Come back Arch Duke Franz - all is forgiven

Wull ye no come back again, Arch Duke Franz of Bavaria? The Kirk dropped a constitutional bombshell into the referendum campaign last week by suggesting that Scottish monarchs should be crowned in Scotland after independence. The last king to have been so invested was Charles 11 in 1651, who was of course a Catholic.   Direct in line through the Jacobite succession today is one Franz of Bavaria, an amiable octogenarian who may not fully appreciate that he is King over the Water.

The Restoration didn't end too well for the Presbyterians back in the day. It led to the “Killing Time” of the 1680s - when thumbscrews and the gallows were the penalties Presbyterians suffered for holding their open-air 'conventicles'.     The Act of Settlement in 1701 prevented Catholics from becoming monarchs ever again, and we are still signed up to that – much to the frustration of Alex Salmond who has been trying to get the Act changed so that it no longer discriminates against Catholics.

Which might be why the Kirk also called last week for the Church of Scotland to be called the National Church of Scotland.  If the Jacobites got their hands back on the throne, Franz might be minded to bring back thumbscrews for Protestants. And then invade England.

What does all this mean? Well, almost nothing, since no one seriously takes issue with the Hanoverian succession these days, and few of us are members of any church. But it provided another perplexing constitutional issue for Scots to worry about as they await the referendum, or should that be referendoom,  in September 2014.    Like the threat that Scotland's bank notes may be taken away, as alleged by the UK Treasury's latest broadside against independence. Not content with oor Pandas, they will even take oor poonds.

Brexit - But what happens to Scotland?

FROM SUNDAY HERALD

It seems only yesterday that everyone was talking about a "Grexit" - the forecast, made by most of the UK press, that Greece was about to leave the European Union because of the onerous bailout terms imposed by the EU and IMF. Now, suddenly, we are talking about the "Brexit" - the possibility, indeed probability, of a British exit from Europe when the current Lisbon Treaty comes up for negotiation in 2015.

Last week, three prominent Tory grandees - the former Chancellor, Lord Lawson, the former Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, and Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, called for British withdrawal from the European Union. The former Tory Scottish Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind said they'd "hurled a hand-grenade into a small building". It certainly put a bomb under David Cameron's policy of promising to renegotiate the terms of British membership, and then putting the result to a referendum after the next general election. Tory backbenchers, emboldened by Lord Lawson and co. are demanding a firm commitment right away. Labour says it is opposed to a referendum now, but agrees on the need for reform, and is not ruling out its own referendum on independence from Europe.

Viewed from Scotland, where opposition to Europe is muted and where we have another referendum on our minds, this all seems more than a little surprising. Most Scots still want to stay in the EU, according to the latest Ipsos Mori poll, and only a third want out. But in England - especially the south - there has been a growing frustration with Europe that finally erupted two weeks ago in the English local elections, when UKIP - the party seeking withdrawal from the EU - won up to 25% of the vote. There is little doubt that many people in England feel that Europe is a "bureaucratic monstrosity" to use Lord Lawson's description, and that their democracy is being subverted by Brussels.

But what exactly do they mean by this? When you ask eurosceptic Tory MPs they tend to reply with relatively trivial examples - compulsory seat belts for children under 12, regulations on food standards, health and hygiene. Those infamous straight bananas. But most of these relate to the terms under which the UK is a member of the Single European Market, where standardisation is necessary to ensure a level playing field for all trading nations.

Similarly, the social protections of the EU, like the working time directive, are intended to make the single market work fairly and prevent some countries seeking advantage by forcing their workers to spend longer at work. The "social Europe" as it is called is hardly onerous, and Britain anyway has an opt out from the 48hr working week.

Eurosceptics also talk of the Human Rights Act and claim that the failure to deport suspected terrorists like Abu Qatada has something to do with the European Union. This is completely wrong. The Human Rights Act is based on the European Convention on Human Rights which was set up by Winston Churchill after the Second World War to prevent totalitarianism returning to Europe.

None of these, it seems to me, are reasons to go to war with Europe, and deny the benefits of the single market which has undoubtedly boosted prosperity. Trade within Europe has doubled since 1992, thanks to the abolition of tariffs and barriers to the free movement of goods and services in Europe.

Europe is a good thing. Honest.

   It was typical of the Guardian to try to suggest some equivalence between Nigel Farrage's UKIP and Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party.   At an editorial level the Guardian has always found it hard to understand that the SNP is not a nationalist party in the conventional sense and is not based on any concept of ethnic chauvinism.  Don't they ever bother to read its election manifestos?   

   The SNP is probably the left wing and most multicultural political party in Britain with any significant parliamentary representation in Britain.  It was the first party to have a muslim MSP; it supports an open immigration policy; its external affairs spokesman is Hums  I gave up trying to make this clear in pieces I have written for them in recent years, and I am not a member of the SNP and don't describe myself as a nationalists.  

   What metropolitan papers cannot quite understand is that the political culture is different in Scotland.   The Radical Scotland demonstrators who barracked Farrage called him a racist and a homophobe.  They were not attacking him for his nationality.  It was convenient for him to present it this way, but it was nauseating to see papers like the Guardian echoing his English nationalist misrepresentation and giving prominence to the equally mendacious accusations by discredited figures like Lord George Foulkes that the SNP condones anti-English racism.  

   It is Labour that has been trying to foment racial antagonism recently.  The most egregious example was the former Labour election candidate, Ian Smart's, claim that the SNP wanted to send home "Pakis and Poles".    It is a matter of record that Labour First Ministers, both SNP and Labour, have been arguing for greater immigration to Scotland and against the policies of the UK government.  Jack McConnell and Alex Salmond don't agree on many things, but they are at one on the need for Scotland to receive workers from abroad in order to revive the Scottish economy.   

   The SNP supports same sex marriage and wants to keep Scotland in Europe.  It's a measure of how attitudes to Europe have changed in Britain over the last twenty years, that anti-Europeans like Nigel Farrage of UKIP, who was barracked in an Edinburgh pub last week, are now regarded almost as members of the political mainstream. In England at least. 

    The term "eurosceptic" was originally coined to describe the minority of mainly Tory MPs in the early 1990s who opposed the Maastricht Treaty. But the term has become redundant because almost all Conservatives are now of that persuasion. Over 100 are so hostile, they voted against their own Prime Minister's Queens Speech last week because there wasn't an immediate referendum on withdrawal.  Britain, it seems,  is on its way out.

      David Cameron has already promised an in out referendum after the next election. Labour and the Liberal Democrats also support a referendum if there are significant changes to Britain's relationship to Europe, which seem almost inevitable now. Ironically, the only party that doesn't seem to want to repatriate powers from Brussels is the SNP, which wants to take Scotland out of the UK but not the EU. It is almost impossible to find anyone in Britain who makes the positive case for European economic integration any more, now that the eurozone crisis has led to mass unemployment and falling living standards in countries like Spain and Greece

Yet, for people of my generation, it is hard to regard the Europe as anything other than a huge advance in European civilisation. I can remember when it was impossible to travel to Eastern European countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia. They were communist dictatorships, closed societies, where often impoverished populations lived in fear of the state and had no human rights. They were part of a military alliance which threatened the very security of the West. Now these countries are vibrant European democracies and pose no threat to anyone. This has happened in only twenty five years - the blink of an eye in historical terms.

Of course, eurosceptics say that this has more to do with Ryanair than the European Union. That these countries have become part of the European family simply because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the expansion of capitalism. Conservatives like the former MEP Daniel Hannon, say that Europe itself today poses a threat to democracy because of its bureaucratic institutions and its lack of respect for diversity among the 27 member states. But no one who recalls the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 could deny that Europe played a part in the democratization of Europe. It is not just a willingness to host stag and hen parties that gets you into the European Union.

Postpone the referendum? How can Scots decide on staying in the UK if they don't know whether the UK is staying in the EU?

FROM HERALD

   “Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?”. That's the question that looks increasingly likely to be asked of British voters in a referendum in the near future. It is in the draft bill offered by David Cameron to assuage his eurosceptic backbenchers.  It didn't, and 116 of them demonstrated their continued dissatisfaction by voting against their own government's  Queen's Speech.  They still don't believe their leader is serious about holding an in out referendum and want a commitment before 2015. 

Labour's Ed Milliband has been enjoying David Cameron's latest troubles over Europe immensely. It is redolent of the mess the Conservatives found themselves in during the early 1990s, when John Major was unable to control his eurosceptic “B@@tards”. But Miliband may not be smiling for long, because things have moved on and Britain, or rather England, appears to be increasingly hostile to the European Union. The pressure will mount on Labour before the next general election to give its own commitment to a referendum on Europe, especially if, as expected, UKIP effectively win the European Elections in May 2014. 

   I don't see how the Labour leader can refuse.  Indeed, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats already accept that there should be a referendum if there is any “substantial” change in Britain's relationship to Europe. Since Europe is in the process of reviewing the EU treaties prior to introducing a banking and fiscal union, that substantial change looks increasingly likely. Yesterday, at Prime Minister's Question Time, the Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said it was a matter of “when not if” there will be a referendum on Europe.

Europe has become the dominant issue in UK politics, and it increasingly looks as if Britain is, if not on its way out, then moving towards a much looser relationship. But where does this leave Scotland? We have a referendum on independence in September in September 2014 in which Scots will be asked whether they want to be out of the UK but in Europe. Then, shortly after, they will be asked in a referendum whether we want to stay in the UK but out of Europe. I don't know about the voters, but I'm confused. I'm not even sure it is possible to have a view on staying in the UK if we don't know whether Britain is staying in Europe.

Indeed, as the constitutional lawyer, Alan Trench has suggested, there is a case for delaying the Scottish referendum until the UK's position in Europe has been resolved. This is because the information essential for making a determination on independence for Scotland will not be available to Scots when they make their choice in September 2014. Will a No vote also be a vote, effectively, to leave Europe - a proposition that a majority of Scots reject? We don't know.

Margaret Thatcher: why they should erect her statue outside Holyrood

FROM SUNDAY HERALD.

She was as divisive in death as she was in life - or so everyone has been saying about the passing of Lady Thatcher. In fact, you could equally argue the reverse. The Left hasn't been more united for years and nor has the Right, in its hatred for the street parties and sing-alongs that have followed in her wake.

 

At times last week I felt as if I had been transported back to the 1980s, watching crowds chanting “Maggie Maggie Maggie” in Glasgow, Liverpool, Brixton. The BBC under attack for threatening to play “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” as it raced up the charts. The press reissuing their 80s classic,“The Enemy Within”, and vilifying ex miners and Labour MPs like Glenda Jackson for sullying the memory of the Great Leader. It has even brought Tony Blair out of his lair to warn the Labour leader Ed Miliband not to get too lefty. 

It's all been in extremely bad taste of course. We shouldn't use a personal tragedy to peddle a political message, said editorials in The Times. But it didn't stop Tories like Boris Johnson doing precisely that. 

  On the day after she shuffled off this mortal coil Mayor of London delivered a politically-charged eulogy in the Daily Telegraph. “You either gave in to the hunger strikers, or you showed a grim and ultimately brutal resolve”, he roared, referring to the IRA hunger strikers of 1981. “You either accepted an Argentine victory or else you defeated Galtieri. You either took on the miners or else you surrendered to Marxist agitators”.

  That exercise in tasteless triumphalism was bound to provoke a response even from those who do not glory in confrontation. Thatcher, remember, also gave comfort to dictators like General Pinochet, promoted homophobia with Clause 28, opposed the liberation of Nelson Mandela, closed down the mines, introduced the poll tax, destroyed manufacturing industry and demonised modern Germany and the European Union. Since you ask.

Mayor Boris has been calling for a statue to be erected in Mrs Thatcher's memory, perhaps even on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square, which would be madness. It would rapidly become the most vandalised and desecrated memorial in Britain.

  And then there is the extraordinary decision to give Thatcher what is effectively a state funeral, with gun carriages, the Queen and Jeremy Clarkson in attendance. It is one thing to give a state funeral to a genuine national leader, like Winston Churchill, who led a coalition government during the Second World War; it is quite another to give a similar send off to a politician who simply divided the country on class and north-south lines. It will likely provoke the street party to end all street parties this week, as well as a national rendition of “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” as she is laid to rest.

 

Yes, it is tasteless and a bit silly to indulge in this nostalgic class warfare, since this is not the 1980s, even if it feels that way. However, the reaction on both sides has demonstrated that the wounds that were opened in that decade have not been healed by the passage of time. My own professional history was dominated by Margaret Thatcher, a politician I only met four times and interviewed twice but who hung like a shadow over Scottish political life. On the day she was elected in May1979 I felt, like many in Scotland, an ominous sense that things would never be the same again.

 

    Fresh out of university I'd had the dubious fortune to start my journalistic career in the BBC's Referendum Unit for the abortive devolution vote of March 1979. Scotland had voted yes, by 48% to 52% but was denied the Scottish Assembly because of the infamous 40% rule. That led directly to the dawn of Thatcherism because the SNP MPs in Westminster, in their fury at the loss of an assembly they didn't really want, withdrew support for the Callaghan government in the crucial confidence motion later that month. It was an act of unpardonable folly by the 11 SNP MPs, even though David Steel's Liberals were also implicated.

 

In the May election, which brought Mrs Thatcher to Number Ten, the SNP lost all but two of its MPs, and was plunged into political obscurity for the next decade. But what was much worse was that their stupidity helped leave Scotland politically undefended in a crucial decade. The incoming Tories concluded that Scotland wasn't a problem any more, with the referendum won and the SNP back in their box, and that consequently Scotland's industrial economy could be sacrificed in the class war. It's an outcome that Scots might do well to reflect upon in the run up to the 2014 referendum.

 

Anyone who thinks that Thatcherism was a good thing for the Scottish economy, as apologists have been trying to argue in the past week, clearly wasn't around at the time. In the early Eighties I was working as a presenter for BBC Scotland documentary series, Current Account, which charted week by week, the social and industrial consequences of the Thatcher recessions. Singer sewing machines in Clydebank, Dunlop tyres at Inchinnan, Alcan aluminium in Invergordon, the last car factory in Scotland, Linwood, closed in 1981. We filmed factory occupations in Plessey Electronics and British Leyland Bathgate, watched as Scotland's steel industry was run down, the shipyards dismantled. It was blindingly obvious to everyone except Arthur Scargill that Thatcher was storing up coal stocks and political capital so that she could take on the miners in 1984. I spent a large part of the strike seeing the life drain out of pit towns like like Polmaise as the tragedy unfolded. .

 

Scotland had been a world leader in engineering technology for nearly a century, a cradle of the industrial revolution, with Glasgow the industrial heart of the British Empire. That was swept away in less than a decade. Around 400,000 jobs, mostly in West Central Scotland were destroyed during the Thatcher recessions, and though many were replaced in electronics assembly plants, Scotland's industrial economy was not. It was an irony entirely lost on the Scottish Tories that the electronics firms that came to Silicon Glen in the 90s were attracted by the very state subsidies she had withdrawn from Scotland's indigenous manufacturing industry. And because of Britain's membership of the EEC she abhorred. Most of them left within 15 years, leaving the deskilled and demoralised Scotland we see today. Scotland's notorious health problems date directly from this period which was the economic equivalent of warfare.

 

Modernisation it wasn't: countries like Germany didn't destroy their industrial base in Bavaria in the 1980s, they retooled it. Opportunities to rebuild on the basis of the oil industry were missed. And what made it all so profoundly unsettling was the knowledge that the destruction of manufacturing industry was being financed by Scottish oil revenue which was pouring into the UK treasury in the 1980s, masking Britain's balance of payments deficit. Estimates of the value of North Sea Oil vary hugely from £100 – 200bn in the Thatcher era. But what is not in doubt was that it was oil that kept the UK in business in the 80s. Of course, Scotland received its share: in the form of unemployment and invalidity benefit.

 

This kind of scorched earth policy would not have been possible in the South East of England because it would have been politically unthinkable. Historians tut tut if you suggest that there was a Scotland-England dimension to Thatcherism because that smacks of nationalism. But it was glaringly obvious at the time, even to non-nationalists like me. Her policies, designed to destroy trades unionism by laying waste to manufacturing industry, were in the direct interests of the City of London financial classes. The other side of the collapse of Scottish industry was the Big Bang of 1986, which deregulated British banking and gave birth to the reckless financial services “industry” we see today. Her privatisations of utilities like gas, electricity and British Telecom earned huge commissions for City of London firms that handled the floatations and speculated on the share prices of state assets. The Russian oligarchs imported her business model to their own country. South of Scotland Electricity, recently fined a record £10m for cheating its own customers is also part of the thatcher legacy. It used to be called the Hydro Board.

 

Mrs Thatcher's policy of council house sales further benefitted the banks and finance houses who sold the mortgages and raked in the profits, mis-selling dodgy endowment mortgages in the process. . Britain turned into a nation of estate agents, and the value of properties in the South East and in London rocketed, benefitting the middle class Tory voters who made capital gains through property speculation. The Lawson tax cuts, which reduced income tax from 83% to 40% further enriched the wealthy middle classes of the South East of England by allowing them to keep most of it. Meanwhile, Scotland got the poll tax.

 

In 1987 I'd just been made the BBC's Scottish Political Correspondent, and was furious that she refused to give us an interview in the run up to the general election. I shamelessly hijacked a packed press conference at the start of the campaign and threw questions at her from the floor. It was insulting to the other journalists present, but sensing the moment, they remained silent when she tried to move on, and we got our interview. Being in Mrs Thatcher's bad books wasn't a very sensible career move, but the poll tax was an unique moment Scottish history. Questions had to be asked about how this policy could be imposed on a country which had rejected it very firmly at the ballot box. Scotland wasn't used as a “guinea pig” as Tory apologists always point out. But the poll tax was introduced a year ahead of England and in the teeth of widespread opposition across all classes expressed in peaceful demonstrations and in the 1987 election where the Tories were routed.

 

But what was worse was that the poll tax was only scrapped in 1990 after riots in London. This delivered a sobering message to Scots that peaceful expressions of dissent are not heard in Westminster, and led to the massive endorsement of the devolution in the Referendum of 1997, and also to the wipe out of Tory MPs in the general election of the same year. It wasn't the industrial closures as such but the manifest unfairness of a tax where “a duke pays the same as a dustman” that forced Scotland to rethink its place in the United Kingdom. It also sealed Margaret Thatcher's fate.

 

I was back in London working in Westminster in 1990 when she finally resigned after Michael Heseltine finally stood against her. It really was announced in the train on the way in – I heard it. Tory ministers like Michael Portillo and Michael Forsyth gathered distraught, some in tears, in the Members Lobby at Westminster promising revenge against the cabinet “wets” who had brought down their leader.

 

But I have to record that there was a great deal of relief too among Tory MPs who feared for their seats, and were genuinely worried about what she was doing to the country. Thatcher was never a true Conservative, after all. Her ideological populism, class confrontation and military sabre-rattling was not at all in the Tory tradition, which is why so many of her cabinet ministers trooped in to Number Ten in November 1990 to tell her the game was up.

 

But by then the damage was done. Britain would never be the same again. Scotland set up its own parliament and opted out of UK domestic politics. The City of London - a frankenstein monster largely of her creation – went on to bring down the entire financial system. Commentators say it is wrong to blame politicians for the bankers' greed, but they were the direct beneficiaries of her industrial policies and also of the amoral climate of possessive individualism which she introduced to Britain - a travesty of the economic philosophy of Adam Smith whom she claimed as a mentor.

 

And today her policies are being pursued again by David Cameron, despite the image of “liberal” Conservatism. We have the bedroom tax in place of the hated poll tax. And yes, I know, it isn't a tax, but nor was the poll tax. It was officially called the “community charge” and the BBC got into exactly the same difficulty for not naming it as such. Margaret Thatcher cut pensions in by not raising them in line with average earnings after 1981. Tories today are cutting all benefits by raising them by less than the rate of inflation. She was profoundly hostile to Europe, but it has taken David Cameron to offer Britain a ballot on withdrawal from the EU. She may be gone, but her work remains.

 

Why did Scots find her so abominable? After all, Scotland used to be a Tory nation in the 1950s. It was a potent mix of anti-Englishness, moral indignation, legitimate grievance and philosophical revulsion. Her Sermon on the Mound in 1988, with its crass celebration of wealth, offended something deep in Scotland's Presbyterian soul. It convinced Scots that they really were a different country and began the process that could still lead to Scotland leaving he UK for good. The cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention was set up in the same year as the poll tax and within a decade Scotland had won a parliament with primary legislative powers. Now Scotland faces a referendum on independence.

 

If they do erect a statue it should really be outside the Scottish parliament in Holyrood, because Mrs Thatcher was the politician that made Scottish home rule inevitable. And may yet cause the Break up of Britain.

 

Kim's nukes to target Glasgow - Cameron

David Cameron raised the stakes in the independence debate last week by insisting that it would be “foolish” to abandon Trident in the Clyde when there is a growing threat from countries like North Korea. I'm not sure it was entirely wise to suggest that we might be on Kim's target list. Are we to assume our Trident missiles are now potentially targeting Pyongyang?

Residents of Scotland's largest conurbation might wonder if having weapons of mass destruction, which are illegal under international law, on our doorstep is a good idea if they are liable to attract the attentions of rogue nuclear states. Even the former Tory Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, said Cameron's intervention was “absurd”. But the PM seems to believe that Trident is a key plank in the “positive” case for the union. A majority of Scots seem to disagree, according to opinion polls, and think that there are better things to spend £100bn on than a useless virility symbol.

David Cameron also believes that the Coalitions's welfare reforms, that kick in this week, will bolster the Union by targeting scroungers and skivers who set fire to their children. But Scots do not seem over keen on weapons of social mass destruction like the bedroom tax, which is shaping up to be the poll tax of the 21^st Century.

SSE - Crooks can be green and Scottish too

From Herald,  4/4/13

   Scottish and Southern Electricity has been charged £10m by Ofgem for mis-selling its gas and electricity. Apparently, its telephone sales people were bamboozling potential customers by giving them “misleading and inaccurate” information about prices. They also reported that the Pope is believed to be Catholic.

I'm sure action will be swift. Two years ago Ofgem castigated the energy companies for having 300 different tariffs. This year they have 900. Last month Ofgem reported that the energy utilities were raking in record profits of £110 per household, because wholesale energy costs were falling. So the energy companies announced that they were going to put their prices up even higher.

This is called regulation? Only in the same way that sub-prime mortgages were regulated. Ofgem insists that it is not in the business of setting prices – heaven forfend. Its job is to ensure a competitive market. Well if this is competition, I'd hate to see what a cartel would look like.

Perhaps Ofgem might get better results if it tried penalising the wrongdoers just a little more severely. Tapping them on the wrist and saying “naughty naughty” tends not to work in our high powered global business environment. £10m is about 0.003% of SSE's annual revenues which last year were over £30 billion. Do you think that this penalty is going to make them change their ways? SSE has form here and were found guilty of doorstep mis-selling in 2012 and fined £1.25m. Gosh, that must've hurt.

Watch out. Press censorship is here.

'Africa is giving nothing to anyone - apart from AIDS'. A rather nasty remark, and untrue. Africa gives us many things, including most of the world's gold and diamonds, and you can't blame a country for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Nevertheless, I'm not sure I would say that this remark, from the Irish journalist and commentator, Kevin Myers, in the Irish Independent in 2008 should actually be censored. But be in no doubt - it cannot be said again in Ireland. And nor can anything like it.

This was one of the earliest cases taken to the Irish Press Council, the system of press regulation Alex Salmond would like to see in Scotland. It was referred to the Irish press watchdog by the Immigrant Council of Ireland, and a number of NGOs, on the grounds that it breached four of the principles of the Council's Code of Practice for journalists. 1)Accuracy 2)Fairness 3)Respect for rights and 8)Incitement to Hatred. The Council accepted that it was "gratuitously offensive", and "was likely to cause grave offence to people throughout sub-Saharan Africa" It ruled that the article "did breach Principle 8 of the Code". Though confusingly it did not conclude that it was "likely to stir up hatred".

But the matter didn't end there. After the ruling, in 2009, the Irish Times ran a headline "Press Council upholds complaint against Myers article". Mr Myers then took the Irish Times to the Press Council on the grounds that this breached Principle 1)Accuracy, 3)Fairness and 4)Respect for Rights. The Times argued that its headline was accurate and fair since it was a direct quote from the Press Council itself. But the Press Council didn't agree and said that even though this is what it had said, the Irish Times headline was misleading and it "breached Principle 1 of the Code". However, just to make things even more confusing, it only partially upheld the complaint made by Mr Myers against the Irish Times.

I'm afraid this is what happens when you put a group of lawyers,ex- judges and professors in charge of regulating the press. The PC tried to apply these very broad an subjective criteria, like offensive and fair, to a piece of journalism that was neither. But they also realised that freedom of speech does require that sometimes offensive and unfair things are said. So, they tried to have it both ways - they upheld the complaint, and didn't uphold it at the same time.

But this has had one very clear outcome: censorship.

The Pyrenees are just like the Highlands, only with people.

When the temperature fell below -11 even my Macbook froze. I didn't think they did that, but they do. When I finally thawed it out it had reset the date, for some reason, at 1^st February 2008 and wouldn't open my email. But since the internet had stopped working, this was kind of academic.. The satellite dish on our roof had a beard of icicles hanging from it which presumably messed up its pointing system with the satellite.

Well, if you choose to holiday at 800metres in the Pyrenees in February, I suppose you shouldn't be surprised if it gets cold. But not like this. This has been the worst winter for 15 years, according to our neighbours in the commune of Alos, who've been struggling to keep their horses fed and free of frostbite. Normally, the people of the Pyrenees welcome snow to keep the ski resorts working – which have become an important part of the local economy.

And it's very rare for the roads to be blocked as many have been over the past week. This is because they have a highly effective snow-clearing and gritting operation. The big snow ploughs on the main roads tear around so fast they often leave a trail of sparks on the road behind them. Local farmers, it seems, can earn a bit by sticking a snow plough on the fronts of their four-by-fours and driving around the networks of small roads that keep the dispersed community going. And this is a dispersed community.

One of the reasons I love the Pyrenees is that it's what I imagine the Highlands of Scotland would have been like had the people not been cleared from the land to make way for sheep and deer. In the hills of the Ariege, there are lots of people, in hundreds of tiny, low densities communities or “hameau”, often illuminated by a solitary street light. When you look at the surrounding hills at night here they're dotted with what look like constellations of stars, but are actually the streetlights of these hamlets in the sky. I don't know how these hill farming communities have survived, with their tiny strips of pasture, their goats and kitchen gardens, but they do.

If we're printing money it should go to poor people who spend not bankers who hoard.

    Imagine being asked to pay your bank for the privilege of depositing your money in it. Most of us think that we are victims of reverse bank robbery already. But actually give them money to take our money? The Bank of England moved rapidly yesterday to insist that the policy of negative interest rates, floated by bank official, Paul Tucker, was “very blue sky thinking” and anyway wouldn't affect the deposit rate that is paid to ordinary savers, only big banks. Though, as we'll see, that isn't strictly true.

The main reason the Bank of England is talking about negative interest rates is to force the banks to lend to business. Much of that quantitative easing money that is being printed and handed, effectively, to the commercial banks is being redeposited with the Bank of England. Yes, the banks get electronic money from the Bank of England; then they deposit it back with the Bank of England to earn interest on the cash it has printed.

You might think that is the economics of the mad house, and you might well be right. But in the paradoxical world of high finance, this is considered a sound monetary policy.