Not humiliated, honest

So Tony Blair isn't to be EU president. But then, according to the Guardian, he didn't want the job:

It is understood that he would have been unsure of taking the post when the Swedish government, which holds the rotating EU presidency, indicated in a paper on Wednesday that the president would have little or no role in foreign affairs.

Spinning to save the planet

Is spinning OK if it's in a good cause? The Guardian's exclusive this morning says that Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change in a potentially damaging split that comes ahead of crucial political negotiations on a new global deal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The story is clearly planted by "Sources on the European side", who "say the US approach could undermine the new treaty and weaken the world's ability to cut carbon emissions." US negotiators have apparently told European counterparts that the Obama administration intends to sweep away almost all of the architecture of the Kyoto treaty and replace it with a system of its own design.

The story makes clear that "European officials are reluctant to be seen to openly criticise the Obama administration, which they acknowledge has engaged with climate change in a way that President Bush refused to." So one of them is doing it anonymously. We are even told what the European negotiators "fear" - that the US move could sink efforts to agree a robust new treaty in Copenhagen in December.

Shocking

Today's Guardian has an absolutely shocking story about swine flu. Shocking because someone - the subs presumably - doesn't know the difference between could and will. It is nevertheless good news.

The headline says that swine flu won't be as dangerous as was thought. But the subheadline gets all mixed up:

The estimate of the number of Britons who will die of swine flu this winter has fallen dramatically after health experts admitted the virus is less lethal then they feared

When it was estimated in July that that up to 65,000 people could be killed across the UK, a few tabloids made a meal of this worst case scenario but it was generally clear that that was what it was. Now the official estimate of the number of Britons who could die this winter from swine flu is to be reduced substantially to roughly 20,000.

In both of these cases, I've quoted from the Guardian article itself, which in both cases talks about the number of people who could die. The article also quotes Scottish health minister Nicola Sturgeon as saying "that that (sic) official worst case scenario had been revised downwards".

"Worst case scenario", "could" and "could". Which bit of that did the sub on this story not get? Thankfully it is a story that is about the numbers being revised downwards, which lessens the impact. If the story was that more people "will" die such sloppiness would be outrageous.

Conspiracy theory

The Daily Mail's Stephen Glover is asking whether the Guardian was more than a mere spectator, in the recent, failed plot against Brown:

Was it trying to orchestrate events so as to secure the resignation which it had called for in its editorial? If it was involved as a player, the person whose head was deepest in the maul was Polly Toynbee, the Guardian's sometimes overwrought columnist.

Ouch!

Still dodging the inquiry

I've done a piece for the Guardian politics blog today asking whether the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq will pave the way for a full inquiry. The government are still unable to answer the question - or rather, making contradictory noises.

The sharp end

The Barclays tax evasion scandal is certainly at the sharp end of the battle between investigative journalism and corporate cover-up, as today's Guardian shows.

The Lib Dems are very much on the case and other MPs are very critical of Barclays tactics:

Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, said: "It is worrying that Barclays should resort to the courts like this to suppress genuine, investigative journalism. Now more than ever the public interest demands that a free press should investigate tax avoidance, especially where it occurs on a grand scale ..."

"The Guardian should be allowed to publish in the public interest and if Barclays wishes to contest the accuracy, it can always sue after the fact."

Richard Shepherd, Conservative MP for Aldridge-Brownhills, said: " It in the public interest that the Guardian wins. The gag should be lifted."

In arguments to the high court yesterday, Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said: "I considered these documents to be of the highest significance in the debate about tax avoidance. They revealed at first hand the processes involved in structuring extremely complex and artificial tax avoidance vehicles; how lawyers and accountants worked together to exploit loopholes in government legislation; and the degree to which they are sanctioned at the highest levels within Barclays."

I'm calling this tax evasion rather than tax avoidance. Strictly speaking one is illegal, the other legal. But tax evasion is the only phrase that adequately describes using an army of lawyers and accountants to create artificial vehicles that are so complex that no-one can work out whether they are legal or not.

If Barclays has nothing to hide, why the need for the injunction?

Absolutely scandalous

So Barclays Bank indulges in large scale tax evasion and doesn't want us to know how it does it.

According to the Guardian, Barclays went to a judge in the early hours of this morning to gag the paper over leaked documents showing what it has been up to. What is more scandalous - that Barclays should rip off the taxpayer or that it should try - with some success - to cover its tracks?

Not 2015 yet

The Guardian says that the government is facing New Year revolts against privatising the Post Office and a third Heathrow runway. Rather ineptly, it says about the runway:

Campaigners believe it will cause air pollution levels to soar, rendering impossible a 2015 emission target set by the European commission.

It's not just that the runway wouldn't be built until 2020. There is no 2015 emission target. The legally binding nitrogen dioxide limits in the EU air quality directive come into force in 2010. The government hopes to extend that for five years but that has by no means been agreed.

Quite wrong

In today's corrections and clarifications, the Guardian's readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth says:

The headline on an article about a third runway for Heathrow airport was misleading (Climate change watchdog backs expansion of Heathrow, page 1, November 27). As the story made clear, plans for expansion were not endorsed by Lord Turner, the chairman of the Climate Change Committee set up to advise the government on the issue of global warming. He said that it might be possible to increase aviation emissions and still meet the government's target for cutting greenhouse gases. The headline on the web story has been changed to: Aviation can expand while meeting climate targets, says watchdog.

Quite

Out comes the national security card

The Guardian says that the police claim that national security issues led to the arrest of Damian Green overshadows the release of a tory film of the search of his office. It could not have been more blatant that the security card was being played had they said "trumped" instead of overshadowed.

The first three lines of the Guardian article say it all:

The Metropolitan police conducted a search of Damian Green's parliamentary office last week after being told by the Cabinet Office that a series of leaks to the shadow minister could have posed a threat to national security.

Minutes after the Tories intensified the pressure on the police last night by releasing a short video showing the "rigorous" search, the Met hit back by highlighting the seriousness of the operation.

Sources said their investigation was prompted by a request from the Cabinet Office, whose officials told the police that the "systematic series of leaks" from the private office of the home secretary were so serious that they could pose a threat to national security. Police sources said this explained their decision to take the step - unprecedented in recent history - of arresting Green and searching his parliamentary office.

The police sources certainly know how to get their version of events in the paper without direct attribution or comeback.

When you dig into the national security claim, as subsequently set out in a letter from Jacqui Smith, it's fairly clear there is nothing in it:

She wrote: "Given the sensitive issues that the Home Office deals with - including matters of national security - there was a clear duty to take action to prevent leaks from happening."

Daily Mail comes out against capitalism

"Spivs, sharks and why the champagne corks were popping on Meltdown Monday", reads the Daily Mail headline above a story about hedge funds, short selling and people who actually wanted Lehman Brothers to crash.

Meanwhile, the Guardian asks some unreconstructed lefties what they make of capitalism in crisis. Ken Livingstone says:

Sadly, I don't think this will be the end of capitalism.

Others are more optimistic.

Capitalism - on or off the rails?

Left and right have different takes this morning on the carnage that continues to flow from the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The Guardian has an extended leader saying:

It is a moment Karl Marx would have relished. From every angle financial capitalism is taking a battering.

Meanwhile, in the Telegraph, Jeff Randall says: "Capitalism - it's painful, but it works". Or does he? In fact, he says:

Soon enough we will discover if the core of Western finance is just an elaborate Ponzi scheme, underpinned only by new waves of suckers, or an imperfect but flexible machinery that, despite its flaws, has the capacity to withstand shocks.

Either way, it seems to me, [US Treasury Secretary] Paulson was right to turn off the tap. If the system is rotten, why shore it up? If it's not, then it will - somehow - survive without more state aid.

The closest Randall comes to an endorsement of capitalism is this:

Nobody said that capitalism was devised to provide soft landings for hopeless losers.

Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Losing the propaganda war in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan the US frequently wipes out large numbers of civilians in misplaced air strikes. It invariably denies having done so, claiming that only Taliban fighters or "militants" were killed. In a recent case, the US has had to carry out a new investigation, after video footage suggested that up to 90 civilians had been killed, including as many as 60 children. According to the Guardian

"Killing civilians is not the best way to attract hearts and minds," one European official noted sarcastically yesterday.

Lying about it afterwards doesn't help either.

In the same piece, the Guardian says:

British officials believe they have stabilised the opium cultivation in Helmand province, questioning UN figures suggesting it has increased over the past year.

Or are they just saying that?

More spin from Iraq

Gordon Brown's visits to Iraq are always about propaganda but the Guardian has the most obviously planted story I've seen for a while.

Not only does it helpfully set out Brown's four "building blocks" as bullet points, we are told that

The prime minister and Britain's military commanders believe great progress has been made since March and that lessons have been learnt on all sides.

Thats alright then. This bit too is obviously planted:

Britain is taking a close interest in the Basra Investment Promotion Agency and the Basra Development Fund, both designed to stimulate private sector development. Britain is also promoting the renovation of the Umm Quasr port.

Of course the real story is that Brown has resorted to hinting that there will be troop reductions,
having failed to keep a promise he made last autumn.

British troop numbers in Iraq will be reduced to 2,500 next spring, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told MPs.

Not that you would know from the Guardian that Brown said it would happen. Rewriting history to save Brown embarassment, the Guardian suggests it was something he kept to himself:

Brown hopes that success in training Iraqi forces will allow him to cut British troop numbers, possibly next year when there is a new president in the White House. Britain had hoped to reduce its troop numbers to 2,500 this spring. But this was postponed after the difficulties of the March offensive.

...

Brown had hoped to cut British troops in Iraq to 2,500 by this spring.

Sour Grapes?

According to Press Gazette,

PR Week has hit back at accusations that it is being “used” by Downing Street communications staff to leak stories about a power struggle within Number 10.

The accusations have come from the Times and the Guardian. Are they upset that Number 10 isn't using them, as usual?

Are they trying to be helpful?

It's really not clear whether the unnamed police sources who "back" Sir Ian Blair in this Guardian article are trying to help him or stab him in the back.

While those who talked to the Guardian support Sir Ian, they fear his departure may be the only way for the force to get back on track. "All the really important things begin to look in jeopardy because the future is so uncertain," said the senior source. "I do question if the authority of his office has been irrevocably damaged."

Guardian Manipulation

Here is one of those classic stories in the Guardian where the government is able to put across its argument under the cloak of anonymity. It's just spin.

Government ministers have given their backing to a renewed campaign by farmers and industry to introduce genetically modified crops to the UK, the Guardian has learned.

They believe the public will now accept that the technology is vital to the development of higher-yield and hardier food for the world's increasing population and will help produce crops that can be used as biofuels in the fight against climate change.

"GM will come back to the UK; the question is how it comes back, not whether it's coming back," said a senior government source.

One of the classic techniques in this type of spin is to dress up an argument as a "belief". Of course, no-one knows what anyone actually believes. It would be more accurate and truthful to say "they want you to hear the argument that..."

Bright's Blog goes cryptic

Martin Bright, who broke my story on the Iraq dossier, has started to blog more frequently and to good effect.

In one piece An outrageous judgement he fiercely criticises the ongoing reporting restrictions on the recent trial of two men over a leaked memo. He notes that

in a bizarre twist, the judge has stated that the contents of the leak -- which is thought to involve a conversation between Tony Blair and George Bush -- can be reported as long as they are not linked to the case and appear on a separate page of the newspaper involved.

On a different post, on a separate page, A missile for Al-Jazeera he reports an issue that he does not link to the leaked memo story at all. Apparently George Bush had a plan to bomb the Arabic television station al-Jazeera. Bright links to Richard Norton-Taylor's Guardian piece on the missile for al-jazeera story.