It’s hard today to escape articles on the Copenhagen conference. Not to mention those on its significance. Or the lack thereof. One point struck me this evening – What does it mean for the EU that it was excluded from the group which actually brokered what little that came out of the event? This apparently comprised the USA, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Which must be the new world order. How little it helped the EU to have a new, full-time President. Maybe this was the problem. No one recognised Mr Whatsisname from Belgium so he wasn’t invited to participate.

Talking of the new world order – here’s an article which takes to a new level my concerns about this being the Age of the Bureaucrat and about the EU being an intrinsically undemocratic – even anti-democratic – institution. As the writer puts it . . The infamous "democratic deficit" of the European Union [will be] elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run.

As for global warming and as to whether it’s a natural or man-made phenomenon, for those trying to keep an open mind and to weigh up the arguments from both sides, here’s another impressive broadside from the inveterate anti-AGW-er, Christopher Booker.

I forgot to say when mentioning yesterday El Mundo’s defence of bullfighting on grounds of liberty and pluralism that a letter in the same edition pointed out they were talking of the liberty to torture and kill. Both sides of the article in a nutshell. Neither of which impresses the other.

Finally . . . We have another Leaning Lamp-post of Poio.


This one is just next to the rear entrance of the School of Granite Carvers between my house and the forest. It wasn’t leaning last week but it is this week. Because the crane which took away the pines which had been cut down couldn’t manage to do this without hitting this piece of street furniture.

This will deprive the junkies of light by which to heat and snort (inject?) their coke but it’s an ill wind that blows no good. And the tree-cutting has left me with a bonanza of pine cones to burn on my fire at time when my central heating isn't coping well with the near-zero conditions even along this coast. Obviously, I’ll have to think of some way to compensate for my enlarged carbon footprint.