A Place to Stand

Apparently the EU Parliament is less interesting than we thought.

The European Parliament is subsidizing journalists to cover its parliamentary sessions in Strasbourg, a move that legislators say aims to ensure that the EU's only democratically elected body is not ignored.

......The funding for journalists can include payment of a first-class round- trip train ticket or an economy-class plane ticket to Strasbourg from any of the 25 EU countries and a daily stipend of €100 to cover hotel, food and entertainment over two days.

........The Parliament also provides television journalists with unlimited use of free state-of-the-art television studios, free sound and camera equipment, and free two-person camera crews that can be borrowed for the day.

"The parliamentary sessions are stultifyingly dull, so the Parliament does whatever it can to make it easier for us to work here, including paying for our journeys and providing plush facilities," said a broadcaster who has benefited from the program and who requested anonymity. "I would never get my Parliament reports on the air if the Parliament wasn't paying for it."

Hans Peter Martin ... who has been campaigning to rein in parliamentary perks, came to prominence in 2004 for surreptitiously filming fellow Parliament members leaving Brussels and Strasbourg after signing in for daily stipends.

"The funding of journalists creates the impression that the Parliament is paying for propaganda, and by doing so it harms the ideals of the EU more than any positive headlines they might get out of it," he said. He added that journalists could not hold the Parliament accountable if they themselves were benefiting from its funds.

Although it is generally viewed as unethical for journalists to accept funding from institutions they cover, analysts said that in countries that rely on public broadcasters, the notion of using available public money to fund journalists may be viewed as acceptable.

Jaime Duch, spokesman for the Parliament, said the funding was intended to encourage EU journalists who would not otherwise cover the Parliament to make the monthly pilgrimage to Strasbourg. He said the Parliament under no circumstances interfered with what was reported. "If we didn't help them, they wouldn't come because they have other priorities," Duch said. "And if we stopped the funding, the journalists would protest."

One television journalist who regularly travels to Strasbourg using funding from the program said the daily stipend was sufficient to pay for a quality hotel and lunch at an upmarket brasserie, including a glass of Bordeaux wine and a dish of Strasbourg's celebrated sausages. The neo-classical Hotel Hannong in Strasbourg - popular with journalists - costs about €60 a night if booked on the Internet.

Another broadcaster, who like others interviewed for this article requested anonymity, said perks such as these had prompted journalists to refuse requests by editors to write stories on members' privileges and travel expenses at the Parliament, a topic of growing interest in Europe. "How can I expose such perks when I myself am benefiting from them?" the journalist asked.

Harald Jungreuthmayer, a correspondent for ORF, the Austrian broadcaster, defended the funding as necessary to generate coverage of an institution that is often maligned and even more often ignored. "It's part of the PR of the European Parliament," he said. "The Parliament's aim is not to put a spin on coverage, but to get any coverage at all."..........

Brussels's 1,550 journalists, one of the world's largest press corps outside Washington, benefit from a host of perks and privileges from EU institutions, including free meals and unlimited free phone calls during EU summit meetings and free television studios at the European Commission. At the beginning of every six-month EU presidency, the presiding country invites journalists to a free junket in the capital. In February, Austria, the current holder of the EU's presidency, invited 62 Brussels-based journalists to Vienna, paying for their lodgings in a lavish Hilton hotel and hosting a complimentary dinner in an 18th-century baroque castle where a soprano sang Strauss operettas - all on the tab of the Austrian government. Media organs had the option of paying for the trip. Only eight opted to do so, according the Austrian representation to Brussels.

"It was a worthwhile investment," said Nicola Donig, spokesman for the Austrian presidency. More

"GET rid of Scottish Enterprise, put the £500m a year into a 25% cut in Scottish corporation tax and see Scottish enterprise flourish. "

A very short letter in the Herald today. I am glad of this since I was somewhat scunnered that they hadn't published anything of mine since Christmas.

They do say brevity is the soul of wit.

The willingness of various Churches to clamber aboard the environmentalist bandwaggon has been taken as evidence, according to preference, that they are taking a moral stand in the real world or that they are recognising that the Green movement is tapping the instincts of religious hysteria that conventional religion can no longer profit from. This certainly seems to suggest that the Archbishop's conversion will not interfere with his finances.

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has been accused of hypocrisy for lecturing politicians on global warming while the Church of England reaps millions of pounds from shares in oil firms.
Rowan Williams warned last week that climate change was a “huge moral problem” that could cause billions of deaths. He said politicians who reject changes will face “a heavy responsibility before God”.

He added that the shortage of fuel supplies for high-fuel economies — “heavy-car-using economies to put it bluntly” — will be a factor in destabilising global politics in the next decade.

But an audit of the Church Commissioners’ investments shows its oil shares increased in value by £46.9m last year. Its portfolio includes more than £12m of shares in Exxon Mobil, the American oil group blamed for the world’s biggest environmental disaster when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground off Alaska in 1989.....

Williams is chairman of the commissioners, who also have investments in BP worth £140m and shares in Shell totalling £80m. Another investment is BAA, the airports group, which has been partly blamed for the rise in carbon emissions because of the way it has encouraged cheap air travel.

Dan Lewis, of the Economic Research Council, a think tank, said: “If anyone wanted proof that for some people global warming has become a religion this is it. It is hilarious that the church has shares in Exxon.”

But John Reynolds, chairman of the Church of England’s ethical advisory group, said: “The investments we have allow us to have an active dialogue with the oil companies about the environment.”

A spokeswoman for Lambeth Palace said: “The archbishop’s leadership has never been about micro-management and investment decisions. It is more about leading by example.”

Environmental experts have issued now issued scientific studies that prove that if we do not take immediate & very strongg action the human race is doomed. They have found;

1) A minimum of ten million people, most of them children, will starve to death during each year. But this is a mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving within 3 decades.

2) The battle to feed all of humanity is over. Hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

3) To prevent overpopulation we must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.

4) Known world supplies of zinc, gold, tin, copper, oil, and natural gas would be completely exhausted in 20 years

5) If we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, very shortly, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.

6) The period of global food security is over. As the demand for food continues to press against supply, inevitably real food prices will rise. The question no longer seems to be whether they will rise, but how much.

7) 40,000 species per year are going extinct and that 1 million species will be gone in 20 years.

8) the world is going to run out of oil soon if we do not conserve our resources.

9) A nuclear reactor accident could be blamed for the deaths of some 2,500 people.

OK clearly this was an April fool, however it differs from other April fool stories in being true - only the dates have been removed to protect the guilty.

(1), (2) & (3 were said by Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb & numerous other ridiculous claims, in 1971 so that starvation catastrophe that wiped out so much of the 3rd world peaked in 2001. He remains an environmentalist guru. See http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/people/paul_ehrlich.html#footnotes_2

(4) comes from the enormously influential Club of Rome report of 1973. Again the date of catastrophe has been passed without any bother (or apology).

(5) comes from a David Bower who seems like a typical twit. from www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ authors/d/david_r_brower.html

(6) is Lester Brown in 1981 another environmental guru. see http://www.reason.com/rb/rb020404.shtml

(7) Is Thomas lovejoy 1979 http://www.reason.com/rb/rb020404.shtml. he originally said "by 2000" which I changed to in 20 years - since that was about 1/4 of all species believed to exist at the time it seems he was somehat in error.

(8) Was the common expectation in the 1850s when they believed they were passing peak oil, eventually they found it was possible to obtain oil from sources other than dead whales.

(9) Was a statement from Greenpeace in 1996 referring to Chernobyl & thus has the unique virtue of being a prophesy made long after the event which was still wrong. Current official estimates are 53, which assume there will be another deaths some time in the future from radiation. See http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=133517 This last was a bit of a rush since I a know much higher estimtes were made. I remeber reading a UK newspaper the nexxt day in which they stated as fact that 10,000 people had already died & that the statements of the Soviet politicians & media that it was, then, 28 proved that they don't have the sort of trustworthy free press that we do,
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