The invisible elephant in the room now strikes the Financial Times with a bizarre report (above) telling us that the UK is to appoint a food ambassador with a mandate to dismantle trade barriers and help British companies take their sausages, biscuits and cereals to Asia and beyond.

"Many SMEs have either been frightened off by the thought of exports, or have never thought of it at all", says agriculture minister Jim Paice, who is fronting a farming, food and drink exports "action plan" put together by Defra and UK Trade & Investment.

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From the preface to the book by F.A. Hayek, 'The Road to Serfdom' :
"When a professional student of social affairs writes a political book, his first duty is to plainly say so. This is a political book...Though this is a political book, I am as certain as anyone can be that the beliefs set out in it are not determined by my personal interests....I have come to regard the writing of this book as a duty which I must not evade...the majority of economists have now for some years been absorbed... and silenced by their official positions....and that in consequence public opinion on these problems is to an alarming extent guided by amateurs and cranks, by people who have an axe to grind or a pet panacea to sell...."

What is happening to us was in progress even during the war years; Mr Hayek was writing in 1940-1943, when Europe was still tearing itself apart. And he was writing from the London School of Economics. I think he would say God help us, if he knew what that institution was doing these days. His book is worthy of being read simply because he tries (and succeeds, in my opinion) to analyse the malaise that is engulfing us, in the West, despite our successes and superiority in regard to virtually all, if not all, other civilisations.

I possibly shouldn't but I am looking forward to reading reports of leading figures in the EU bureaucracy being assassinated. It will be like a real life version of V for Vendetta. I'd love to see the socialists in general and the EU kind, in particular being fearful of their lives. And that most emphatically includes all our 5th columnists, in all walks of life.

sorry, but I've just realised why the bbc broadcasts the Jonathan Meades productions. It's because the fu**ers in the bbc are too uneducated to realise what he's saying.

Sorry, again, but I've just thought of another thing - the Radio4 Extra programme, 'Armitage and Moore's Guide to Song'. I was wondering at why they chose the songs/songwriters that they did and it occurred to me that they chose Mr Richard Thompson because he's a convert to islam. In my opinion, Mr Thompson is a minor entity in the music world. I began to wonder why they didn't choose some other contemporary artists, such as Mr Paul Simon; is it because he's Jewish? Or Mr Jackson Browne, is it because he's not muslim, or rather that he's a Christian? On the subject of bbc propaganda, I heard, a couple of years ago, an advert on bbc radio7, the precursor of bbc radio4 extra, an advert for the fabian society. It occurred at a few minutes to 6am, just before the then childrens programmes began. The bbc make me sick and I wish it would cease to exist.

Richard,

Euro-blindness was the order of the day. Things did happen in the Euro-world, but hardly anyone noticed. (Nothing in the Wail, Express, something at the end of one piece in the Torygraph, the Independent apparently had a small piece, but it disppaered pretty quickly. The only one who did write about it was - strangely enough - the FT.) So what was the story? Guess one could do worse than read Zerohedge:

The Silent Anschluss: Germany Formally Requests That Greece Hand Over Its Fiscal Independence.

Eventually Greece answered: Greece Politely Declines German Annexation Demands

One blogger (other than this blog ) laments the navel gazing of the British media: A GREEK TRAGEDY REACHES ITS DENOUEMENT: but in the UK, there is only the triumph of polemics over news

Same hopeless, mindless news reporting in Sweden. After the usual biff-baff-bang reporting on the "political game" (Would the Social Dims side with the other opposition parties and give the governing Alliance a black eye by saying no to the fiscal euro pact or not? No, they sided with the Gov't, of course.) the whole question died, and the fact that new events that should affect our decision makers (but won't) occurred is neither here nor there, apparently.

Sigh.

If I may, for a moment, leave the politics of food aside.
As a long-term expatriate in Germany & Portugal, I have never ceased to be amazed by the dearth of UK foods in the supermarkets of both countries. Some years ago, in Frankfurt, I even visited the Consulate/Trade Commision to try to get answers; naturally to no avail.
Shelves are awash with produce from every EU country, including the Czech Republic but it's a surprise to find anything from the UK.
We have some brilliant produce apart from Weetabix....but one seldom if ever sees it.
I can only conclude that the UK food branch has no interest.

I realise it's slightly off-focus, but we do actually see some British food on N Fla shelves; and the price, though high, is not necessarily above other products. I ran to $5.99 for Branston pickle, the other day, having eyed it for months. Of course, they have euro stuff as well, which (at this point) I wouldn't touch with a long line of bargepoles.

However, I've tried to buy other British things on the internet ... e.g. sheets, or shoes, etc.... only to have my custom refused because this isn't the euSSR. Apparently Britain's not allowed to ship stuff here without permission. I wonder if that sort of restriction applies to Commonwealth countries?

What a joke (not), that the euros think they're introducing us to world trade! I really think it's because they're prejudiced against us, always have been, and have every intention of continuing to prevent our trading. I can never help wondering if that isn't one reason we've kept on moving away from them over the millennia: they are our natural enemies. And we must have, above all, our freedom - to think and to act.

Just as someone else suggested earlier, my usual empathy will vanish-the minute an assassination-fest starts on these ****************s.

More likely the vendors are being lazy asses who don't wish to do the extra paperwork for "export" and to give you the VAT-exempt-price.