Who do you think you are kidding, Mrs Merkel?

From the BBC:

Mr Zelensky [Ukraine's president] opposes the pipeline, which he says threatens Ukraine's security. It will run under the Baltic Sea and double Russian gas exports to Germany...

Mrs Merkel, who is standing down as Germany's chancellor this autumn after 16 years in office, said Berlin agreed with Washington that Nord Stream 2 should not be used against Ukraine. She said sanctions could be used against Moscow under an agreement between Germany and the US, if gas was "used as a weapon".

Mr Zelensky said he was concerned about what would happen in three years when the contract to deliver Russian gas through Ukrainian pipelines runs out. The loss of billions of dollars in transit fees would hit Ukraine's economy hard. Mrs Merkel, who held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, promised to provide more than a billion dollars to help expand Ukraine's renewable energy sector.

Russia already supplies about 40% of the EU's gas - just ahead of Norway, which is not in the EU but takes part in its single market. The new pipeline will increase the amount of gas going under the Baltic to 55 billion cubic metres per year.

Mrs Merkel has tried to assure Central and Eastern European states that the pipeline would not make Germany reliant on Russia for energy.

Where do you start? A few facts which must be patently obvious to everybody else:

1. Russia IS using its oil and gas as economic 'weapons', always has done, always will. Same as the Saudis.

2. Russia has every incentive to build its own pipeline under the Baltic. They won't have to pay Ukraine 'billons of dollars' and Ukraine won't be able to (threaten to} just turn off the taps.

3. Putin is quite happy for Ukraine to go bankrupt, that's a bonus as far as he's concerned.

4. The money which Germany is offering to pay Ukraine to help it 'expand its renewable energy sector' will have zero effect on anything.

5. Germany IS completely reliant on Russian gas for energy. They shut down their coal fired plants (having been bamboozled by the wrong explanation for the Greenhouse Effect) and started phasing out their nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster (even though Germany isn't an earthquake zone).

6. IIRC, Germany has been reliant on Russian gas for decades. The Russians even gave former the previous Chancellor a (no doubt very well-paid) psuedo-job with Nord Stream, the organisation running the new pipeline.

7. Germany is not going to impose proper harsh sanctions on Russia, as Putin could simply cut off the gas supplies. He can hold out longer than Germany can. The impact of sanctions is slow, drip-drip. The impact of having your electricity sector shut down is immediate.

"May to meet Merkel and Macron for talks"

... is the shortened version of the headline to this article on the BBC's front page.

Which scans like the first line of (something like) a limerick:

May to meet Merkel and Macron for talks,
All on a cold April day.
The plan is well scripted - when one of them walks,
She will ask for a further delay.

Brexit LOLZ and not-so LOLZ

Spotted by Shiney in Reaction:

Brussels apparatchiks are in a state of shock: until Theresa May’s letter was opened, many of them had clung to the delusory hope that, in an Oscars-style mix-up, the envelope would contain a humble request for Britain to join the euro.

From The Evening Standard:

With Chancellor Angela Merkel toughening her stance on Brexit as German elections loom, Berlin is demanding a united EU front during the talks on Britain’s departure.

It wants the UK’s exit negotiations rushed through in 15 months rather than up to two years, according to a leaked German government paper. However, the document also suggests that a detailed trade deal could take up to 10 years to complete…

Ms Merkel, seeking a fourth term in power in the German general election slated for September, says all “contentious issues” — such as the free movement of people across EU borders — must be negotiated now and not left to some undecided date.

But she recognises that “future relations” with the UK could take far longer to crystallise and believes that the European Commission could be correct in predicting talks on these matters could take up to 10 years.

OK, so Merkel wants us to concede on the bits that are important to her within 15 months, but the bit that is important to us will have to wait ten years?

By that time we will be used to the new status quo, probably WTO rules, so that vague promise is less than worthless as at today's date.

If the EU is not going to take it seriously, we might as well call the whole thing off right now and walk away unilaterally, there is nothing worth haggling for and no whiff of a compromise. Does Merkel not understand the British mentality?

Fun Online Polls: USA military spending & "gifts for Islamists"

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Without Googling first, how much is the USA's annual military spending?

$100 billion - 3%
$200 billion - 4%
$300 billion - 7%
$400 billion - 14%
$500 billion - 19%
$600 billion - 52%

You are surprisingly well informed, more than half got it correct. When I first read that figure in an article or reader's letter somewhere, I assumed the person was wildly exaggerating for effect, I had to look it up to believe it.

IF you want to put that sort of insanely large figure in context, it's about equal to the entire military spending of the rest of the world put together, or three-quarters as much as the UK's entire government spending in a year (schools, hospitals, pensions, welfare, the lot).
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This week's made-to-order Trumpage was the travel ban.

Did he do this purely as an ineffective stunt or does he genuinely think it will reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks? The thinking man's Katie Hopkins points out that Trump was merely enacting something that the previous president had already set in motion.

The vocal minority promptly jumped on their chairs and started shouting. Britain's leading Muslim politician (or the Muslims' leading British politician, as they like to see it) said the international community must show “moral leadership” by speaking out against Donald Trump’s travel ban and even the normally temperate Amber Rudd said Trump travel ban is a 'propaganda opportunity' for Isis.

Ho hum. What bothers me is the asymmetry of all this.

Mrs Merkel in Germany tried the opposite tactic and welcomed in a million Muslims. She was rewarded with an overall increase in crimes against women and spate of terror attacks, culminating in the Berlin Christmas Market attack.

Merkel's policy looks like a "gift to Islamists" to me, so how can Trump's polar opposite policy also be a "gift to Islamists"? Or is the world so f---ed up that both are?

It's a tricky question, so I will turn it round for this week's Fun Online Poll and ask which policy people would prefer for this country.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Atmospheric temperatures, politicians and sugar

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Why is the earth's surface 30C warmer than it should be, and 60C warmer than the top of Mount Everest?

Greenhouse gases like H2O and CO2 - 20%
Gravity and Boyle's Law warm the lower and cool the upper atmosphere - 67%
Other, please specify - 14%

Which was of course the correct answer. I was told that more specifically I should have said Gay-Lussac's Pressure-Temperature Law:

"The pressure of a gas of fixed mass and fixed volume is directly proportional to the gas's absolute temperature."

(Though having re-read this, they seem to be saying the same thing.)

Atmospheric pressure at ground level is higher than at the highest altitudes, ergo it is warmer than it would be from sunshine alone, and at the top of the atmosphere, it is colder than the average temperature of the whole atmosphere.

Clearly heat can't come from nowhere so what the lower atmosphere gains (in terms of average number of molecules per unit volume with a correspondingly higher total kinetic energy of those molecules per unit volume, which can be measured as 'pressure' or 'temperature', same thing in this context) must be balanced out by lower numbers for density, temperature, pressure etc in the higher atmosphere .

There is an equilibrium, which depends on how thick the atmosphere is, the air at the bottom can only warm up so far before it rises and cools again; the air can only rise so far before the force of gravity pulling it down overrides its tendency to float up etc.

It's all well and good coming up with an explanation why the surface temperature is higher than it would be from sunshine alone (and yes, 'greenhouse' gases like H2O, CO2, CH4 contribute a couple of degrees but not a massive amount) but if that does not also explain why the upper reaches of the atmosphere* are colder than they would be etc, then that explanation is not coherent or plausible.

* Don't start with the thermosphere, that is high up but hot for very different reasons.
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Going back to a Fun Online Poll of a few weeks ago, 71% thought that Merkel would never realise it was wrong to let a million Muslim refugees into the country.

Interestingly, she sort of did today, although it wasn't really an apology as such, more that she regrets having lost votes over it and wishes she had prepared the ground better before she pressed ahead and did it anyway.
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On the topic of politicians, another politician-avoiding-sugar story popped up again today, I don't know why some people are so obsessed with other people's diets but hey, I try to avoid sugar where poss so he has my sympathy (although I don't make jam, don't really like the stuff).

From The Daily Mail:

* The Labour leader made the comment during a chat on Mumsnet
* Said he shunned biscuits because he was 'anti-sugar on health grounds'
* But mocked as he has a jam-making hobby, which usually involves sugar

Luckily, the internet never forgets. For contrast, there was another politician-avoids-sugar story a while back, which raised no eyebrows whatsoever.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll (without following that last link first!)

"Which of these politicians avoids sugar?"

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

Fun Online Polls: Merkel & Midges

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How many more Islamist attacks will it take before Merkel realises it was wrong to let a million of them in?
I'm sure she'll apologise and change tack soon - 2%
A couple more and she'll see sense - 1%
A dozen? - 3%
She'll give it a few more years to see how things pan out - 14%
What? A politician see sense? Never! - 71%
Other, please specify - 10%

Thanks to everybody who took part. I'm in the minority on this one, I reckon she'll do a U-turn fairly soon. Oh, hang on, maybe not.
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These last few weeks I have been bitten by midges more often than in the last twenty years put together and it is bloody itchy.

The warmenists have long been predicting that warmer weather = midges and mosquitos will be able to spread northwards. In my limited experience, it's not any warmer but it is definitely midgier.

So that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll, have I just been unlucky or have others noticed this?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Angela Merkel's ultimatum & The price of crude oil

The results to last fortnight's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How will Cameron respond to Merkel throwing down the gauntlet?

Continue to waffle on about renegotiating terms with the EU for as long as possible - 97%Hold a referendum as soon as possible - 3%

Cameron's gone awfully quite about it since, hasn't he?
'Nuff said.
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There was am excellent article in today's City AM, worth reading in full, but here's the gist:

... at last I’ve found a conspiracy theory I can get behind: the whispered secret accord between the US and Saudi Arabia over the geopolitics of energy policy seems to me to be the real deal.

One thing is for certain; the Saudis are behaving decidedly oddly. While the price of oil has fallen off the map, having dropped below $80 per barrel to its lowest level in four years (in late spring it was perched at a lofty $115), the petro-kingdom has done absolutely nothing.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

Is Saudi Arabia deliberately pushing down the price of crude oil?

Fun Online Polls: EU budget and Angela Merkel throws down the gauntlet

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How should the UK respond to the EU's demand for another GBP 1.7 billion?

Assume it was a clerical error and ignore it - 19%
Assume it was a practical joke and ignore it - 61%
Other, please specify - 20%

My thoughts exactly. A good turnout with 114 voters, thanks to everybody who took part.
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The EU fun never stops!

I've no idea what goes through Cameron's tiny mind, but Angela Merkel has firmly slapped him down. Assuming that she can dictate EU policy and/or that other EU leaders think the same, this has wrong footed Cameron completely.

He now has now run out of excuses for waffling on about doing a bit of renegotiating and then holding a referenudm comfortably far into the future, Merkel has deftly painted him into a corner and he has no choice, morally, but to hold a referendum ASAP.

So that's this week's Fun Onlline Poll, how do you think he will respond (all a bit open ended, really)?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Angela Merkel gains 1½ stone after swapping fruit and carrot snacks for sausage sandwiches and biscuits"

From The Daily Mail:

* White House reporters noted that Merkel looked 'well fed and content'

* Biscuits and sausage sandwiches are now her preferred snack foods

* She never wants to see another raw chopped carrot or leek ever again

She is a heavyweight politician with a figure to match. Her imposing new physique is apparently down to observance of a strict new diet.

The result is that she has gained around one and half stone, with pictures of her taken this year and last highlighting the difference her perseverance has made.

The previously favoured fruit and vegetable snacks are now strictly off limits, with the German Chancellor, 59, now munching happily on cheese and sausage sandwiches and biscuits instead, according to Germany's Bild newspaper.

It is rumoured that Mrs Merkel's change of diet came after a state visit by the King of Tonga, who appeared very disconcerted when he first met her face to face and enquired discreetly whether Germany was suffering a terrible famine.

"Red-faced Angela Merkel discovers Herman Goering's pornography stash in her office"

From The Daily Mail:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is this week faced with the tricky question of what to do with a large number of explicit black and white photographs discovered to be part of a collection of pornography amassed by Hitler's deputy Hermann Goering.

The existence of the stash was uncovered by journalists writing for news magazine Der Spiegel about Nazi items that should have been returned to their owners but are still scattered about government guest houses, offices and museums.

Mrs Merkel is said to be furious with her aides at the embarrassing revelation, coming as it does months before her third bid for power in the general election and with the opposition snapping at her heels.

It is understood the photographs will be removed from her top right hand desk drawer by the end of the week. Over a thousand claims for return of the collection have been received by Merkel's office, none of which has been yet authenticated.

Merkozy

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time...

We've all been there, the party gets a bit out of hand and you end up daring each other to do all sorts of stupid things, sometimes it's enormously good fun, at other times, somebody ends up in hospital or seriously embarrassing himself.

But I wonder what bizarre sequence of events led up to this: From The Evening Standard:

French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced at 4am that he will call Chinese president Hu Jintao today to discuss China contributing to a huge new bailout fund... Analysts said China, which has grown rich from mass exports to the west, would be wary of handing over money without assurances. Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist for Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd, said: "China will need time to evaluate this plan very carefully."

Presumably Angie had already flashed her bra at passers by, Berlusconi had ordered fifty pizzas for 10 Downing Street, and the Greek PM had vandalised Rumpy's office, and now Little Nicky's challenge was to ring up Hu Jintao in the middle of the night* and ask for a trillion Euros while keeping a srtaight face.

* Or mid-morning, from Hu Jintao's point of view, but you don't think about things like that when you're really merry.

I thought it was quite sweet really..

Angela Merkel is clearly madly in love with Nicolas Sarkozy, has been for years. If you look at pictures of her when she's out on her own, she really looks quite frighteningly dull and drab, but when she's out and about with little Nicky, her eyes sparkle, she smiles quite naturally etc.

Whether he's quite as keen on her, I don't know, but their whole relationship is more or less perfectly encapsulated in this short video of them having a good giggle at Berlusconi's expense. She politely suppresses her giggle until she glances across at him and then follows his lead:

Prime Ministers with melty faces

How very dashed un-European of her!

From City AM

The pressure is telling on the region’s leaders, with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker lashing out at German chancellor Angela Merkel for what he called her "un-European manner".

Regarding Merkel’s comments that issuing single, region-wide Eurozone bonds (or "E-bonds") would not be legal under current treaties, he retorted: “The proposal is being rejected before it has been studied. Germany’s thinking is a bit simple on that."

As it happens, Germans take their constitution (Grundgesetz, a very fine constitution it is too) very seriously. If it says that the German government isn't allowed to do certain things, then they don't do them. They apply the same logic to the EU Treaties, either something's allowed or it isn't.

Where it gets really complicated is when the Grundgesetz prevents the German government from doing something that is legal or even required under an EU Treaty, but apparently the simple fact that something is illegal under an EU Treaty is irrelevant, and refusing to do it is "un-European".

Fun Online Polls: The Euro-zone and The Big Freeze

On a very good turnout in last week's Fun Online Poll (thanks to all 131 people who cast a vote), the result was:

Which country will the EU 'bail out' next?
Portugal - 78%
Spain - 11%
Italy - 2%
Other, please specify -3% (Belgium, Greece and the UK were suggested).
None. Financial stability in the Euro-zone has now been guaranteed - 6%

I use the term 'bail out' loosely of course, Ireland appears to be even more firmly under the EU cosh than before. It's a bit like taking a loan from a 'doorstep lender' or paying the Mafia for 'protection'. Suffice to say, the whole Euro-experiment is crumbling at such a rate that Angela Merkel has already started denying that 'they' will double the size of the nominal amount available to the EFSF (currently €440 billion) to be able to 'bail out' Spain if needs be.
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Much hilarity ensued last February when local councils ran out of salt, grit etc after it had been snowing for a couple of days. They've been forecasting snow for the whole of the UK for over a week and it's already hit large parts of the country (even though I've only seen a few flakes fall in London so far).

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "When do you think your local council will run out of salt and grit?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Chutzpah

A very simplified analysis of the various bail outs that have happened around the world is that the status of the lender is important, not the status of the borrower.

So in the USA, they bailed out their banks (in particular Fannie & Freddie) because the bonds are held by PR China and the USA is dependent on PR China; Greece was bailed out by Euro-zone taxpayers because a lot of Greek bonds are held by French or German banks (which in turn are largely state-owned); and the ECB forced Ireland to bail out its own banks (which are now also largely state-owned) for the same reason (and the Euro-zone countries in turn will be bailing out the ECB when the time comes).

In other words, the Euro-zone taxpayers weren't really bailing out Greece, they were bailing out French and German banks which own a lot of Greek bonds. And so on. It's quite possible that the UK government bailed out UK banks because a lot of their bonds are owned by Sacred Cows like pension funds or something (I'd have to look into that).

The key to debt-for-equity swaps is to expect bondholders to take some of the losses on the chin (in nominal terms - in terms of market values, such swaps have little impact), as I have been pointing this out for three years.

So my flabber was well and truly gasted when I read this:

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition backs proposals for a two-step crisis mechanism to make bondholders pay for any future euro-area crisis, the parliamentary finance spokesman for her party said yesterday...

It's a bit bloody late for that! Or is she now just pulling up the drawbridge, having got her own banks into the safety zone?

More Greek Bailout Fun

No wonder Carla Bruni got jealous...

Angie & Nick