A view of an Italian ski resort in the Alps Photo: ALAMY

EU ski holiday paid for by taxpayers

Taxpayers will heavily subsidise a skiing holiday in the Italian Alps for the children of MEPs and European Parliament officials in February.

Telegraph | Dec 31, 2009

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels

European Union officials, including MEPs, are already under fire for threatening legal action unless they are paid a recession busting 3.7 pre cent pay rise in January.

Most also pay reduced “community” rates of taxation and the latest perk will fuel controversy over the subsidised lifestyle enjoyed by many EU civil servants.

The eight-day skiing trip for 80 children aged between eight and 17 is timed to begin over the weekend of St Valentine’s Day, providing some romantic time off from parenting for officials.

Costs, the holiday is priced at 920 euros (£822), are generously subsidised by the parliament’s budget. Households receive different levels of subsidy depending on their monthly income but even those on a income of over £108,000 get a discount.

There is reduction of up to 52 per cent for officials earning £69,620 a year and an MEP, earning £86,000, is eligible for a subsidy of 45 per cent.

According to an internal document an extra 10 per cent reduction “applies to the enrolment of a second child and subsequent children”.

Mats Persson, of the think-tank Open Europe, said: “It is ridiculous that, at a time when most families across Europe have to tighten their belts, the European Parliament thinks it is appropriate to subsidise holidays for the families of even its most well-paid staff. How can MEPs claim subsidised holidays for their children when many of their constituents’ families are struggling through the recession?”

Organised by the parliament’s staff committee, the holiday, with the educational aim of teaching children skiing skills, will be spent in Italian province of Bergamo.

The children will enjoy full board in a three-star hotel in the beautiful village of Spiazzi.

The trip includes “workshops” in a “multilingual environment” on the themes of “the mountain, its snow, its nature”. Four hours each day will be spent on the ski slopes and three hours on lessons, such as an “exercice (sic) with snow dogs” as well as “open air games” and a “torchlight procession”.

The parliament’s spokesman declined to comment on the holiday.

Nigel Farage, leader of Ukip in the European Parliament, said “spending a fortune on a skiing jolly for MEPs and their families” would anger the public after the worst economic year in memory.

“Surely now is a time of reflection and humility, not a chance to rub the taxpayer’s nose in yet another tremendous waste of money,” he said.

US Aids S. Sudan Secession

Washington offers $1 billion in annual aid to South Sudan.

IslamOnline.net | Dec. 25, 2009

"The United States government, one of their goals now, is to make sure southern Sudan in 2011 is a viable state," Gatkuoth said. (Washington Times)

CAIRO — The United States is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the pocket of South Sudan government to help it prepare for secession from the North.

“The United States government, one of their goals now, is to make sure southern Sudan in 2011 is a viable state,” Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, representative of South Sudan in Washington, told The Washington Times Friday, December 25.

Washington offers $1 billion in annual aid to South Sudan.

Related

Washington Assists South Sudan Secession, Admits SPLM

The majority of the money is used to build roads, train police and professionalize a separate army in preparation for the Christian-majority region’s secession in 2011, said Gatkuoth, who also heads South Sudan’s mission to the UN.

Southern Sudanese will vote in a referendum in 2011 on whether to secede from the Muslim north.

The referendum is part of the 2005 north-south peace deal, which ended a two-decade civil war between the north and south.

The accord established an interim period, with a coalition government between the Muslim north and mostly Christian south and the sharing of oil wealth.

Last month, South Sudan President Salva Kiir publicly called for secession from Sudan.

Though southern officials have not concealed their intention to vote for secession, the region still lack the basics of a viable state.

The region is also plagued by tribal clashes, which have killed at least 2,500 people and displaced more than 350,000 others this year.

The International Crisis Group on Tuesday criticized South Sudan police for failing to keep security and end tribal clashes in the region.

War Again

Gatkuoth accused the Khartoum government of stumbling efforts of the South to secede.

“I do not think the North is ready to allow the South to go and have its independent state,” he said.

The southern official said that the next 12 months would be crucial in determining the fate of the country.

“In 2010, we either make it or break it,” he said.

“An election can lead to war if you feel cheated.”

The ruling Sudanese National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) agreed Wednesday to review a disputed law on the 2011 referendum.

Parliament has passed the law even though SPLM walked out of the assembly objecting to an amendment allowing southerners living in the north to vote in the January 2011 referendum.

Gatkuoth threatened that the South will take up arms again if Khartoum government tried to postpone the 2011 referendum.

“Even if you postpone that for one day, the people of southern Sudan will not accept it.”

Courier Mail | Dec 13, 2009

by Glenn Milne

AUSTRALIA faces having to make a hefty payout to help developing countries such as China and India cope with climate change in order to clinch a deal in Copenhagen.

Despite Australia facing a domestic Budget deficit of about $50 billion for the coming year, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told The Sunday Mail from Copenhagen that Australia would have to contribute to so-called climate “abatement” funds if India and China were to come into the climate-change tent.

“There are a range of figures flying around,” Senator Wong said. “(British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown has proposed a $100 billion mix of public and private money. We have not indicated a figure but we have indicated we’re prepared to do our fair share.”

But new Opposition finance spokesman Barnaby Joyce immediately attacked the proposal.

“Essentially this Copenhagen plan means we borrow money from places like China to pay them to help them develop. I don’t think they need our help. They’re doing a very good job on their own.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has previously backed a separate $US10 billion climate fund in talks with US President Barack Obama and Mr Brown.

Reports from Copenhagen say industrialised countries favour a target of 50 per cent reduction of global carbon emissions by 2020 (compared with 1990 levels), but major emerging economies led by China have baulked at any such target unless it is made clear that rich countries will assume most of the burden.

Commuters at Copenhagen’s Central Railway Station walk under a banner urging Danes to be more climate-conscious.

AP | Dec 3, 2009

By Joshua Rhett Miller

Talk about your global warming . . . When an estimated 16,500 delegates, activists and reporters descend upon Copenhagen Monday for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a lot of hot air will follow.

Those greenhouse gas emissions are comprised of two parts: international travel and local emissions from hotels and transportation venues. Organizers will also reportedly lay 900 kilometers of computer cable and 50,000 square miles of carpet, along with more than 200,000 meals to be served and 200,000 cups of coffee.

The conference will leave an enormous carbon footprint, says Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

“It will be huge,” Michaels said of the environmental toll. “Where is video conferencing when we need it? An equally important question is what will be accomplished here?”

Approximately 140 aircraft carrying world leaders, heads of state and VIPs will land in Copenhagen, the U.N. estimates — although 95 percent of departures from Copenhagen Airport will be “green departures,” which allow airplanes to climb continuously to their optimal operating level, enabling them to reach planned routes sooner than usual. The result, according to the U.N., is saved time, fuel and carbon emissions.

But Michaels wonders why attendees, particularly those in Europe, can’t ride the rails into Copenhagen.

“That’s the way I get to New York,” Michaels said. “There’s nothing new here. There’s always been a lot of hypocrisy amongst the climate change political community.

“Prince Charles goes around the world in a private jet, telling everyone else they need to ration their carbon dioxide. Please.”

Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, acknowledged the “level of hypocrisy” regarding the conference and its emissions, but he said living in modernity mandates some sort of measurable carbon footprint. The question, he said, is if the carbon footprint left behind is desirable and efficient.

“It is ironic that you’ll have all these pronouncements made and very little action,” London told FoxNews.com. “What are [China and India] going to do? So what are we talking about here?”

To minimize the conference’s carbon footprint, the U.N. says the main venue, The Bella Center, aims to reach a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. To reach that goal, delegates have been urged to use public transportation to the site, to drink water from the tap instead of plastic bottles, and to minimize paper waste. Hotel owners have been asked to offer rooms that have been certified as environment-friendly.

Despite those efforts, Michaels said he expects little if any firm proposals to come out of the conference, which aims to produce a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“It will not produce a concrete agreement on climate change, meaning a universally-accepted international agreement with targets and timetables,” Michaels said. “It will, however, produce a statement that there’s been a breakthrough even though there will not have been.”

President Obama will travel to the Danish capital on Dec. 9 to offer his goal of cutting emissions 17 percent by 2020, in line with a bill passed by the House in June and slightly less than a 20-percent decrease proposed in the Senate.

“The president going to Copenhagen will give positive momentum to the negotiations,” Michael Froman, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economies, told reporters last month. “We think it will enhance prospects for success.”

Joined by up to seven cabinet members, Obama will also propose reducing emissions by 83 percent by 2050 and a 30 percent reduction in 2005 levels by 2025. China and India have said industrialized countries like the United States — the biggest greenhouse gas producer among developed nations — must be willing to slash carbon output 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels if it expects poorer economies to agree to long-term goals.

Climategate: five Aussie MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over carbon tax

Telegraph | Nov 26, 2009

By James Delingpole

Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.

Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.

The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.

Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.

For the rapidly increasing number of us who believe that AGW is little more than a scheme by bullying eco-fascists to deprive us of our liberty, by big government to spread its controlling tentacles into every aspect our lives, and scheming industrialists such as Al Gore to enrich themselves through carbon trading, this principled act by Australia’s Carbon Five is fantastic news.

Where they lead, the rest of the world’s politicians will eventually be forced to follow: their appalled electorates will make sure of it.

Unless lawmakers make big changes, the interest Americans will have to pay to keep the country running over the next decade will reach unheard of levels.

CNN | Nov 19, 2009

By Jeanne Sahadi

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Here’s a new way to think about the U.S. government’s epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.

More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.

If that’s hard to grasp, here’s another way to look at why that’s a problem.

In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due – $533 billion – is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group.

On the bright side – such as it is – the record levels of debt issued lately have paid for stimulus and other rescue programs that prevented the economy from falling off a cliff. And the money was borrowed at very low rates.

But accumulating any more interest on what the United States owes at this point is like extreme sport: dangerous.

All the more so because interest rates will rise when private sector borrowers return to the debt market and compete with the government for capital. At that point, the country’s interest payments could jack up very fast.

“When interest rates rise even a small amount, the interest payments go up a lot because of the size of the debt,” Konigsberg said.

The Congressional Budget Office, which made the $4.8 trillion forecast, already baked some increase in rates into the cake. But there is always a chance those estimates may prove too conservative.

And then it’s Vicious Circle 101 – well known to anyone who has gotten too into hock with Visa and MasterCard.

The country depends heavily on borrowing to fund what it wants to do. But the more debt it racks up, the more likely it becomes that creditors could demand a higher interest rate for making new loans to the government.

Higher rates in turn make it harder to pay off the underlying debt because more and more money is going to pay off interest – money, by the way, which is also borrowed.

And as more money goes to interest, creditors may become concerned that the country can’t pay down its principal and lawmakers will have less to fund all the things government is supposed to do.

“[P]olicymakers would be less able to pay for other national spending priorities and would have less flexibility to deal with unexpected developments (such as a war or recession). Moreover, rising interest costs would make the economy more vulnerable to a meltdown in financial markets,” the CBO wrote in its most recent long-term budget outlook.

So far, that crisis of confidence hasn’t happened. And no one can predict with any certainty whether or when it could occur.

But should it occur, the change could be abrupt.

That’s because the government frequently rolls over – or refinances – the debt it has issued as it comes due.

Full Story

CNN | Nov 18, 2009

By Tom Cohen

Washington (CNN) — The federal government made $98 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2009, and President Obama will issue an executive order in coming days to combat the problem, his budget director announced Tuesday.

The 2009 total for improper payments — from outright fraud to misdirected reimbursements due to factors such as an illegible doctor’s signature — was a 37.5 percent increase over the $72 billion in 2008, according to figures provided by Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In an evening media briefing, Orszag was unable to provide an overall figure for what percentage of the bad payments was due to fraud. He also lacked a breakdown on how much of the total improper payments involved spending on Obama’s $787 billion economic recovery package passed in February.

Orszag said the executive order coming in the next week will promote transparency, strengthen accountability and provide incentives to improve the government payment process, Orszag said.

Full Story

National Debt could top $14 trillion.

CBS | Nov 17, 2009

by Mark Knoller

It’s another record-high for the U.S. National Debt which today topped the $12-trillion mark. Divided evenly among the U.S. population, it amounts to $38,974.34 for every man, woman and child.

Technically, the debt hit the new high yesterday, but it was posted on the Treasury Department website just after 3:00 p.m. ET today. The exact calculation of the debt is a 16-digit tongue-twister and red-ink tsunami: $12,031,299,186,290.07

This latest milestone in the ever-rising journey of the National Debt comes less than eight months after it hit $11 trillion for the first time. The latest high-point is not unexpected, considering the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an all-time high at $1.42-trillion – more than triple the previous year’s record high.

Much of the increase in the deficit and debt is attributed to government spending outpacing revenue – both exacerbated by the recession and the government response to it – including hundreds of billions in bailouts and stimulus spending and tax cuts along with decreased tax revenues due to rising unemployment.

In recent days, President Obama has spoken of the need to bring the rising deficit and debt under control.

“I intend to take serious steps to reduce America’s long-term deficit – because debt-driven growth cannot fuel America’s long-term prosperity,” he said in remarks prepared for delivery to the leader’s meeting last Sunday at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The National Debt has increased about $1.6 trillion on Mr. Obama’s watch, though less than $4.9 trillion run up during the presidency of George W. Bush.

But the White House budget review issued in August projects that by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept 30th, the National Debt could top $14 trillion.

It gets worse. The same document projects that by the end of the decade, the National Debt will hit $24.5 trillion — exceeding the Gross Domestic Product projected for 2019 of $22.8 trillion.

The new debt number adds urgency to Treasury Department calls on Congress to quickly raise the statutory limit on the National Debt which now stands at $12.104 trillion. The debt ceiling was last raised in February as part of the $787 billion Recovery Act stimulus bill.

The debt also costs a fortune to maintain. In the fiscal year just ended, the National Debt cost taxpayers over $383 billion. And that amount means the government is only paying 3.3 percent interest. If interest rates go up, so does the amount paid on the debt.

And we’re paying it to scores foreign countries which hold $3.5 trillion of the U.S. Debt.
China leads the pack holding nearly $800 billion in U.S. Government securities, followed closely by Japan with $731 billion.

Among the smaller nations lending the U.S. money are Luxembourg, Taiwan, Singapore and Ireland.

Mr. Obama has said he hopes the health care plan pending in Congress will serve to curb the growth in the debt by reducing the amount government spends on health care. But it’s a claim disputed by critics who say it will have the opposite effect.

In this Oct. 29 2009 file photo, Belgium’s Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy participates in a meeting prior to an EU summit in Brussels. Very soon, Europeans from Denmark to Bulgaria will wake up to the reality of having their very first president, one person world leaders can call when they want to talk to Europe. AP Photo

“New resources will be necessary for the financing of the welfare state. Green tax instruments are a possibility.”

Top candidate debates EU tax at elite dinner

EU Observer | Nov 16, 2009

by ANDREW RETTMAN

Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, a top candidate for the new European Union president job, laid out his views on future EU financing at a dinner of the secretive Bilderberg group last week.

The event took place at Val Duchesse, a former priory on the outskirts of Brussels, on Thursday (12 November), with guests including Belgian industrialist and Bilderberg chairman Etienne Davignon, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and luminaries from the worlds of international politics and business, according to Belgian broadsheet De Tijd.

The Belgian leader is reported to have said in a speech that: “New resources will be necessary for the financing of the welfare state. Green tax instruments are a possibility, but they are ambiguous: This type of tax will eventually be extinguished. But the possibilities of financial levies at European level must be seriously examined and for the first time the large countries in the union are open to that.”

Mr Van Rompuy’s official spokesman later told the Belga news agency that: “The Prime Minister … indicated that it is necessary to carry on thinking about structural financing at the European level.”

The leak to De Tijd, coming just days before the EU aims to choose its first permanent president, could damage Mr Van Rompuy’s chances.

Proposals about imposing fees on environmentally-damaging behaviour or skimming small levies off financial transactions have been mooted before. But the suggestion that the new EU president might interfere in national taxation policy is anathema to anti-federalists in EU countries such as the UK or Denmark.

Mr Van Rompuy’s participation at the Bilderberg dinner will also give ammunition to critics of the EU top job selection process, which takes place via confidential consultations between EU leaders and informal social events.

The Bilderberg group is an elite club of aristocrats, politicians and businessmen dating back to 1954, which likes to meet away from the public eye and which is widely disliked by pro-transparency campaigners.

EU parliament chief shows his cards

Meanwhile in a related development, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek over the weekend backed former Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar to take the EU president post.

“As far as I know, Aznar is not currently interested in this kind of position. But I think it would be good for the EU if he changed his mind and submitted his candidature,” Mr Buzek told Spanish daily ABC in an interview published on Saturday.

Mr Buzek met Mr Aznar along with the current Spanish government on a trip to Madrid ahead of Spain taking up the rotating EU presidency in January.

The conservative Spanish politician is from the correct political family according to the prevailing wisdom that the centre-right will take the EU president job while the centre-left will take the EU foreign minister position. But he was a firm advocate of the Iraq war, which remains a highly-divisive topic in the EU.

The speculation is set to see an end on Thursday (19 November) when EU leaders gather in Brussels to decide the top appointments. Other names in line for the presidency post include Dutch leader Jan Peter Balkenende and his Luxembourg counterpart, Jean-Claude Juncker.

An astonishing £380 a minute will be spent on surveillance in a massive expansion of the Big Brother state.

Daily Mail | Oct 21, 2009

By James Slack

The £200million-a-year sum will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen – on top of the email and telephone records already available.

It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime.

Last night LibDem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne described the sum as ‘eye-watering’.

‘There is already enough concern at the level of Government snooping,’ he said.

‘In an era of tough spending choices, it cannot be a justified response to the problems we face as a country to lavish millions of pounds a year on state spying.

‘The increase in money spent on tapping phones and emails is all the more baffling when Britain is still one of the few countries not to allow intercept evidence in court, even in terrorist cases.’

State bodies including councils are already making one request every minute to spy on the phone records and email accounts of members of the public.

The number of snooping missions carried out by police, town halls and other government departments has rocketed by 44 per cent in two years to a rate of 1,381 new cases every day.

Ministers say the five-year cost of the existing regime is £55.61million, an average of £11million a year.

This is paid to phone companies and service providers to meet the cost of keeping and providing private information about customers.

The cost of the new system emerged in a series of Parliamentary answers.

It is to cover payments to internet service providers so they can store mountains of information about every customer for a minimum of 12 months, and set up new systems to cope.

The actual content of calls and emails is not be kept – only who they were from or to, when they took place and where they were sent from.

Police, security services and other public authorities can then request access to the data as part of investigations.

Some 653 bodies are currently allowed access, including councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service and fire authorities and prison governors.

The new rules allowing access to internet records will be introduced by Parliament before the end of the year.

They are known as the Intercept Modernisation Programme.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a massive Government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns.

Yesterday Alex Deane, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘The Government is preparing to make British people pay through the nose so that they can track our movements online.’

But a Home Office spokesman said the costs involved were entirely separate from those necessary to comply with the European Data Retention Directive, which requires the storage of phone and email records.

‘Communications data is crucial to the fight against crime and keeping people safe,’ he added.

‘We have made clear that there are no plans to collect and hold the content of everyone’s communications.’

There were 504,073 made last year to intercept email and telephone records under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. It was passed ostensibly to fight terrorism.

But it has been used to spy on people suspected of putting their bins out on the wrong day, dropping litter and attempting to cheat school catchment area rules.