Recently in Europe Category

Jeff and others always love their Scottish subsamples, so here are the eye-popping Scottish numbers for your delecation.

That's right, it shows us in third, ahead of the Lib Dems and the Tories. It's a small sample, and it's only a poll, so no-one get complacent, mm'kay?

* note: our Green colleagues down south commissioned the poll, so feel free to tell me the customer is always right.

Another curiosity from that same site - click here to compare the voting record of ALDE (the group the Liberals are in) with the other parties, and you see they're closest to the centre-right EPP-PE.

So what did the British MEPs do? The Greens did the right thing throughout, in case you're wondering: the pic to the left is Caroline Lucas casting voting on this actual issue. Exciting or what?

The first vote was on 350g/kwh, and the three Tories voted against that, as did the Labour MEPs. The only UK Liberal voted the right way, as did the Plaid rep and also Sinn Fein. The good guys lost 24-37 this time.

Next up, 400g/kwh. Again, the Tories and Labour voted against. This one was closer, falling by a single vote. In other words, if the Committee had one more Green (or even another Liberal, Plaid or Sinn Fein member) and one fewer Tory or Labour MEP we'd have got a tougher law. So too we would have if either group had done the right thing.

All the UK MEPs then voted with the Greens on the 500g motion, and that went through overwhelmingly.

The most tiresome part of this is that Cameron pledged himself in June this year to:

"..follow the Californian model, and implement an Emissions Performance Standard. This would mean the carbon emissions rate of all electricity generated in our country cannot be any higher than that generated in a modern gas plant. Such a standard would mean that a new generation of unabated coal power plants could not be built in this country."

A combined cycle gas turbine power station emits just 320g/kwh (2003 figures given in evidence to the House of Commons). Sure, his speech cited the 500g/kwh figure, but he must know that's seriously out of date. The figure above is five years old, after all, and I have no doubt technology has moved on, bringing the current figure down even further. 

It's another bit of evidence about the limits of the Tories' new-found interest in the environment, and it confirms the equal uselessness of Labour on the same issue. Having said that, a limit is better than no limit, and to that extent I'm pleased. 

The voting numbers are here, in case anyone wants to check my rollcall (thanks to Mark Johnson for those). The Committee's affiliations are listed here for cross-reference purposes.

Second, it's a slightly vague recognition of the problems the Euro has caused a number of European economies: "There are various things that we have learnt about euroland, and about the eurozone, which are clearly problems that need to be resolved." 

Consider the problems the MPC have each month here - do they cut rates to try and kick-start the housing market, or do they raise them to try and bring inflation back within Brown's targets? For five months they've been stuck in these headlights, and have kept interest rates steady at 5%.

Now imagine trying to set one interest rate across a continent with varying inflation rates, and varying economic conditions. For example, Spain's inflation is at 5%, Italy's at 4.1% (same link), while the Dutch are at 3.25%. Simultaneously, the Guardian reports that Latvia's house prices have fallen 24.1% over the last year, Germany's have gone down 6.9% over the last two years, while in Spain, France and Greece they're still rising at a little over 3%.

How on earth should the European Central Bank reconcile all that? How would you feel if you lived in Latvia, and interest rates were set to suit Germany, or vice versa? Where's the democratic oversight? (Note: Latvia are part of European Monetary Union but have not yet adopted the single currency, but their currency is pegged to the Euro).