Blogoir: June

Today I spotted this April piece about the decline and fall of the BBC, from More Intelligent Life:

Last Sunday wasn't the most eventful one in world history. But it wasn't short of news either. In the United States, the Democratic infighting takes a dramatic new twist with Senator Obama's guns-and-religion gaffe. In Britain, there was open talk of Labour disenchantment with Gordon Brown, the party's prime minister. In Italy, a general election looked likely to bring Europe's most colourful politician to power. In Africa, regional leaders chose to sit on their hands as Robert Mugabe's thugs clubbed their way to keeping him in power, yet again. Food riots in Haiti symbolised the soaring price of the world's basic grains. In Washington, top officials of the seven leading economies gave grim warnings about the credit crunch.

So what does the British Broadcasting Corporation pick on to lead its evening television news? Five young British women have been killed in a bus crash in Ecuador.

Minute after minute -- four or five, I'd guess, in a 20-minute bulletin -- the report drags on, complete with (justifiably) sorrowing parents, the usual tributes (equally justified, let us trust) and the plastered-on solemnity of journalistic grief in which the BBC is now so expert ...

...  Still, the BBC is a national institution, supported by public funds. It has a duty to deliver public-service information. That means hard news. Instead, the Beeb's editors specialise increasingly in mawkish sentimentality with its bunches of plastic-wrapped flowers, its standard clichés of public sorrow and de mortuis nil nisi bunkum ...

The bad news is that the FCO also has moved strongly into this mawkish territory in recent years.

As part of a trite urge to make the FCO look 'relevant', FCO Ministers issued new instructions to the global network of Ambassadors.

If more than a handful of British citizens look to have been involved in a 'serious incident' (Note: defined at a very low level, eg a motorway car pile-up with say five deaths) the Ambassador personally is expected to drop everything (CAP reform, Climate Change, Terrorism) and go straight to the scene.

Once there he/she is expressly instructed to deploy the 3 Ps:

What the public expects to hear from you/your spokesman/Minister/official after a major incident :

Pity:         sympathy for the victims and their families

Praise:      praise for/thanks to the emergency services etc

Pledge:     a promise/pledge to get to the bottom of what has happened -  and learn any lessons 

Yuck.

Is not there something wrong here? Namely a complete loss of proportion?

Hundreds of thousands of British people travel in different parts of the world every day. Just by the forces of Bad Luck a tiny number will hit trouble, of whom a small proportion alas will get killed or injured.

Of those, a proportion will have suffered because they themselves messed up in one way or the other (not least ignoring FCO warnings).

Of these, some of them or their relatives will rush to whinge to the media about the FCO support they received, merely to assuage their own incompetence or guilt.

That's how it is.

High-level official emoting-by-numbers when there really has not been a major disaster - involving (say) at a minimum several scores of British deaths in one go - is nothing other than a dangerous dumbing down of the way we all look at Life and its Priorities.

Memo to next Foreign Secretary, and indeed this one:

The media love to pounce on allegations of FCO staff being unkind or inefficient when they find British citizens overseas who have hit trouble. For every hundred people who write in to you with profuse letters of thanks, there are a number who complain - sometimes fairly, sometimes not - to the media.

It makes no sense to pander to the ensuing synthetic media tantrum.

Next time the media attack FCO consular staff doing their best, go on the offensive. Say bluntly that it is not realistic to expect the government to respond in a perfect way to suit every traveller who has a problem overseas, any more than it can be expected to sort out every problem at home.

And add that just as there are a proportion of people who abuse social services at home, there are a number of British travellers who through their own folly or carelessness get into trouble overseas, then selfishly expect the taxpayer to bail them out. The FCO team does what it can to help within the limited resources paid in to this work by Parliament, but not everyone will be happy, and not everyone who complains will have a fair case.

Pressed why the Ambassador did not go personally to the scene of a car-crash, say that he/she is paid to deal with high priority policy subjects - the Embassy has a team of trained experts for that sort of work, who did get there and responded properly.

Likely result? A howl of media and pseudo-public protest.

How dare you be so unfeeling? Don't you care? Not about your silly policies, but about real people?

You say that you do indeed care, which is why HM Ambassadors are dealing with issues which affect the lives of millions of British citizens, not the very few in this case who indeed have experienced such a sad personal loss.

Keep saying the same thing every time an incident like this happens, using a strong firm adult leadership voice.

Eventually they'll go away.

The Persian pocket empire never had a government or a civil society: it only had a court and a bazaar, which are incapable of managing the affairs of a modern society. There is no political party, no social movement, in fact no form of popular organization of any kind capable of handling $350 million a day of oil revenue at present prices.

Iran crashing?  A trenchant read.

We think that we are pretty darn smart these days, what with all our clever new inventions.

But in seventy years' time, won't we look a bit ... quaint?

Serving as HM Ambassador in Belgrade from 2001-2003 I had the task of advising London on how best to handle the aspirations of demands in Montenegro for independence from Serbia.

At the time European capitals were just getting over the NATO bombing campaign aimed at ending Milosevic's appalling rule over Kosovo. So further Balkanization of the Balkans did not seem like a good idea, especially when opinion in Montenegro itself was pretty evenly divided.

Then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook took the view that such issues should not be decided on a wafer-thin minority. He also thought, looking at the Bosnia disaster, that it made no sense to support Montenegrin independence if the largest single 'ethnic' community in Montenegro (ie Serbs) were opposed to it.

Plus opinion had moved against Montenegro's ambitious leader Milo Djukanovic. He had brushed aside personal appeals from US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that he take part in the 2000 elections in the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to help bring Milosevic down. I stood in the FCO main courtyard listening to her in Washington remonstrate with him in Podgorica via the cell-phone of a US diplomat listening in on the animated conversation.

Djukanovic miscalculated. He thought that as Milosevic was bound to win by hook or by crook he would stand vindicated by boycotting the phoney election.

But Milosevic crashed. Leaving Djukanovic with the problem of remaining credible in Western eyes while standing aloof of FRY processes.

Djukanovic had his eye set on independence for Montenegro. He put his head down and decided not to cooperate on Western terms.

This did not work out as he hoped. He eventually in 2002 was compelled to agree to a new loose formation called 'Serbia and Montenegro', seen at the time as a major success for 'EU Foreign Policy'.

But nothing really worked properly in SAM. The Montengrins stalled, playing for time. Serbia's post-Djindjic leadership were unable to project any coherent policy, torn between fear of being seen as 'interfering' and unable to do much to help Montenegro's Serbs or to appeal to non-Serb Montenegrins.

My name during my posting in Belgrade was of course mud in Montenegro pro-independence circles, as I loyally pursued HMG's and EU/US policy of working to keep Serbia and Montenegro together.

All manner of banal communistic tricks were used against me when I visited Podgorica. Blatant telephone and conversation tapping. Grotesque personal attacks against me in the official and non-official pro-Djukanovic media.

I reported one especially lively piece to London in July 2002 in a telegram entitled 'Slimed!'. In it I recorded that I had been publicly denounced in Podgorica as a tool of MI5 and MI6, a Serbian nationalist with a love of "oriental cuisine, grilled meat, monasteryism and Smederevo wine". The article said that had Montenegro already achieved independence, I would have been PNG'd: "Note: as good an argument for independence as I have seen".

Anyway, I left Belgrade in mid-2003. The EU policy I was instructed to pursue steadily lost its way. The Patten (ie monied) part of the EU's external effort did not throw its weight wholeheartedly behind the Solana achievement. So much for European foreign policy

And lo, in 2006 Montenegro finally achieved its independence.

If Montenegro is now independent of Serbia it is not obviously independent of Russia, which has hit upon the happy idea of just buying goodly chunks of it.

Life goes on.

There I was in a Brussels restaurant last week when in walks Milo Djukanovic with a sizeable pack of Balkan security types, little plastic curly things sprouting from all available ears.

We greeted each other warmly. I congratulated him on Montenegro's independence and we exchanged visiting cards.

As ever, I praise fine technique.

Djukanovic knew what he wanted. And he got it.

A text-book example of a tiny, highly focused and sustained ambition defeating far larger but uncertain and disorganised opponents.

One of the most piquant features of the British Parliamentary voting system is that it is so well established and so well analysed that pundits can predict with a high degree of accuracy which MPs will lose their seats for any given % swing of opinion against the government at the next election.

Thus the current group of Labour MPs are staring at the opinion polls in horror, as so many of them stand to be Out next time round if things carry on as they are.

Thus the Labour ship heads boldly for the rocks. At what point do the crew rebel and heave the captain overboard?

Robert Mugabe of course sets Gordon Brown a magnificent example in full steam ahead political navigation when rocks are looming.

Robert. Gordon. Names of great richness in Scotland.

Are these two leaders by some chance related?

Montenegro has not followed the line of most EU countries and recognised its neighbour Kosovo as an independent state.

Why not?

Because doing so is "not high on its list of priorities":

Everyone understands our positive distanced and considered views on Kosovo independence.

Odd, that.

Positive? Hard to say - depends on one's point of view.

Considered? No doubt.

But distanced?

Is not taking a view on the legal status of an adjacent territory about the highest priority in any country's foreign policy?

Why is Montenegro now being so coy, after supporting Kosovo's aspirations to escape Belgrade rule to help its own plans for independence?

It has an Albanian minority of its own to think about. And it has a lot of Russian money and influence sloshing about its coastline.

A lot.

Those Russians with Moscow's support might think that the Montenegrins were being a tad ... ungrateful by moving to recognise Kosovo?

So down the Podgorica priority list that one goes.

From this vast distance it is not easy to follow the procedural manoeuvres of the majestic and variegated Canadian 'Human Rights' industry in its pursuit of Mark Steyn.

But Mark and Maclean's magazine looks to have won one handy free speech victory, with the Canadian Human Rights Commission dropping its case against them:

The Steyn article discusses changing global demographics and other factors that the author describes as contributing to an eventual ascendancy of Muslims in the 'developed world', a prospect that the author fears for various reasons described in the article. The writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Overall, however, the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature as defined by the Supreme Court in the Taylor decision. Considering the purpose and scope of section 13 (1), and taking into account that an interpretation of s. 13 (1) must be consistent with the minimal impairment of free speech, there is no reasonable basis in the evidence to warrant the appointment of a Tribunal.

Maclean's of course incurred significant costs in defending themselves against these idiotic pseudo-charges.

A verdict/decision is still awaited from the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

Much more on the whole saga here.

Watch, and be astounded.

Various MEPs all of a sudden become shy of the media - when they are filmed at 0700 hrs, apparently improperly claiming their daily expenses...

Which reminded me of George Harrison's classic, Beware of Darkness:

Watch out now, take care
Beware of greedy leaders
They take you where you should not go...

A powerful TV programme in Poland has aroused a lot of interest there. 

Trzech Kumpli ("Three Mates") describes the fates of three men who were students in communist-era Krakow in the 1970s.

One became a poet murdered seemingly by the communist police.

One under the Kaczynski twins' leadership became the head of TVP (Polish BBC-equivalent), a fervent anti-communist.

And one became a prominent journalist for Gazeta Wyborcza (sort of Guardian equivalent in Poland).

The point is that the film describes how the third of the three also was a serious collaborator with the communist regime, spying and informing on his friends.

And how the crimes and abuses by the regime which he may have helped provoke have gone largely unpunished, while this collaborator like so many others who helped run the apparatus of repression has lived well on generous pensions and privileges, far beyond what the average Pole receives.

This collaborator not only has lived well. After communist rule ended he established himself in a senior role on the leading Polish newspaper which came out strongly against 'lustration' (the full revealing of who did what to whom in the communist period).

Nice work if you can get it.

Like a murderer from a gang of killers who manage to destroy the evidence which might convict them, who subsequently becomes famous for arguing strenuously in the media that murderers in general should not be punished harshly because 'society is to blame'?

Beyond sickening.

This issue - should we 'move on' from communist-era crimes - is a profound one for modern Europe.

I tackled it in my very final telegram for the FCO, sent from Warsaw:

... during the Communist period the authorities pressed a person to sign a simple document indicating a readiness to cooperate even when the security police did not care whether the person actually would cooperate or not.

What they wanted was the recognition by the person signing of his/her own psychological submission, expressed via just that mean little secret signature, whose very meanness and smallness and furtiveness made the act of submission even more total...

... the striking thing is how the psychological force of Submission lives on today. Clamour from the Poles and indeed foreigners against opening the secret police archives here comes from different angles.

From the former communist elite intending to keep ill-gotten gains by keeping the scale of their plunder and deceit well away from the wider public eye. 

From the rantings of Lenin's useful idiots in Western media and academic circles (and indeed! How useful they have been to the Communist cause down the generations - the Bolshevik poisoned gift that keeps on giving).

Some from well-intentioned decent people who unhappily conclude that even if the cause is just, the pain and disruption (including to the Catholic Church) provoked by tackling these problems will not be worth it.

The arguments and motives differ. The end result is the same.

The days trickle into months and years. It all gets ... difficult. Complicated. Memories fade.

Thus people who slyly presided over or benefited from the communist system are feted as modern European social democrats. Jewish, Polish and other victims of communism who had their property stolen or heroically refused to cooperate appeal to European institutions for justice, and often leave empty-handed. We prosecute elderly Nazis for their crimes. Elderly Communists go free...

... Do Al Qaeda and Hamas look at how Stalin got away with mass murder at Katyn, and think that by being viciously determined enough they can do the same? Do they expect the sheer intensity of their hatred of our pluralism to overwhelm our readiness to defend it? That they too can bring us to Submit?

How might we measure if they are succeeding? 

Well done Poland, for keeping the subject alive.

Back from Brussels, hearing lots of theories about whether the Lisbon Treaty is dead, alive or in some sort of suspended animation.

The core options appear to be these:

• brutalise/bribe the Irish into submitting mainly via various 'Declarations' aimed at meeting most of their identifiable concerns, allowing a further and this time successful Yes referendum in Ireland next year. Ideal outcome for Europhiles, but High Risk.
• let the Treaty die and soldier on as now. Embarrassing, but Low Risk. Some (France) will try to use this to block enlargement across the board. Germany may support shutting the door but only if Croatia is let in quickly. Others (Poles, Czechs, UK) likely to be deeply unimpressed with such cynicism - and what does the EU do with the non-EU Balkan Black Hole within its own geographical space? Madness to say that those 20 million people can not join a Union of 500 million?
• try to bring in via cherry-picking those parts of the Treaty which can be effected without a full-blown new Treaty. Unglamorous and Unedifying, seen as Undemocratic, Lowish Risk

France faces the unenviable task of trying to pick a way forward through its coming Presidency on the basis of some sort of reasonable consensus.

To be continued. 

In all the clamour about saving energy, what energy systems and savings in fact make a difference on a scale that matters?

Fascinating analysis here:

Our conclusion: if we covered the windiest 10 per cent of the country with windmills, we might be able to generate half of the energy used by driving a car 50 km per day each. Britain’s onshore wind energy resource may be “huge,” but it’s not as huge as our huge consumption. I should emphasize how audacious an assumption I’m making. … The windmills required … are fifty times the entire wind hardware of Denmark; seven times all the windfarms of Germany; and double the entire fleet of all wind turbines in the world. This conclusion – that the greatest that onshore wind could add up to, albeit ‘huge’, is much less than our consumption – is important …

And what about this:

... solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity is viciously expensive in the cloudy UK, and just sticking panels on roofs won’t do much — it seldom yields any large proportion of the energy used in the building it’s on top of. You need to cover a big portion of the country in cells.

All in all, according to MacKay, if you like solar it probably makes more sense to put the panels in North Africa and bring the power to the UK over efficient high-voltage DC lines. As an engineering matter the desert-solar idea is quite feasible — not very different in scale from piping in gas across continents and beneath seas, as people already do.

Or this:

There’s also a thing called a thorium energy amplifier reactor which would be a lot more efficient. If it works as its Nobel prize-winning designers predict, known thorium reserves would run six billion people at American luxury for sixty thousand years.

Read. And Think.

This is a sharp account of one serious Russian view on Russian energy issues:

Mr Chubais has spent the past 10 years masterminding the break-up of UES, the Russian electricity monopoly, which will cease to exist next week after selling off its generators in the biggest liberalisation of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. His insistence that Europe is misreading Gazprom is striking as he is a frequent critic of the gas monopoly.

He warned Europe’s actions were part of a broader international tendency in oil and gas towards increasing state intervention and closing domestic markets – which he warned were a “dead end” and posed big risks “for the world and for Russia”. A return to protectionism was “madness”.

He's right of course in that. But Europe's problem is that these energy issues are not symmetrical.

Russia has energy on a vast scale. Europe does not.

In Europe the use of major energy contracts as a political policy tool is ruled out. That is not obviously the case in Russia.

So, battle is joined. How does Europe import Russian energy on a huge scale while exporting greater transparency/due process back up the supply chain into Russia? Does Russia use its energy predominance craftily to export its political worldview as well?

See eg the reluctance in many parts of the EU (not only ultra-cautious Poland) to allow Russian interests to buy key energy assets, for fear that those assets will not be managed in a purely commercial way for purely commercial purposes.

Not surprising, given the way Russia under current management weighs in to rewrite former contracts and grab better terms when it feels like it.

But Mr Chubais has a point here:

Mr Chubais insisted ending subsidised gas supplies to former Soviet states was about “stopping handing out money for free”. “Why the hell should we supply gas to Ukraine” for discount prices, he asked. “And meanwhile, forgive me, these scoundrels are stealing gas…

I wrote about this problem back in 1996 while at the Embassy in Moscow. I said that the West hypocritically nagged post-communist Russia to behave in a market way, but then complained about Russian 'bullying' when Russia pressed eg Ukraine and Serbia to move towards paying market-prices for energy and stop 'diverting' gas supplies improperly.

That said, for a long time it suited Russia to leave other former Soviet republics and parts of the Balkans hooked on cheap energy as a way of keeping them within the Russian 'sphere of influence'.

Maybe we are finally emerging from that period to a tougher game, based on world prices with 'influence' won or lost via different means?

Daniel Finkelstein in the Times also takes up the charge against John Simpson's wretched analysis of the latest news from Zimbabwe.

And Lord Ashdown argues the case for intervening by force in Zimbabwe to head off a possible genocide.

But, comes the shriek, that would violate Zimbabwe's sovereignty!

Recently I was a Harvard-sponsored seminar at which issues of 'humanitarian intervention' and the Right to Protect were discussed.

I recalled seeing signs as one entered Harvard Square: Cambridge is a Domestic Violence-Free Zone.

I said that if you were walking down the street near Harvard and saw a man beating his wife/child/dog brutally with a stick in his front garden, you were morally and maybe even these days legally obligated to intervene to stop the violence.

Thus we long ago moved on from the idea that the 'sovereignty' of one's home was a shield enabling the uninterrupted commission of seriously illegal acts.

So if it is unacceptable to brutalise one person in one's own garden, why is it acceptable to brutalise millions of people in one's country without fear of being stopped?

Lordy. The West appearing yet again as the self-proclaimed world policeman. How to choose where to intervene? Zimbabwe the thin end of the wedge?

Good points. But to accept them without more merely gives a blank cheque to repressive regimes everywhere. 

So let's agree at least to intervene in the no-brainer immediate brutality cases, where there is no serious cost to intervening and immediate gains to be made in saving large numbers of lives.

Plus 'intervention' need not jump immediately to military force. If key Western governments froze all Zimbabwean official accounts, forced the printing of Mugabe's worthless currency to be stopped and used a bit of electronic sabotage, the regime's power to suppress its own people would be massively reduced.

Or why not quietly offer the key gangsters propping up the regime a bit of money to Go Quietly?

Or lots of other little ruses designed to End the Misery asap?

Maybe some of this is going on. I hope so. But the dose so far is not working.

Finally, South Africa's role (to be precise Mkeki's role) has been outlandishly bad.

Here is a Good Idea from Peter Godwin in the New York Times: lean hard on South Africa by treating Zimbabwe as South Africa's Tibet:

Maybe Zimbabwe should become to the South Africa-hosted World Cup what Tibet has been to the Beijing Olympics — the pungent albatross that spoils every press conference and mars every presentation with its insistent odor.  

This from the BBC is just too much.

John Simpson - who should know better - gushes on about Mugabe's 'extraordinary turnaround' under a heading about 'Mugabe's remarkable comeback'.

A 'sweeping victory for a man who only three months ago seemed on the ropes.'

What makes a seemingly intelligent journalist use tired and vilely inappropriate sporting cliches to describe the violent greed of this African despot as if it were some sort of meaningful achievement?

May I have a refund of my licence fee, please?

Should one support one's own country at international sporting fixtures? If so, why?

Take the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Bosnian Muslims (Bosniacs) and Bosnian Croats have been busy rioting again following the defeat of Croatia by Turkey in the Euro 2008 football match. The Bosniacs supported Turkey, the Croats Croatia.

Republika Srpska PM Dodik deftly stirred this pot, coming out for Croatia:

The issue on the match Turkey-Croatia and possible skirmishes in Mostar have nothing to do with football. But ok, great sport competitions become an occasion for the irreconcilable differences of Mostar to come up.

Meanwhile when Serbia plays Bosnia, Bosnian Serbs root for Serbia.

Serbs of course titter at all this and say that it just goes to show that loyalties can not be created by international fiat. Until they start spluttering with rage at the wickedness and ingratitude of Kosovo's Albanians for not supporting their native republic of Serbia.

Back in the UK, theologians ponder whether it is sinful for Scots to support England's sporting opponents. (Answer: it depends.)

And what of Lord Tebbit's famous 'cricket test' as a way to measure loyalty? This Guardian headline asserts that it has been 'hit for six' because so many 'black and Asian people' (sic) now see themselves as British, but oddly the article does not mention which cricket team they support when England is playing India/Pakistan/West Indies.

Supporting any given English football team has long ceased to be a rational exercise. Once upon a time at least some of the players were locally born, so there could be a local fan base urging them on. Now so many of the players now come from overseas, so on one level there is no obvious loyalty issue at all other than to the club brand.

But in international fixtures an English or Scottish or British team do somehow represent 'us'.

And if there is no 'us' as in the Bosnian case, where does that leave Bosnia? Can any country survive without some minimal mutual self-identification across its citizens as a whole?

The very names we use make a difference:

Of course our own very nomenclature reinforces one or other stereotype in such cases. Thus from the start of the Bosnia drama (as still now) we have talked about the 'Bosnian Serbs' and 'Bosnian Croats' - not the 'Serbian/Croatian Bosnians'. Somehow the ultimate identity emphasis is put by us - as indeed by them - on their Serbness or Croatness, not their Bosnian-ness.

This of course suits those who say that there can never be a meaningful shared non-ethnic Bosnian identity anyway, hence the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina project as supported by the US/EU is doomed to fail.

But that failure can drag on for a long time in the form of surly stalemate, propped up expensively by EU taxpayers as the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.

Also known as Belgium.

The problem with making speeches is that quite a lot of things have been said before.

So do you strive to say something new?

Or do you 'borrow' ideas from others..?

This FT article is scary reading:

European chief executives believe the Irish No vote in a referendum on the Lisbon treaty is bad for business as it weakens the European Union on the global stage against the Middle East, Russia and Asian countries.

But we can relax. When one reads the article it turns out that the grandly collective description 'European Chief Executives' in fact means 'three European Chief Executives', all with Germanic names. Does the FT have editors?

Meanwhile, over at the Economist:

It is time to accept that the Lisbon treaty is dead. The European Union can get along well enough without it.

Do we hear the dull thud as the ex-parrot topples to the bottom of the bird-cage?

Were/are all the horrors across former Yugoslavia driven by 'age-old ethnic hatreds'?

Or was/is it all more about gangs of criminals wanting to steal TV sets?

Misha Glenny, brilliant Balkan analyst, has the answer.

Buy the analysis here.

The communist parts of the world recycled all sorts of jokes. See a few here, as nicely reviewed here.

Some of them maybe emerged elsewhere back in the mists of time and were rebooted for new purposes.

Thus:

"A Russian proverb: If you see a Bulgarian in the street, beat him. He'll know why!"

When I shared that with someone in Poland he said he'd heard it long before in the Middle East, but with the words "your wife" replacing "a Bulgarian".

Or this one:

A Pole, a Nigerian and a Russian are standing outside the hospital ward where their respective wives have just had their respective babies.

Out comes an agitated nurse. "There's been a mix-up. We don't know which baby belongs to whom!"

The Pole says that he will sort things out and enters the ward. He reappears with a strikingly dark-skinned African-looking baby.

"The Nigerian coughs politely. "Excuse me, but perhaps that one is mine?"

Pole: "Look, there's a Russian in there and I'm taking no chances!"

That one is found on the Internet in numerous ethnic and other forms. It is a fine one to use to unnerve clever people from Harvard.

They laugh nervously, shocked at its apparent racially charged political incorrectitude but unable to work out why it is offensive and to whom.

France's President Sarkozy warns that without the Lisbon Treaty there can be no more EU enlargement.

A magnificent example of the mysterious mirror-world of EU negotiating.

France of course does not want any more EU enlargement, especially if it includes Turkey. See eg lots of Parliamentary haggling in France over a proposal to make Turkey's eventual EU accession subject to a referendum.

So now France proclaims the logic of enlargement in a perverse attempt to assert the moral/political 'pro-European' high ground: noisily championing enlargement while in fact planning on enlargement not happening except maybe for Croatia (now close) and then the other small Balkan states in due course.

So what does France as led by Sarkozy really want?

Probably on balance it wants the Lisbon Treaty to come into effect. Not so much because it deeply cares for the Treaty as such, but because it will be pretty embarrassing for the forthcoming French EU Presidency if a serious mess unfolds.

Plus France wants as little as possible EU enlargement, as France's punching weight edges down as the EU gets bigger.

Yet Good Technique always must be commended. In this case clarity of expression combined with clarity of purpose.

President Sarkozy:

"Without the Treaty of Lisbon there won't be any enlargement," he said. "You can't say no to reforms and yes to enlargement." 

Oh that the British Government had said in the 2005 Budget negotiation:

"Without major reform of the EU Budget there will be no more money from the UK. You can't say yes to more British money and no to reform."

And meant it.