonable chance that at least one of....
The Times
February 18, 2010
Oil may be there, but bringing it to market is another matter
Robin Pagnamenta: analysis
Billions of barrels of oil may lie trapped in the rocks deep beneath the ocean floor of the South Atlantic, but finding them and bringing them to market is likely to be a big struggle — vastly expensive and fraught with political complications.
A study by the British Geological Society suggested that the region could contain up to 60 billion barrels of oil — a similar-sized deposit to the North Sea. But such figures may give little sense of how much is recoverable using existing technology.
No drilling has been carried out in the Falklands since 1998, when Shell and Lasmo drilled six wells in an area to the north of the islands, not far from where the current drilling programme is set to start next week. Traces of crude were discovered in all but one of the wells — where gas was found instead — but the following year the global price of oil fell to $10 per barrel, ending the commercial logic of further exploration.
Since then there has been much speculation about the prospects of oil in the Falklands but little real activity on the ground — that is until last year when Desire Petroleum, a small, independent oil explorer, announced that it had contracted a rig and planned to tow it to the Falklands from the North Sea for a drilling campaign this year. Three other similar-sized companies are planning to share the £250 million costs of the campaign, which is due to start in a few day’s time.
The drilling site lies in relatively shallow waters about 400 metres (1,300ft) deep and between 30 and 60 miles north of the islands.
Two of the other companies, Falkland Oil and Gas and Borders & Southern, are prospecting in another region that lies to the south of the islands in deeper and more challenging waters up to 1,200m (3,900ft) deep. There is a reasonable chance that at least one of the companies will find oil — but whether it is found in commercial quantities is less clear.
The Falklands are so remote that any oil discovery would need to be large to justify the multibillion- pound costs of building pipelines, export terminals and other infrastructure. Then there are the political obstacles with Argentina, which are likely to deter industry giants such as BP, Shell and Exxon. Until a resolution with Argentina can be reached over who owns the oil, they are likely to remain sceptical.
In the meantime, Desire claims to have been unaffected by Argentina’s sabre-rattling. It shipped a full set of spares and replacement parts to the Falklands before drilling begins to minimise any delays in the event of technical or political problems.
February 18, 2010
Oil may be there, but bringing it to market is another matter
Robin Pagnamenta: analysis
Billions of barrels of oil may lie trapped in the rocks deep beneath the ocean floor of the South Atlantic, but finding them and bringing them to market is likely to be a big struggle — vastly expensive and fraught with political complications.
A study by the British Geological Society suggested that the region could contain up to 60 billion barrels of oil — a similar-sized deposit to the North Sea. But such figures may give little sense of how much is recoverable using existing technology.
No drilling has been carried out in the Falklands since 1998, when Shell and Lasmo drilled six wells in an area to the north of the islands, not far from where the current drilling programme is set to start next week. Traces of crude were discovered in all but one of the wells — where gas was found instead — but the following year the global price of oil fell to $10 per barrel, ending the commercial logic of further exploration.
Since then there has been much speculation about the prospects of oil in the Falklands but little real activity on the ground — that is until last year when Desire Petroleum, a small, independent oil explorer, announced that it had contracted a rig and planned to tow it to the Falklands from the North Sea for a drilling campaign this year. Three other similar-sized companies are planning to share the £250 million costs of the campaign, which is due to start in a few day’s time.
The drilling site lies in relatively shallow waters about 400 metres (1,300ft) deep and between 30 and 60 miles north of the islands.
Two of the other companies, Falkland Oil and Gas and Borders & Southern, are prospecting in another region that lies to the south of the islands in deeper and more challenging waters up to 1,200m (3,900ft) deep. There is a reasonable chance that at least one of....
The Times
February 18, 2010
Oil may be there, but bringing it to market is another matter
Robin Pagnamenta: analysis
Billions of barrels of oil may lie trapped in the rocks deep beneath the ocean floor of the South Atlantic, but finding them and bringing them to market is likely to be a big struggle — vastly expensive and fraught with political complications.
A study by the British Geological Society suggested that the region could contain up to 60 billion barrels of oil — a similar-sized deposit to the North Sea. But such figures may give little sense of how much is recoverable using existing technology.
No drilling has been carried out in the Falklands since 1998, when Shell and Lasmo drilled six wells in an area to the north of the islands, not far from where the current drilling programme is set to start next week. Traces of crude were discovered in all but one of the wells — where gas was found instead — but the following year the global price of oil fell to $10 per barrel, ending the commercial logic of further exploration.
Since then there has been much speculation about the prospects of oil in the Falklands but little real activity on the ground — that is until last year when Desire Petroleum, a small, independent oil explorer, announced that it had contracted a rig and planned to tow it to the Falklands from the North Sea for a drilling campaign this year. Three other similar-sized companies are planning to share the £250 million costs of the campaign, which is due to start in a few day’s time.
The drilling site lies in relatively shallow waters about 400 metres (1,300ft) deep and between 30 and 60 miles north of the islands.
Two of the other companies, Falkland Oil and Gas and Borders & Southern, are prospecting in another region that lies to the south of the islands in deeper and more challenging waters up to 1,200m (3,900ft) deep. There is a reasonable chance that at least one of the companies will find oil — but whether it is found in commercial quantities is less clear.
The Falklands are so remote that any oil discovery would need to be large to justify the multibillion- pound costs of building pipelines, export terminals and other infrastructure. Then there are the political obstacles with Argentina, which are likely to deter industry giants such as BP, Shell and Exxon. Until a resolution with Argentina can be reached over who owns the oil, they are likely to remain sceptical.
In the meantime, Desire claims to have been unaffected by Argentina’s sabre-rattling. It shipped a full set of spares and replacement parts to the Falklands before drilling begins to minimise any delays in the event of technical or political problems.
Montag, Februar 15, 2010
Freitag, Januar 29, 2010
Economists start to consider that money can't buy happiness
guardian.co.uk home Sunday 10 January 2010
Economists start to consider that money can't buy happiness
Obsession with GDP as a measure of how good people feel is losing its grip against concerns for welfare and sustainability
Britain has got the shopping habit back: we may only now be clambering out of the worst recession in living memory, but John Lewis has scored its best Christmas ever, Next clocked up a healthy festive season, and Boxing Day kicked off with jostling queues of bargain-hunters outside shopping centres determined not to miss a moment of the sales.
For long-suffering retailers, and the gleeful shoppers themselves, that feels like good news, but should we welcome the return of the spendthrift habits that plunged us into crisis in the first place, or is it time to ask if traditional metrics of economic success – retail sales, house prices, even GDP growth – really point us in the right direction?
As far as the politicians are concerned, the obsession with economic growth continues unabated. Gordon Brown used to take...
guardian.co.uk home Sunday 10 January 2010
Economists start to consider that money can't buy happiness
Obsession with GDP as a measure of how good people feel is losing its grip against concerns for welfare and sustainability
Britain has got the shopping habit back: we may only now be clambering out of the worst recession in living memory, but John Lewis has scored its best Christmas ever, Next clocked up a healthy festive season, and Boxing Day kicked off with jostling queues of bargain-hunters outside shopping centres determined not to miss a moment of the sales.
For long-suffering retailers, and the gleeful shoppers themselves, that feels like good news, but should we welcome the return of the spendthrift habits that plunged us into crisis in the first place, or is it time to ask if traditional metrics of economic success – retail sales, house prices, even GDP growth – really point us in the right direction?
As far as the politicians are concerned, the obsession with economic growth continues unabated. Gordon Brown used to take great glee in reminding parliament at each budget how many quarters of consistent expansion had been achieved under his chancellorship.
Now, with that record cruelly shattered, Labour hopes that 26 January and 23 April (assuming the election is held in May) will be key in producing a feelgood – or at least, feel-less-bad – factor, as voters prepare to go to the polls. These are the dates when GDP figures will be reported for the fourth quarter of 2009 and first quarter of 2010 respectively, and which are both likely to show positive growth after six consecutive quarters of contraction.
But with unemployment still rising, taxes going up and personal debt still high, the public may decide they do not feel any better just because of a couple of abstract numbers that don't correspond to their own experiences. And Britain is far from the only country to have discovered in the past two years that a record of rapid GDP growth does not guarantee long-term prosperity, let alone fairness or environmental sustainability.
Indeed, with the issue of climate change becoming ever more urgent and a growing recognition that economic growth does not make people any happier, there are growing calls for growth and the endless consumption of ever more material goods to be downgraded as political goals.
The pursuit of growth and endless rises in consumption every year have become part of the national psyche, since Harold Macmillan told the electorate they had "never had it so good". The idea that more, bigger and cheaper is better is a powerful one, and it will be hard to dislodge. It affects the way we think, the things politicians aim for and how journalists report events.
Rises in economic output, a company's sales or house prices are invariably considered good, rises in petrol prices bad. But debate is growing. Just as he sparked a furore last year about whether the activities of the City were good for society, Financial Services Authority chief Adair Turner last week questioned whether economic growth was a "false god". He said that not only did growth harm the climate by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, but "all the evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into human welfare and happiness".
This is an area some economists have tried to deal with for several decades, by attempting to subtract from GDP figures the social or environmental consequences of growth. Cleaning up an oil spill counts towards GDP, but the environmental damage it causes does not; pumping the oil out of the ground counts as economic activity, but the resource depletion it implies is not accounted for.
For years, the economists trying to come up with alternative measures of welfare or sustainability were treated by the mainstream of the dismal science as tree-huggers who were trying to value things that were impossible to count, and therefore best ignored. This was partly because economics was going through an intensely mathematical phase, in which the goal was to prove everything with models and fancy equations. But the limitations of conventional economics were brutally exposed by the recession – and critics say the time has finally come for a long-overdue paradigm shift.
One of the oldest advocates of an alternative approach is Herman Daly, an American ecological economist who decades ago developed a measure called the "index of sustainable economic welfare" and the idea of a "steady state economy", which argues that the world has to develop a way to live within its means and the limitations of its resources. Another is Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, who works on development and poverty issues, and argues that conventional models of development increase poverty and ecological disaster.
Professor David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire – better known in Britain for being the only member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee to see the recession coming – has spent decades working on measures of happiness and wellbeing which, he says, offer politicians much more useful ways to think about what policy they should aim for, rather than merely expanding GDP.
Blanchflower rejects the idea that happiness is difficult to measure. Not only are there huge amounts of survey data over decades asking people about how they feel, he says, but cross-checks with other disciplines such as psychology or medicine and their data on metrics such as blood pressure work very well. And the fundamental truth the data reveal is that, despite decades of economic growth in the western world, people have not got happier.
Sensing that GDP measures might have outlived their usefulness, last September French president Nicolas Sarkozy commissioned a report by a panel of experts headed by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, to look at how to ensure governments take full account of their citizens' happiness and wellbeing, not just the country's economic growth.
In Britain the torch is being carried by the New Economics Foundation which, among other things, produces what it calls the "Happy Planet Index". Nef's policy director, Andrew Simms, says this brings together both the wellbeing and environmental aspects of human activity as well as the growth to measure whether economies achieve sustainable, happy lives for their citizens, rather than simply growing strongly. Under the HPI, Costa Rica is the world's happiest, greenest country. Many other Latin American countries feature high up in the table but Britain and the United States are down at 74th and 114th respectively. The HPI shows, for example, that fast-growing economies such as the US, China and India were all greener and happier 20 years ago than they are today. "Growth has failed on its own terms. You can't have infinite growth in a world of finite resources. Redistribution of the existing wealth is a far better way to go," says Simms. "It is now a case of paradigm shift or bust."
Nef recently published a report outlining how this can be achieved called "The Great Transition" and will this month release a new report entitled "Growth isn't possible". The simple measure of GDP may soon have had its day.
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Economists start to consider that money can't buy happiness
Obsession with GDP as a measure of how good people feel is losing its grip against concerns for welfare and sustainability
Britain has got the shopping habit back: we may only now be clambering out of the worst recession in living memory, but John Lewis has scored its best Christmas ever, Next clocked up a healthy festive season, and Boxing Day kicked off with jostling queues of bargain-hunters outside shopping centres determined not to miss a moment of the sales.
For long-suffering retailers, and the gleeful shoppers themselves, that feels like good news, but should we welcome the return of the spendthrift habits that plunged us into crisis in the first place, or is it time to ask if traditional metrics of economic success – retail sales, house prices, even GDP growth – really point us in the right direction?
As far as the politicians are concerned, the obsession with economic growth continues unabated. Gordon Brown used to take...
guardian.co.uk home Sunday 10 January 2010
Economists start to consider that money can't buy happiness
Obsession with GDP as a measure of how good people feel is losing its grip against concerns for welfare and sustainability
Britain has got the shopping habit back: we may only now be clambering out of the worst recession in living memory, but John Lewis has scored its best Christmas ever, Next clocked up a healthy festive season, and Boxing Day kicked off with jostling queues of bargain-hunters outside shopping centres determined not to miss a moment of the sales.
For long-suffering retailers, and the gleeful shoppers themselves, that feels like good news, but should we welcome the return of the spendthrift habits that plunged us into crisis in the first place, or is it time to ask if traditional metrics of economic success – retail sales, house prices, even GDP growth – really point us in the right direction?
As far as the politicians are concerned, the obsession with economic growth continues unabated. Gordon Brown used to take great glee in reminding parliament at each budget how many quarters of consistent expansion had been achieved under his chancellorship.
Now, with that record cruelly shattered, Labour hopes that 26 January and 23 April (assuming the election is held in May) will be key in producing a feelgood – or at least, feel-less-bad – factor, as voters prepare to go to the polls. These are the dates when GDP figures will be reported for the fourth quarter of 2009 and first quarter of 2010 respectively, and which are both likely to show positive growth after six consecutive quarters of contraction.
But with unemployment still rising, taxes going up and personal debt still high, the public may decide they do not feel any better just because of a couple of abstract numbers that don't correspond to their own experiences. And Britain is far from the only country to have discovered in the past two years that a record of rapid GDP growth does not guarantee long-term prosperity, let alone fairness or environmental sustainability.
Indeed, with the issue of climate change becoming ever more urgent and a growing recognition that economic growth does not make people any happier, there are growing calls for growth and the endless consumption of ever more material goods to be downgraded as political goals.
The pursuit of growth and endless rises in consumption every year have become part of the national psyche, since Harold Macmillan told the electorate they had "never had it so good". The idea that more, bigger and cheaper is better is a powerful one, and it will be hard to dislodge. It affects the way we think, the things politicians aim for and how journalists report events.
Rises in economic output, a company's sales or house prices are invariably considered good, rises in petrol prices bad. But debate is growing. Just as he sparked a furore last year about whether the activities of the City were good for society, Financial Services Authority chief Adair Turner last week questioned whether economic growth was a "false god". He said that not only did growth harm the climate by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, but "all the evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into human welfare and happiness".
This is an area some economists have tried to deal with for several decades, by attempting to subtract from GDP figures the social or environmental consequences of growth. Cleaning up an oil spill counts towards GDP, but the environmental damage it causes does not; pumping the oil out of the ground counts as economic activity, but the resource depletion it implies is not accounted for.
For years, the economists trying to come up with alternative measures of welfare or sustainability were treated by the mainstream of the dismal science as tree-huggers who were trying to value things that were impossible to count, and therefore best ignored. This was partly because economics was going through an intensely mathematical phase, in which the goal was to prove everything with models and fancy equations. But the limitations of conventional economics were brutally exposed by the recession – and critics say the time has finally come for a long-overdue paradigm shift.
One of the oldest advocates of an alternative approach is Herman Daly, an American ecological economist who decades ago developed a measure called the "index of sustainable economic welfare" and the idea of a "steady state economy", which argues that the world has to develop a way to live within its means and the limitations of its resources. Another is Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, who works on development and poverty issues, and argues that conventional models of development increase poverty and ecological disaster.
Professor David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire – better known in Britain for being the only member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee to see the recession coming – has spent decades working on measures of happiness and wellbeing which, he says, offer politicians much more useful ways to think about what policy they should aim for, rather than merely expanding GDP.
Blanchflower rejects the idea that happiness is difficult to measure. Not only are there huge amounts of survey data over decades asking people about how they feel, he says, but cross-checks with other disciplines such as psychology or medicine and their data on metrics such as blood pressure work very well. And the fundamental truth the data reveal is that, despite decades of economic growth in the western world, people have not got happier.
Sensing that GDP measures might have outlived their usefulness, last September French president Nicolas Sarkozy commissioned a report by a panel of experts headed by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, to look at how to ensure governments take full account of their citizens' happiness and wellbeing, not just the country's economic growth.
In Britain the torch is being carried by the New Economics Foundation which, among other things, produces what it calls the "Happy Planet Index". Nef's policy director, Andrew Simms, says this brings together both the wellbeing and environmental aspects of human activity as well as the growth to measure whether economies achieve sustainable, happy lives for their citizens, rather than simply growing strongly. Under the HPI, Costa Rica is the world's happiest, greenest country. Many other Latin American countries feature high up in the table but Britain and the United States are down at 74th and 114th respectively. The HPI shows, for example, that fast-growing economies such as the US, China and India were all greener and happier 20 years ago than they are today. "Growth has failed on its own terms. You can't have infinite growth in a world of finite resources. Redistribution of the existing wealth is a far better way to go," says Simms. "It is now a case of paradigm shift or bust."
Nef recently published a report outlining how this can be achieved called "The Great Transition" and will this month release a new report entitled "Growth isn't possible". The simple measure of GDP may soon have had its day.
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Sonntag, Juli 05, 2009
Financial Times: Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for an ‘invisible’ occupation
Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for an ‘invisible’ occupation
Financial Times, 01 Jul 2009
By Priya Satia
We are at the beginning of the end. On Tuesday, US troops left Iraq’s cities, and in two years they will leave the country. Or so the official story goes. In reality, most of the “withdrawing” forces are merely relocating to forward operating bases where they appear to be hunkering down for a long entr’acte offstage in expensive, built-to-last facilities.
Still, Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is touting this redistribution of American power as a “great victory” against foreign occupation, akin to the Iraqi rebellion against the British in 1920. The US media appear bemused...
Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for an ‘invisible’ occupation
Financial Times, 01 Jul 2009
By Priya Satia
We are at the beginning of the end. On Tuesday, US troops left Iraq’s cities, and in two years they will leave the country. Or so the official story goes. In reality, most of the “withdrawing” forces are merely relocating to forward operating bases where they appear to be hunkering down for a long entr’acte offstage in expensive, built-to-last facilities.
Still, Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is touting this redistribution of American power as a “great victory” against foreign occupation, akin to the Iraqi rebellion against the British in 1920. The US media appear bemused at the comparison, as they continue to miss the point of the Iraqi insurgency. But Mr al-Maliki is more right than he knows about the historical echo: 1920 turned out to be a sad year for Iraq, as the brutal British suppression of that uprising inaugurated four decades of British rule, lasting until the 1958 Iraqi revolution.
Today, too, victory is tinged with fraud. And the Fallujah bombers – the “patriotic resistance” – know it. Mr al-Maliki may claim US participation in maintaining public order is “finished”, but everyone knows public order depends on Iraqi awareness of the offstage presence of US troops.
US operations will be suspended for a few days to promote the perception that Iraqi forces are actually in control; Ali al-Adeeb, a senior leader of Mr al-Maliki’s Dawa party, says the Americans will become “invisible”.
But Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for invisible occupation again; indeed, they never fell for it the first time. Tuesday’s withdrawals echo the cynical British grant of “independence” in 1932 more than Mr al-Maliki’s selective memory of 1920. Then, too, the foreign occupiers co-operated in the local government’s efforts to create an impression of sovereignty, while continuing to pull the strings of real authority behind the scenes. Then, too, Iraqis saw through the ruse. The celebrations of 1932 rang hollow as British aircraft continued to patrol overhead and British personnel were renamed advisors, trainers, liaisons – “the same individuals with new and supposedly thicker cloaks”, one British official confessed. Today, too, the thousands of troops that will remain in Iraq will be restyled as “trainers” and “advisers”; American aircraft will retain their free hand. Moreover, the Iraqi and US governments’ focus on appearances has increased their need for secrecy about the true number and nature of the withdrawals, compounding suspicions of foul play.
Iraqis worry equally about the loyalty of Iraqi security forces, who will remain under the sway of thousands of embedded US “trainers”. Their takeover of the violent security work of the former occupiers also renders them suspect.
In sermons last week, Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, warned of American loyalists in the military and government. Echoing 1920s and 1930s speculation that violence was the result of British machinations, he blames recent explosions on an American conspiracy to justify the US presence. His sermons inspired marches in Sadr City with shouts of, “No, no to America. No, no to occupation. No, no to terrorism. Yes for independence”. The current withdrawals are not seen as a step toward independence but to more covert and thus even more unaccountably violent American control – like the post-1932 British period.
American officials should heed the cautionary tale of the past, unwittingly invoked by Mr al-Maliki’s bluster. As the British ambassador in “independent” Iraq realised too late, Iraqis “never swallowed the fiction that [the advisers] are maintained as much, more even, for their good than for ours”. Independence remained a mirage as British trainers refused to entrust critical elements of Iraqi security to their trainees for fear of compromising British security. Security itself remained a pipe dream. As the isolated trainers grew increasingly susceptible to a paranoid groupthink about Iraqi politics, it became impossible for them to accept real withdrawal. The fortifications that protect US trainers from their trainees threaten to create a similar bubble.
In 1932 as now, rhetoric about withdrawal was aimed at global as much as Iraqi opinion. Instead of attending only to appearances, stoking the fears of a people familiar with nominal independence, the US and Iraqi governments should deliver the reality Iraqis and Americans want: “Yes for independence.”
The writer is assistant professor of history at Stanford University and author of Spies in Arabia
Financial Times, 01 Jul 2009
By Priya Satia
We are at the beginning of the end. On Tuesday, US troops left Iraq’s cities, and in two years they will leave the country. Or so the official story goes. In reality, most of the “withdrawing” forces are merely relocating to forward operating bases where they appear to be hunkering down for a long entr’acte offstage in expensive, built-to-last facilities.
Still, Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is touting this redistribution of American power as a “great victory” against foreign occupation, akin to the Iraqi rebellion against the British in 1920. The US media appear bemused...
Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for an ‘invisible’ occupation
Financial Times, 01 Jul 2009
By Priya Satia
We are at the beginning of the end. On Tuesday, US troops left Iraq’s cities, and in two years they will leave the country. Or so the official story goes. In reality, most of the “withdrawing” forces are merely relocating to forward operating bases where they appear to be hunkering down for a long entr’acte offstage in expensive, built-to-last facilities.
Still, Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is touting this redistribution of American power as a “great victory” against foreign occupation, akin to the Iraqi rebellion against the British in 1920. The US media appear bemused at the comparison, as they continue to miss the point of the Iraqi insurgency. But Mr al-Maliki is more right than he knows about the historical echo: 1920 turned out to be a sad year for Iraq, as the brutal British suppression of that uprising inaugurated four decades of British rule, lasting until the 1958 Iraqi revolution.
Today, too, victory is tinged with fraud. And the Fallujah bombers – the “patriotic resistance” – know it. Mr al-Maliki may claim US participation in maintaining public order is “finished”, but everyone knows public order depends on Iraqi awareness of the offstage presence of US troops.
US operations will be suspended for a few days to promote the perception that Iraqi forces are actually in control; Ali al-Adeeb, a senior leader of Mr al-Maliki’s Dawa party, says the Americans will become “invisible”.
But Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for invisible occupation again; indeed, they never fell for it the first time. Tuesday’s withdrawals echo the cynical British grant of “independence” in 1932 more than Mr al-Maliki’s selective memory of 1920. Then, too, the foreign occupiers co-operated in the local government’s efforts to create an impression of sovereignty, while continuing to pull the strings of real authority behind the scenes. Then, too, Iraqis saw through the ruse. The celebrations of 1932 rang hollow as British aircraft continued to patrol overhead and British personnel were renamed advisors, trainers, liaisons – “the same individuals with new and supposedly thicker cloaks”, one British official confessed. Today, too, the thousands of troops that will remain in Iraq will be restyled as “trainers” and “advisers”; American aircraft will retain their free hand. Moreover, the Iraqi and US governments’ focus on appearances has increased their need for secrecy about the true number and nature of the withdrawals, compounding suspicions of foul play.
Iraqis worry equally about the loyalty of Iraqi security forces, who will remain under the sway of thousands of embedded US “trainers”. Their takeover of the violent security work of the former occupiers also renders them suspect.
In sermons last week, Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, warned of American loyalists in the military and government. Echoing 1920s and 1930s speculation that violence was the result of British machinations, he blames recent explosions on an American conspiracy to justify the US presence. His sermons inspired marches in Sadr City with shouts of, “No, no to America. No, no to occupation. No, no to terrorism. Yes for independence”. The current withdrawals are not seen as a step toward independence but to more covert and thus even more unaccountably violent American control – like the post-1932 British period.
American officials should heed the cautionary tale of the past, unwittingly invoked by Mr al-Maliki’s bluster. As the British ambassador in “independent” Iraq realised too late, Iraqis “never swallowed the fiction that [the advisers] are maintained as much, more even, for their good than for ours”. Independence remained a mirage as British trainers refused to entrust critical elements of Iraqi security to their trainees for fear of compromising British security. Security itself remained a pipe dream. As the isolated trainers grew increasingly susceptible to a paranoid groupthink about Iraqi politics, it became impossible for them to accept real withdrawal. The fortifications that protect US trainers from their trainees threaten to create a similar bubble.
In 1932 as now, rhetoric about withdrawal was aimed at global as much as Iraqi opinion. Instead of attending only to appearances, stoking the fears of a people familiar with nominal independence, the US and Iraqi governments should deliver the reality Iraqis and Americans want: “Yes for independence.”
The writer is assistant professor of history at Stanford University and author of Spies in Arabia
Mittwoch, Juni 24, 2009
Tages Anzeiger :23.06.09 Kriegstreiber Bush und Blair auf der Anklagebank
Tages Anzeiger Online 23.06.09
Kriegstreiber Bush und Blair auf der Anklagebank
Von Martin Kilian, Washington.
Die Vorgeschichte des Irakkriegs wird im britischen Parlament für rote Köpfe sorgen. Ein Thema ist das brisante Memorandum eines Beraters des damaligen Ministerpräsidenten Tony Blair.
Morgen wird das Parlament in London inmitten von geplanten Protesten von Kriegsgegnern beraten, ob die offizielle Untersuchung der Hintergründe der britischen Teilnahme an George W. Bushs Einmarsch im Irak öffentlich oder hinter verschlossenen Türen stattfinden soll.
Die Vorgänge in London werden sehr aufmerksam in Washington....
Tages Anzeiger Online 23.06.09
Kriegstreiber Bush und Blair auf der Anklagebank
Von Martin Kilian, Washington.
Die Vorgeschichte des Irakkriegs wird im britischen Parlament für rote Köpfe sorgen. Ein Thema ist das brisante Memorandum eines Beraters des damaligen Ministerpräsidenten Tony Blair.
Morgen wird das Parlament in London inmitten von geplanten Protesten von Kriegsgegnern beraten, ob die offizielle Untersuchung der Hintergründe der britischen Teilnahme an George W. Bushs Einmarsch im Irak öffentlich oder hinter verschlossenen Türen stattfinden soll.
Die Vorgänge in London werden sehr aufmerksam in Washington verfolgt werden: Während in der amerikanischen Hauptstadt eine umfassende Abrechnung mit dem Krieg auf Grund politischen Widerstands kaum zu erwarten ist, könnte in London die schmutzige Wäsche des Kriegs im Irak vor aller Augen gewaschen werden.
Zwar hatte sich Premier Gordon Brown auf Druck seines Vorgängers Tony Blair zunächst gegen eine öffentliche Untersuchung gesperrt, doch will Brown nach scharfen Protesten einlenken. George W. Bush und präsidialen Mitarbeiter wie der damaligen Sicherheitsberaterin Condolezza Rice könnte die Ausleuchtung des britischen Kriegseintritts einmal mehr politische Peinlichkeiten bescheren.
Unter anderem wird sich die Londoner Untersuchung mit einem brisanten Memorandum befassen, das beim Besuch Blairs im Weissen Haus am 31. Januar 2003 entstand – knapp zwei Monate vor Beginn des Kriegs also.
Das 2006 erstmals in Grossbritannien publizierte Memorandum basiert auf den Notizen von Blairs aussenpolitischem Berater David Manning, der den Gesprächen zwischen Bush und Blair an jenem Januartag beiwohnte. Ein öffentliche Prüfung dieses Memorandums dürfte in Washington neuerliche Forderungen nach einer umfassenden Aufarbeitung der Vorgeschichte des Einmarschs im Irak auslösen.
Das Memorandum, dessen Authentizität weder in London noch in Washington bestritten wurde, belegt unter anderem, dass die Entscheidung zum Krieg im Januar 2003 bereits gefallen war, obwohl Bush wie Blair beteuerten, man werde der Diplomatie bei den Vereinten Nationen eine letzte Chance geben.
Saddam Hussein provozieren
Da die Uno-Inspekteure zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch immer keine Spur der vermeintlichen irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden hatten, schlug Bush bei der Begegnung mit Blair vor, Saddam Hussein zu provozieren und dadurch einen Vorwand für eine Intervention zu erhalten.
Bush wollte den Aufzeichnungen Mannings zu Folge ein amerikanisches U2-Aufklärungsflugzeug in den Farben der Uno in den irakischen Luftraum entsenden. Falls Saddam das Flugzeug angreife, verletze er Uno-Resolutionen und liefere den Anlass zum Krieg, so Bush.
Auf Blairs Verlangen nach einer zweiten Uno-Resolution, die einen Einmarsch legitimieren sollte, antwortete Bush laut dem Memorandum, die Vereinigten Staaten würden «ihr gesamtes Gewicht für eine zweite Resolution verwenden» und widerstrebenden Nationen notfalls «drohen».
Tatsächlich ordnete das Weisse Haus noch am selben Tag die elektronischen Spione der «National Security Agency» in Fort Meade nahe Washington an, die Telefone und Emails von Uno-Delegationen auszuspähen, die sich im Sicherheitsrat einem Krieg widersetzten.
Ein anderer Plan, der in Mannings Memorandum indes nicht erwähnt wird, sah vor, irakische Oppositionelle aus ihrem Exil mit Helikoptern in den Süden des Irak zu fliegen, wo sie auf einem Militärstützpunkt nahe der Grenze zu Saudiarabien einen Aufstand gegen Saddam ausrufen sollten. Ein irakischer Gegenangriff, so die Schlussfolgerung des Weissen Hauses, brächte den Diktator automatisch mit Uno-Resolutionen in Konflikt und lieferte mithin einen Kriegsgrund. (Tagesanzeiger.ch/Newsnetz)
Erstellt: 23.06.2009, 07:37 Uhr
Kriegstreiber Bush und Blair auf der Anklagebank
Von Martin Kilian, Washington.
Die Vorgeschichte des Irakkriegs wird im britischen Parlament für rote Köpfe sorgen. Ein Thema ist das brisante Memorandum eines Beraters des damaligen Ministerpräsidenten Tony Blair.
Morgen wird das Parlament in London inmitten von geplanten Protesten von Kriegsgegnern beraten, ob die offizielle Untersuchung der Hintergründe der britischen Teilnahme an George W. Bushs Einmarsch im Irak öffentlich oder hinter verschlossenen Türen stattfinden soll.
Die Vorgänge in London werden sehr aufmerksam in Washington....
Tages Anzeiger Online 23.06.09
Kriegstreiber Bush und Blair auf der Anklagebank
Von Martin Kilian, Washington.
Die Vorgeschichte des Irakkriegs wird im britischen Parlament für rote Köpfe sorgen. Ein Thema ist das brisante Memorandum eines Beraters des damaligen Ministerpräsidenten Tony Blair.
Morgen wird das Parlament in London inmitten von geplanten Protesten von Kriegsgegnern beraten, ob die offizielle Untersuchung der Hintergründe der britischen Teilnahme an George W. Bushs Einmarsch im Irak öffentlich oder hinter verschlossenen Türen stattfinden soll.
Die Vorgänge in London werden sehr aufmerksam in Washington verfolgt werden: Während in der amerikanischen Hauptstadt eine umfassende Abrechnung mit dem Krieg auf Grund politischen Widerstands kaum zu erwarten ist, könnte in London die schmutzige Wäsche des Kriegs im Irak vor aller Augen gewaschen werden.
Zwar hatte sich Premier Gordon Brown auf Druck seines Vorgängers Tony Blair zunächst gegen eine öffentliche Untersuchung gesperrt, doch will Brown nach scharfen Protesten einlenken. George W. Bush und präsidialen Mitarbeiter wie der damaligen Sicherheitsberaterin Condolezza Rice könnte die Ausleuchtung des britischen Kriegseintritts einmal mehr politische Peinlichkeiten bescheren.
Unter anderem wird sich die Londoner Untersuchung mit einem brisanten Memorandum befassen, das beim Besuch Blairs im Weissen Haus am 31. Januar 2003 entstand – knapp zwei Monate vor Beginn des Kriegs also.
Das 2006 erstmals in Grossbritannien publizierte Memorandum basiert auf den Notizen von Blairs aussenpolitischem Berater David Manning, der den Gesprächen zwischen Bush und Blair an jenem Januartag beiwohnte. Ein öffentliche Prüfung dieses Memorandums dürfte in Washington neuerliche Forderungen nach einer umfassenden Aufarbeitung der Vorgeschichte des Einmarschs im Irak auslösen.
Das Memorandum, dessen Authentizität weder in London noch in Washington bestritten wurde, belegt unter anderem, dass die Entscheidung zum Krieg im Januar 2003 bereits gefallen war, obwohl Bush wie Blair beteuerten, man werde der Diplomatie bei den Vereinten Nationen eine letzte Chance geben.
Saddam Hussein provozieren
Da die Uno-Inspekteure zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch immer keine Spur der vermeintlichen irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden hatten, schlug Bush bei der Begegnung mit Blair vor, Saddam Hussein zu provozieren und dadurch einen Vorwand für eine Intervention zu erhalten.
Bush wollte den Aufzeichnungen Mannings zu Folge ein amerikanisches U2-Aufklärungsflugzeug in den Farben der Uno in den irakischen Luftraum entsenden. Falls Saddam das Flugzeug angreife, verletze er Uno-Resolutionen und liefere den Anlass zum Krieg, so Bush.
Auf Blairs Verlangen nach einer zweiten Uno-Resolution, die einen Einmarsch legitimieren sollte, antwortete Bush laut dem Memorandum, die Vereinigten Staaten würden «ihr gesamtes Gewicht für eine zweite Resolution verwenden» und widerstrebenden Nationen notfalls «drohen».
Tatsächlich ordnete das Weisse Haus noch am selben Tag die elektronischen Spione der «National Security Agency» in Fort Meade nahe Washington an, die Telefone und Emails von Uno-Delegationen auszuspähen, die sich im Sicherheitsrat einem Krieg widersetzten.
Ein anderer Plan, der in Mannings Memorandum indes nicht erwähnt wird, sah vor, irakische Oppositionelle aus ihrem Exil mit Helikoptern in den Süden des Irak zu fliegen, wo sie auf einem Militärstützpunkt nahe der Grenze zu Saudiarabien einen Aufstand gegen Saddam ausrufen sollten. Ein irakischer Gegenangriff, so die Schlussfolgerung des Weissen Hauses, brächte den Diktator automatisch mit Uno-Resolutionen in Konflikt und lieferte mithin einen Kriegsgrund. (Tagesanzeiger.ch/Newsnetz)
Erstellt: 23.06.2009, 07:37 Uhr
Donnerstag, Juni 11, 2009
Reuters: Iraq agrees to let Britain help protect oil platforms
Iraq agrees to let Britain help protect oil platforms
Tue Jun 2, 2009 3:41pm EDT
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq and Britain have struck a deal that will allow British troops to remain in the country, helping Iraqi naval forces protect oil platforms beyond a previously agreed withdrawal date, officials said on Tuesday.
Britain's presence in Iraq began with its support of the 2003 U.S. invasion, but was set to conclude at the end of June under a pact signed at the end of last year.
But the two sides agreed to extend the British.....
Iraq agrees to let Britain help protect oil platforms
Tue Jun 2, 2009 3:41pm EDT
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq and Britain have struck a deal that will allow British troops to remain in the country, helping Iraqi naval forces protect oil platforms beyond a previously agreed withdrawal date, officials said on Tuesday.
Britain's presence in Iraq began with its support of the 2003 U.S. invasion, but was set to conclude at the end of June under a pact signed at the end of last year.
But the two sides agreed to extend the British deployment so that a small number of British troops and up to five naval vessels could help Iraq protect its floating oil terminals against attack, said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
"The agreement will allow a limited number of not more than 100 British troops, and their civilian support personnel and five navy ships with their crews, to stay in Iraq for one year, after parliament has given its approval," Dabbagh said.
Lieutenant Colonel Sean Armstrong said the British forces would focus on protecting the oil platforms in Iraq's south, through which most of its oil exports are shipped, and on training Iraqi forces.
Iraq has the world's third largest oil reserves and is desperately trying to ramp up production so it can raise the funds it needs to rebuild after years of sanctions and war.
Armstrong said the total British force would not number more than 400.
"It is inappropriate for us to comment further on the Iraqi process while the Council of Representatives is considering the text," he said in an email, referring to Iraq's parliament.
London sent 46,000 troops to the Gulf for the U.S.-led invasion, a war that became deeply unpopular in Britain, and ended up controlling the southern province of Basra where most of Iraq's crude is pumped out of the ground.
By 2007, Britain's remaining 4,000 soldiers had largely withdrawn to Basra airport, leaving security in the provincial capital Basra -- Iraq's second largest city -- in Iraqi hands. The British troops began to pull out for good earlier this year.
(Reporting by Tim Cocks and Wathiq Ibrahim; Writing by Michael Christie; Editing by Jon Hemming)
Tue Jun 2, 2009 3:41pm EDT
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq and Britain have struck a deal that will allow British troops to remain in the country, helping Iraqi naval forces protect oil platforms beyond a previously agreed withdrawal date, officials said on Tuesday.
Britain's presence in Iraq began with its support of the 2003 U.S. invasion, but was set to conclude at the end of June under a pact signed at the end of last year.
But the two sides agreed to extend the British.....
Iraq agrees to let Britain help protect oil platforms
Tue Jun 2, 2009 3:41pm EDT
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq and Britain have struck a deal that will allow British troops to remain in the country, helping Iraqi naval forces protect oil platforms beyond a previously agreed withdrawal date, officials said on Tuesday.
Britain's presence in Iraq began with its support of the 2003 U.S. invasion, but was set to conclude at the end of June under a pact signed at the end of last year.
But the two sides agreed to extend the British deployment so that a small number of British troops and up to five naval vessels could help Iraq protect its floating oil terminals against attack, said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
"The agreement will allow a limited number of not more than 100 British troops, and their civilian support personnel and five navy ships with their crews, to stay in Iraq for one year, after parliament has given its approval," Dabbagh said.
Lieutenant Colonel Sean Armstrong said the British forces would focus on protecting the oil platforms in Iraq's south, through which most of its oil exports are shipped, and on training Iraqi forces.
Iraq has the world's third largest oil reserves and is desperately trying to ramp up production so it can raise the funds it needs to rebuild after years of sanctions and war.
Armstrong said the total British force would not number more than 400.
"It is inappropriate for us to comment further on the Iraqi process while the Council of Representatives is considering the text," he said in an email, referring to Iraq's parliament.
London sent 46,000 troops to the Gulf for the U.S.-led invasion, a war that became deeply unpopular in Britain, and ended up controlling the southern province of Basra where most of Iraq's crude is pumped out of the ground.
By 2007, Britain's remaining 4,000 soldiers had largely withdrawn to Basra airport, leaving security in the provincial capital Basra -- Iraq's second largest city -- in Iraqi hands. The British troops began to pull out for good earlier this year.
(Reporting by Tim Cocks and Wathiq Ibrahim; Writing by Michael Christie; Editing by Jon Hemming)
Montag, April 27, 2009
NYT: Frank Rich - The Banality of Bush White House Evil
The New York Times
April 26, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Banality of Bush White House Evil
By FRANK RICH
WE don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.
On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths....
The New York Times
April 26, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Banality of Bush White House Evil
By FRANK RICH
WE don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.
On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths that quarantine the evil. If our country committed torture, surely it did so to prevent Armageddon, in a patriotic ticking-time-bomb scenario out of “24.” If anyone deserves blame, it was only those identified by President Bush as “a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values”: promiscuous, sinister-looking lowlifes like Lynddie England, Charles Graner and the other grunts who were held accountable while the top command got a pass.
We’ve learned much, much more about America and torture in the past five years. But as Mark Danner recently wrote in The New York Review of Books, for all the revelations, one essential fact remains unchanged: “By no later than the summer of 2004, the American people had before them the basic narrative of how the elected and appointed officials of their government decided to torture prisoners and how they went about it.” When the Obama administration said it declassified four new torture memos 10 days ago in part because their contents were already largely public, it was right.
Yet we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government’s highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to “24”; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.
The newly released Justice Department memos, like those before them, were not written by barely schooled misfits like England and Graner. John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee graduated from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan and Brigham Young. They have passed through white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling, and Sidley Austin.
Judge Bybee’s résumé tells us that he has four children and is both a Cubmaster for the Boy Scouts and a youth baseball and basketball coach. He currently occupies a tenured seat on the United States Court of Appeals. As an assistant attorney general, he was the author of the Aug. 1, 2002, memo endorsing in lengthy, prurient detail interrogation “techniques” like “facial slap (insult slap)” and “insects placed in a confinement box.”
He proposed using 10 such techniques “in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.” Waterboarding, the near-drowning favored by Pol Pot and the Spanish Inquisition, was prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II. But Bybee concluded that it “does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ”
Still, it’s not Bybee’s perverted lawyering and pornographic amorality that make his memo worthy of special attention. It merits a closer look because it actually does add something new — and, even after all we’ve heard, something shocking — to the five-year-old torture narrative. When placed in full context, it’s the kind of smoking gun that might free us from the myths and denial that prevent us from reckoning with this ugly chapter in our history.
Bybee’s memo was aimed at one particular detainee, Abu Zubaydah, who had been captured some four months earlier, in late March 2002. Zubaydah is portrayed in the memo (as he was publicly by Bush after his capture) as one of the top men in Al Qaeda. But by August this had been proven false. As Ron Suskind reported in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” Zubaydah was identified soon after his capture as a logistics guy, who, in the words of the F.B.I.’s top-ranking Qaeda analyst at the time, Dan Coleman, served as the terrorist group’s flight booker and “greeter,” like “Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar’s Palace.” Zubaydah “knew very little about real operations, or strategy.” He showed clinical symptoms of schizophrenia.
By the time Bybee wrote his memo, Zubaydah had been questioned by the F.B.I. and C.I.A. for months and had given what limited information he had. His most valuable contribution was to finger Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the 9/11 mastermind. But, as Jane Mayer wrote in her book “The Dark Side,” even that contribution may have been old news: according to the 9/11 commission, the C.I.A. had already learned about Mohammed during the summer of 2001. In any event, as one of Zubaydah’s own F.B.I. questioners, Ali Soufan, wrote in a Times Op-Ed article last Thursday, traditional interrogation methods had worked. Yet Bybee’s memo purported that an “increased pressure phase” was required to force Zubaydah to talk.
As soon as Bybee gave the green light, torture followed: Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002, according to another of the newly released memos. Unsurprisingly, it appears that no significant intelligence was gained by torturing this mentally ill Qaeda functionary. So why the overkill? Bybee’s memo invoked a ticking time bomb: “There is currently a level of ‘chatter’ equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks.”
We don’t know if there was such unusual “chatter” then, but it’s unlikely Zubaydah could have added information if there were. Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies. Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated Bybee to write his memo that August, thanks to the comprehensive Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees released last week.
The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.
In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.
But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.
Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included.
Levin also emphasized the report’s accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine — only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
Levin suggests — and I agree — that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.
President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.
April 26, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Banality of Bush White House Evil
By FRANK RICH
WE don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.
On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths....
The New York Times
April 26, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Banality of Bush White House Evil
By FRANK RICH
WE don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.
On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths that quarantine the evil. If our country committed torture, surely it did so to prevent Armageddon, in a patriotic ticking-time-bomb scenario out of “24.” If anyone deserves blame, it was only those identified by President Bush as “a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values”: promiscuous, sinister-looking lowlifes like Lynddie England, Charles Graner and the other grunts who were held accountable while the top command got a pass.
We’ve learned much, much more about America and torture in the past five years. But as Mark Danner recently wrote in The New York Review of Books, for all the revelations, one essential fact remains unchanged: “By no later than the summer of 2004, the American people had before them the basic narrative of how the elected and appointed officials of their government decided to torture prisoners and how they went about it.” When the Obama administration said it declassified four new torture memos 10 days ago in part because their contents were already largely public, it was right.
Yet we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government’s highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to “24”; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.
The newly released Justice Department memos, like those before them, were not written by barely schooled misfits like England and Graner. John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee graduated from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan and Brigham Young. They have passed through white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling, and Sidley Austin.
Judge Bybee’s résumé tells us that he has four children and is both a Cubmaster for the Boy Scouts and a youth baseball and basketball coach. He currently occupies a tenured seat on the United States Court of Appeals. As an assistant attorney general, he was the author of the Aug. 1, 2002, memo endorsing in lengthy, prurient detail interrogation “techniques” like “facial slap (insult slap)” and “insects placed in a confinement box.”
He proposed using 10 such techniques “in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.” Waterboarding, the near-drowning favored by Pol Pot and the Spanish Inquisition, was prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II. But Bybee concluded that it “does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ”
Still, it’s not Bybee’s perverted lawyering and pornographic amorality that make his memo worthy of special attention. It merits a closer look because it actually does add something new — and, even after all we’ve heard, something shocking — to the five-year-old torture narrative. When placed in full context, it’s the kind of smoking gun that might free us from the myths and denial that prevent us from reckoning with this ugly chapter in our history.
Bybee’s memo was aimed at one particular detainee, Abu Zubaydah, who had been captured some four months earlier, in late March 2002. Zubaydah is portrayed in the memo (as he was publicly by Bush after his capture) as one of the top men in Al Qaeda. But by August this had been proven false. As Ron Suskind reported in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” Zubaydah was identified soon after his capture as a logistics guy, who, in the words of the F.B.I.’s top-ranking Qaeda analyst at the time, Dan Coleman, served as the terrorist group’s flight booker and “greeter,” like “Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar’s Palace.” Zubaydah “knew very little about real operations, or strategy.” He showed clinical symptoms of schizophrenia.
By the time Bybee wrote his memo, Zubaydah had been questioned by the F.B.I. and C.I.A. for months and had given what limited information he had. His most valuable contribution was to finger Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the 9/11 mastermind. But, as Jane Mayer wrote in her book “The Dark Side,” even that contribution may have been old news: according to the 9/11 commission, the C.I.A. had already learned about Mohammed during the summer of 2001. In any event, as one of Zubaydah’s own F.B.I. questioners, Ali Soufan, wrote in a Times Op-Ed article last Thursday, traditional interrogation methods had worked. Yet Bybee’s memo purported that an “increased pressure phase” was required to force Zubaydah to talk.
As soon as Bybee gave the green light, torture followed: Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002, according to another of the newly released memos. Unsurprisingly, it appears that no significant intelligence was gained by torturing this mentally ill Qaeda functionary. So why the overkill? Bybee’s memo invoked a ticking time bomb: “There is currently a level of ‘chatter’ equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks.”
We don’t know if there was such unusual “chatter” then, but it’s unlikely Zubaydah could have added information if there were. Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies. Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated Bybee to write his memo that August, thanks to the comprehensive Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees released last week.
The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.
In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.
But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.
Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included.
Levin also emphasized the report’s accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine — only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
Levin suggests — and I agree — that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.
President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.
Samstag, Januar 10, 2009
Bird and Fortune - Subprime Crisis and Iraq....
Financial Advisor
Diplomatic talk.....
Operation Iraqi Liberation abbriveated as OIL :-)
Montag, Dezember 01, 2008
UK 'closer' to adopting the euro
2008/12/01
BBC NEWS
UK 'closer' to adopting the euro
No 10 denies shift in euro policy
The government has denied a shift in policy on the euro after the European Commission's president said the UK was "closer than ever before" to joining.
Jose Manuel Barroso told French radio that British politicians were considering the move because of the effects of the global credit crunch.
Lord Mandelson said at the weekend that "our aim" should be to join the euro.
2008/12/01
BBC NEWS
UK 'closer' to adopting the euro
No 10 denies shift in euro policy
The government has denied a shift in policy on the euro after the European Commission's president said the UK was "closer than ever before" to joining.
Jose Manuel Barroso told French radio that British politicians were considering the move because of the effects of the global credit crunch.
Lord Mandelson said at the weekend that "our aim" should be to join the euro.
But Downing Street said its position on the single currency remained the same and that it had "no plans" to join.
"Our position hasn't changed... we have no plans to join the euro," No 10 said.
Five tests
In 1997 Gordon Brown, seen as less keen on the euro than Tony Blair, set five economic tests which had to be met before ministers would recommend UK euro entry and holding a referendum.
The key test is whether the UK economy is coming together with those of countries in the eurozone and whether this can be sustained in the long-term. The second test, linked to this, is whether there is sufficient flexibility to cope with economic change.
The remaining three tests assess the impact of joining the euro on jobs, foreign investment and the financial services industry.
Opinion polls have suggested that any vote on scrapping the pound and adopting the euro would be lost, and in the UK the currency has not been a significant political issue for years.
In his interview Mr Barroso acknowledged "the majority" of British people continued to oppose joining the eurozone.
But he said the recent economic uncertainty had made the currency a far more attractive option.
'Better off'
In the RTL radio/LCI television broadcast, the former prime minister of Portugal said: "We are now closer than ever before.
"I'm not going to break the confidentiality of certain conversations, but some British politicians have already told me, 'If we had the euro, we would have been better off'."
He said the current poor economic situation had emphasised the importance of the euro to the UK, but added he believed a move would not take place in the immediate future.
"I know that the majority in Britain are still opposed, but there is a period of consideration under way and the people who matter in Britain are currently thinking about it," he said.
The value of sterling compared with other currencies has fallen during the credit crunch, and the UK government has had to spend massively in recent months to try to support the economy.
During the interview, Mr Barroso highlighted the situation in Denmark - an EU state which voted against joining the eurozone in 2000, but is now considering holding a new referendum on the single currency.
In the daily Brussels briefing later an EC spokesman said "member states would benefit from a country like Britain being in the euro".
He said the euro could be "an anchor of stability in troubled times... the advantages are very clear".
He added that Mr Barroso's comments were "reflections" and added: "The British are very pragmatic. When they feel it is right to join the euro, they will join the euro."
A Downing Street spokesman said: "We have no comment on this. Our position on the euro is the same. We have no plans to join the euro."
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, a former European Commissioner, told Labour's Progress conference on Saturday: "I hold to the view that our aim, our goal, should be to enter the single currency."
He added that the government was "obviously not going to take on that challenge" in the current economic climate.
'Hunt them down'
The UK's opposition Conservative Party opposes adopting the euro.
Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said: "It is extraordinary that certain politicians are whispering to the EU Commission about joining the euro behind the British people's backs.
"Keeping the pound is vital for Britain's economic future. We need interest rates that are right for Britain, not the rest of Europe. There are no circumstances in which the next Conservative government will propose joining the euro.
"If Labour ministers still want to get Britain into the euro they should come out and say so. We will be putting questions to the government to find out what conversations have been going on."
The leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, said "the people who matter in Britain are the people, not the professional political class that Barroso is himself a member of".
"That ruling elite would love to bounce us into the euro and will grasp at any straw to do so, for it's a step on the way to their dream and our nightmare, a federal superstate.
"We're told that some British politicians have said 'If we had the euro, we would have been better off'. Whoever these people are we need to hunt them down and explain some simple economics to them."
He added that if Mr Barroso wanted to test the mood in Britain "then he can call for a referendum on both the euro and the Lisbon Treaty so that the people of Britain can tell him where to go".
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7757830.stm
Published: 2008/12/01 14:42:37 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
BBC NEWS
UK 'closer' to adopting the euro
No 10 denies shift in euro policy
The government has denied a shift in policy on the euro after the European Commission's president said the UK was "closer than ever before" to joining.
Jose Manuel Barroso told French radio that British politicians were considering the move because of the effects of the global credit crunch.
Lord Mandelson said at the weekend that "our aim" should be to join the euro.
2008/12/01
BBC NEWS
UK 'closer' to adopting the euro
No 10 denies shift in euro policy
The government has denied a shift in policy on the euro after the European Commission's president said the UK was "closer than ever before" to joining.
Jose Manuel Barroso told French radio that British politicians were considering the move because of the effects of the global credit crunch.
Lord Mandelson said at the weekend that "our aim" should be to join the euro.
But Downing Street said its position on the single currency remained the same and that it had "no plans" to join.
"Our position hasn't changed... we have no plans to join the euro," No 10 said.
Five tests
In 1997 Gordon Brown, seen as less keen on the euro than Tony Blair, set five economic tests which had to be met before ministers would recommend UK euro entry and holding a referendum.
The key test is whether the UK economy is coming together with those of countries in the eurozone and whether this can be sustained in the long-term. The second test, linked to this, is whether there is sufficient flexibility to cope with economic change.
The remaining three tests assess the impact of joining the euro on jobs, foreign investment and the financial services industry.
Opinion polls have suggested that any vote on scrapping the pound and adopting the euro would be lost, and in the UK the currency has not been a significant political issue for years.
In his interview Mr Barroso acknowledged "the majority" of British people continued to oppose joining the eurozone.
But he said the recent economic uncertainty had made the currency a far more attractive option.
'Better off'
In the RTL radio/LCI television broadcast, the former prime minister of Portugal said: "We are now closer than ever before.
"I'm not going to break the confidentiality of certain conversations, but some British politicians have already told me, 'If we had the euro, we would have been better off'."
He said the current poor economic situation had emphasised the importance of the euro to the UK, but added he believed a move would not take place in the immediate future.
"I know that the majority in Britain are still opposed, but there is a period of consideration under way and the people who matter in Britain are currently thinking about it," he said.
The value of sterling compared with other currencies has fallen during the credit crunch, and the UK government has had to spend massively in recent months to try to support the economy.
During the interview, Mr Barroso highlighted the situation in Denmark - an EU state which voted against joining the eurozone in 2000, but is now considering holding a new referendum on the single currency.
In the daily Brussels briefing later an EC spokesman said "member states would benefit from a country like Britain being in the euro".
He said the euro could be "an anchor of stability in troubled times... the advantages are very clear".
He added that Mr Barroso's comments were "reflections" and added: "The British are very pragmatic. When they feel it is right to join the euro, they will join the euro."
A Downing Street spokesman said: "We have no comment on this. Our position on the euro is the same. We have no plans to join the euro."
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, a former European Commissioner, told Labour's Progress conference on Saturday: "I hold to the view that our aim, our goal, should be to enter the single currency."
He added that the government was "obviously not going to take on that challenge" in the current economic climate.
'Hunt them down'
The UK's opposition Conservative Party opposes adopting the euro.
Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said: "It is extraordinary that certain politicians are whispering to the EU Commission about joining the euro behind the British people's backs.
"Keeping the pound is vital for Britain's economic future. We need interest rates that are right for Britain, not the rest of Europe. There are no circumstances in which the next Conservative government will propose joining the euro.
"If Labour ministers still want to get Britain into the euro they should come out and say so. We will be putting questions to the government to find out what conversations have been going on."
The leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, said "the people who matter in Britain are the people, not the professional political class that Barroso is himself a member of".
"That ruling elite would love to bounce us into the euro and will grasp at any straw to do so, for it's a step on the way to their dream and our nightmare, a federal superstate.
"We're told that some British politicians have said 'If we had the euro, we would have been better off'. Whoever these people are we need to hunt them down and explain some simple economics to them."
He added that if Mr Barroso wanted to test the mood in Britain "then he can call for a referendum on both the euro and the Lisbon Treaty so that the people of Britain can tell him where to go".
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7757830.stm
Published: 2008/12/01 14:42:37 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Dienstag, November 04, 2008
The financial crisis foreseen by the BBC 20 yrs ago!
Yes Prime Minister!
"A Conflict of Interests"
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part 4
"A Conflict of Interests"
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part 4
Donnerstag, August 28, 2008
Abonnieren
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