So now we know!

Understand more, condemn less. That's the way forward. Ask not why the Tory MEPs Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer - those titans of Euroscepticism - were curiously absent at the fringe meeting specifically convened to debate the European Union. Perhaps they were "nobbled" by Tory high command who didn't want them on the same platform as Ukip's Nigel Farage. Perhaps they were "frit", as Ukip says.

I can confirm to The Guardian that the frit explanation seems to fit best.

A certain amount of pressure from the Tory High Command perhaps....wouldn't want three people all saying sensible things about the EU now, would we?

Aaand...He's back!

Bigger, brighter than ever, Gawain returns to blogging!

Well, not quite. He isn't threatened any more with losing his job or having his pay docked for running a blog.

But he is still so threatened if he says nasty things about the European Union.

Which really explains it all, doesn't it. You can say and do what you like, just as long as you don't criticise the EU.

Tim Congdon on the crisis

Tim Congdon has a great piece in The Times on the current problems. Of course, we like Tim because he's one of us. But don't forget he's one of the leading economists in the country too.

He explains just why we want that American bailout to work, how important it is. There's nothing very new about that tactic, it's one that has worked many times before. The only difference this time around is the size of the problem and the size of the necessary solution.

Those banking problems

Last week there were chortles all around Europe. Those silly Anglo Saxons and their crazy free market capitalism. Look, see how their banks are falling over!

As Ambrose EP points out today, there's not quite so much laughing now.

By Monday, Mr Steinbrück was having to orchestrate Germany's biggest bank bail-out, putting together a €35 billion loan package to save Hypo Real Estate. By then Europe was "staring into the abyss," he admitted. Belgium faced worse. It had to nationalise Fortis (with Dutch help), a 300-year-old bastion of Flemish finance, followed a day later by a bail-out for Dexia (with French help).

Now it may well be that new and different regulations are needed in the finance industry. But that doesn't mean that we need more European style regulation. Sure, we've got to get through this mess first, but exactly what type of future regulation we need will be more apparent a little later.

For example, are us Anglo Saxon style economies going to get through this better than the more rigid Continental ones?

Mike Hume

Nice to see Mick Hume quoting JS Mill in the papers today:

In his essay On Liberty, J.S.Mill took a stand not only for freedom of thought and speech, but also for “liberty of tastes and pursuits...of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow [ie, if you smoke don't sue tobacco companies] without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong”.

That's pretty much what liberty means, that we all get left alone to plot our own path to the grave as we see fit. Our behaviour may only be restricted if we're doing damage to another, or to their rights to plot their own path as they see fit.

Why is it that some people find this so hard to understand?

Godders

So Mary Honeyball tries to slag off our own Godfrey Bloom.

Hey, no fair! We're the only people who are allowed to slag off our Godders!

Have a look here.

And note, as Vindico does, that Godfrey comes out of this rather better than Mary Honeyball does.

A moment in the life of a press officer

If you think about it for a moment, it's not actually possible for someone to read every article in every newspaper every day. There's, what, 12, 13 national papers? Another dozen major regionals? Then the locals and so on.

So of course what happens is that a press officer, like myself, doesn't in fact read every newspaper. There's a lot of speed reading and some sections get barely a glance. Then of course there's the computer systems that can be used to search for certain words: UKIP say, or "Gerard Batten", to see if there's a hidden story somewhere of interest to us.

This system can cause problems though. As it did today.

Part of the job here is to see stories before they happen, that way we can talk to journalists and have our say about the subject before they start writing their stories.

So I noted that the ban on short selling was leading to problems with the HBOS and Lloyd's merger. Hmm, that's interesting, so I phone up a City Editor and:

"Hello, this is Tim from UKIP"

"Hello Tim, what's up today?"

"Well, I've just realised that this ban on short selling of financials is causing problems for HBOS."

"How so?"

Well, everyone's worried that the HBOS price is so low as compared with the Lloyd's offer price. Makes people think the deal won't go through."

"Yup".

"But speculators might want to take advantage of that low price...HBOS is 121p, but Lloyd's is offering 191p in its own shares. So a hedgie would buy HBOS and short Lloyd's so as to lock in his profit. This would bring the two prices closer together, make the deal more likely to happen and make everyone worry less. But he can't short Lloyd's so he won't do the deal at all."

"You're absolutely right Tim. Which is why we ran this story in our finance pages this morning. That the ban on shorting financials is having some very bad effects upon the markets".

"Ah..."

Even though I can't read all of every paper each day, I am going to have to read more of them, aren't I?