The pubs of Rye were overflowing last Saturday for the FA Cup Final…the score was three all at the end of ninety minutes after Liverpool’s last gasp equaliser against West Ham who had taken a two-goal lead in the first half. Eventually Liverpool won the penalty shoot-out 3-1 after a goalless thirty minutes of extra time.
Everyone was back again for the final of the European Cup last night. Arsenal were playing Barcelona who had knocked out Chelsea…English League Champions for the second year running. It’s strange the way everybody talks about these professional teams. Barcelona’s best player is Brazilian and Arsenal’s French Manager Arsène Wenger recruits more from the French Football League than the English Premiership.
Early on Arsenal had their German goalkeeper sent off so played most the match with ten men...although it should have been a yellow card and a Barcelona goal instead. But they went one up against the odds in the first half when Sol Campbell…one of only two Englishmen in the side…put them ahead. Sol Campbell is black just to add another dimension to the multinational brew of European Football. Sport does more to dissolve racism than all the laws and quotas and public education. Barcelona eventually ran out worthy winners against a very tired Arsenal side with two goals in the last 15 minutes.
However Barcelona is something of a special case as far as sporting nationalism goes. Most people in England think of them as a Spanish side. But that is not how they think of themselves. The team has always been a hotbed of Catalan Nationalism. The rest of Spain knew that Franco’s Fascism was really over when the Catalan flags came out at the Nou Camp Stadium and the policeman stayed in their barracks.
Catalonia is to be given greater autonomy and wider tax-collecting and judicial powers after Spain’s lower house of parliament recently approved the Catalan Charter by 189 votes to 154. After further debate and amendments in the Spanish Senate the bill is on its way to the Catalan Parliament for approval before being put to a vote in the region. The right of centre opposition Popular Party voted against the bill as did the small Republican Left of Catalonia group which favours independence. Constanza Leal-Melo once explained to me that the Colombian ruling class comes from Catalonia and partly as a result have quite a different accent to other Spanish speakers in South America.
According to the latest wording of the charter’s preamble, the regional Catalan Parliament recognizes Catalonia as a nation but the Spanish Constitution refers to the north-eastern regions as a nationality. The text originally referred to Catalonia only as a nation which sparked an outcry from The Right which said that it could lead to secession.
I have been reading the Financial Times for the past couple of days to understand the European Carbon Trading Exchange. The newspaper clippings spread out on the cabin table in front of me…I am working on my Dell laptop…have headlines like Blair’s Decision Time On Nuclear Power, Carbon Credit Errors Throw Permit Scheme Into Turmoil, Independent Auditing a Must if Carbon Trading is to be a Success, The Real Story Behind the Collapse of Carbon Prices and Give the Emissions Trading Scheme a Fair Chance...written by the ceo of RWE npower. These shenanigans lend credence to those claiming that the whole point of The Kyoto Treaty is that it should fail.
I don’t believe the Global Warming Orthodoxy that sees Armageddon in carbon emissions. But that is no reason not to eliminate them. The side effects often turn out to be the main effects. It is almost a Rule of Nature. The less muck spewed into the atmosphere the better. But some of the side effects have to be seen to be believed…and many have little to do with cutting back on atmospheric pollution or reining in the emission of greenhouse gases.
My Crap Detector first began to register with the allocation of CO2 emissions permits for 2005…based on self-assessments which made Cod Quotas look like divine justice. The Dirty Half Dozen are Germany with 473 million tonnes, the UK with 242, Italy with 215, Spain with 181, France with 131 and Holland with 81. The other ten countries in the European Commission’s scheme account for just 12% of all permits and can be disregarded.
Demand on the Carbon Trading Exchange is driven by the UK, Spain and Italy…respectively 15%, 11% and 4% over quota. The UK has to buy 40 million tons-worth of CO2 emission permits, Spain 20 and Italy 10. Who has them for sale? Last week it was France and Germany. But then Angela Merkel announced that Germany would give 12 of her 21 million tonnes surplus back to Brussels. But France with her massive ‘non-polluting’ nuclear industry wants to keep her 15 for 2006. Market chaos duly ensued as carbon prices shoot up from €9 to €15 overnight. What a game!
It gets worse. Britain has enforced the toughest cuts on the electricity generators. Here’s the logic. The electricity sector is more insulated from overseas competition than sectors like chemicals, cement and steel so costs can be passed on to customers in higher prices. But the giant German polluter RWE owns Yorkshire Electricity and npower which supply UK consumers. Electricity companies have been accused of profiteering by charging customers for the free carbon permits they were given by Brussels. Now there’s a surprise. You couldn’t make it up.