Britain caught napping on rare earths

 Today's news that Aung San Suu Kyi has again been convicted in a kangaroo court in Myanmar is a further reproach to the Tory government. So far from exerting a global reach as Boris Johnson promised, it has done nothing to protect a fighter for democracy, the widow of a British citizen and mother of two more in what was once a Commonwealth country. Perhaps this is for the basest of reasons: they approve of the junta's genocide of Muslims, much as too many of their predecessors approved of Hitler's solution of "the Jewish problem".

Well, there it turns out that there was a practical reason for not allowing the virtual takeover of Myanmar by China. The country is rich in the ores of neodymium and other vital "rare earth" metals. China is extracting these and not in an environmentally-friendly way.

Misha Glenny's Radio 4 series on rare earths revealed another source closer to home: Ukraine. This is another nation where the UK (and, let us face it, our then European partners) could have warned off a dictator before it was too late.

But the major rare earth monopolist is China. Glenny cites other territories where China has insidiously extended her grip. 

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a man of contradictions

 A contemporary of the late Queen has died. His name meant nothing to me when the death was announced, until I did some searching in my archives. They reminded me that he had been refused a visa to enter the UK for medical treatment because of his extreme anti-Semitic utterances. Where this visceral hatred of fellow Children of the Book came from is not clear. It certainly goes beyond those Jews seen as exploiting Palestinians. He was also a homophobe, as shown by these exchanges. A visa ban was also issued by France.

And yet, within the Muslim community he held liberal views. He condemned female genital mutilation (FGM), death by stoning, the violent actions of the so-called Islamic State and the devastation of New York's World Trade Center (9/11). His support for (peaceful) uprisings against tyrannies in the Islamic world saw him imprisoned by successive dictators in Egypt, his homeland, and only exile in Qatar prevented his execution at the behest of the latest, el-Sisi. 

Much as he earned condemnation for his views on Judaism, he was a major figure in the realm of Islamic scholarship and deserves more recognition in the West for that at least.

Starmer now treating Labour conference with contempt

 Sir Keir Starmer seems to have adopted the same attitude to his party's conference as Conservative leaders have long regarded the annual Tory rallies. Anthony Tuffin of Make Votes Matter writes;

The Labour Party Conference voted for PR today!  That’s the good news.

But, as Sir Winston Churchill said 80 years ago, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

The bad news is that Sir Keir Starmer has said he won’t put it in the party manifesto for the next general election and, even if he did, there’s no guarantee that he would honour it if Labour won.  Some of us are old enough to remember Labour’s broken PR promise of 1997.  Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction.

Our next target with Labour must be to have the Conference decision endorsed in the manifesto.  I expect the PR organizations like the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count will produce ideas for that but, in the meantime and especially if you are a Labour member or at least supporter, you may like to congratulate the party on the  conference resolution and urge it to put PR in the manifesto.

Is Labour democratic or not?  Does Labour believe it is right for a party with only about 2 out of 5 votes to form the Government? Will Labour accept its own conference’s democratic decision?

You can read more about the resolution at:

• www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63036884 and
• Make Votes Matter on Twitter: 

Party conference live coverage

 The Labour annual conference which began yesterday is the most important during this parliament and of Sir Keir Starmer's leadership so far. Yet its deliberations are not being shown on BBC Parliament. Surely we citizens are entitled to see the working out of policy by the major opposition party at a time when the government appears to have no strategy for the future of the UK and is merely intent on rewarding its friends? Parliament has been suspended in order for these conferences to take place with full participation by MPs. Pre-pandemic, it was the custom to show the proceedings of at least the autumn conferences of all the major parties and occasionally the spring ones as well. 

One can forgive the corporation for missing the Liberal Democrat AGM because it was cancelled this year. We had the misfortune to be overtaken by events. Conferences have to be scheduled well in advance and nobody was to know that the monarch would die and that her funeral and the period of mourning leading up to it would coincide with conference dates. There is no such excuse for the Labour, Conservative and the Nationalists' conferences.

Of course, there will be a showing of the leaders' speeches as BBC's journalistic values of personalising politics continues to match those of the redtop papers. That is not, though, a substitute for examining the detailed consideration of what lies behind the propaganda.

The executives who swell the BBC payroll will no doubt argue that conference coverage is too expensive. The simple answer to that is to trim the contingent which goes to the seaside to the minimum necessary to cover the conferences. It is not necessary to send half-a-dozen journalists who could be better employed elsewhere merely to have extra-conference arguments with leading lights. Let us see the ordinary delegates and representatives, who are the backbone of the parties, on their feet in the conference hall!

Legislation against suspicious financial activity delatyed

 ICIJ reports:

It’s Sept. 20, 2020, and a brand new ICIJ investigation has pushed a relatively small unit of the U.S. Treasury into a glaring global spotlight… 

Named for the Treasury’s Financial Crime Enforcement Network, whose leaked files were at the heart of the investigation, the FinCEN Files exposed more than $2 trillion of potentially dirty money flowing around the world — all via U.S. banks.

Published in collaboration with BuzzFeed News and more than 100 media outlets from 88 countries, the investigation sparked global debates about cash flows, crime and corruption, and spurred lawmakers — including those in Washington, D.C. — to push anti-money-laundering reforms to the top of their agenda.

Activists and advocates who had spent decades fighting financial secrecy cheered when, in January 2021, the U.S. passed landmark legislation that sought to clamp down on anonymous companies, including plans to build a database of U.S. company owners that would make it much harder for criminals to hide their dodgy dealings.

Fast forward to today, and much of that excitement and hope has been replaced with anxiety. Reporter Spencer Woodman spoke with experts who are struggling to understand why, two years after the FinCEN Files, seemingly little has been done to get this company register up and running.

“There is a lot of anxiety that the Biden administration will take the whole four years to finalize the rules setting up the beneficial ownership registry,” Elise Bean, an anti-corruption expert and former chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said. “It is hard to understand what is taking so long.”

A spokesperson told ICIJ that FinCEN is “working expeditiously to promulgate rules to implement the statute” but there was no set date for those rules to be published.

The plot against Corbyn

 Jeremy Corbyn may have been a mistaken choice, electorally speaking, by the Labour membership, but he was democratically elected. His removal - according to this exposé (text version here) - was anything but, relying on smears, untruths and false reporting. Al Jazeera named at least half-a-dozen Labour activists and officials, who should have supported the leader but instead worked to undermine him. Their fake news, wittingly or unwittingly, was used by MPs Tom Watson, Angela Eagle and the late Tessa Jowell in their opposition to Corbyn. 

Corbyn was not the total innocent portrayed by the programme. He clearly sympathises with any group which seeks to overturn the establishment, including some who do not shrink from violence. Nor do his hopes for state socialism chime with most UK voters, though lately the under-performance of English train operating companies and the profits being made from the North Sea for multi-national energy companies may prove a partial exception. 

Al Jazeera of course has its own special interest in the story. As the major news organisation based in an Arab nation it has reporters both in Palestine and Israel. It regularly publishes descriptions of assaults on civil rights by the authorities throughout the region, including Israel. When people in the West blow the whistle on attempts to equate criticism of Israel, the state, with anti-Semitism, naturally it is interested. 

What appears to have happened in the Labour party is that Islamophobes have made common cause with those who regret the departure of Blair in order to oust Corbyn. So socialists, including Jews, were smeared as anti-Semites along with supporters of Palestinian rights. The purge has continued as the party has swung to the opposite extreme under Starmer, leading surely to the party's loss of many moderate Muslim members. Their activism will have to be replaced if Labour is serious about contesting its previous "Red Wall" seats in the north of England, not to mention holding on to its London seats.

That the theme of the programme is more than a Trotskyite protest is shown by the presence of Peter Oborne. This ultra-liberal's work is usually to be found in the pages of conservative periodicals, but also includes a biography of Basil d'Oliveira, the cricketer who triumphed over apartheid.

For the record, I support Israel's right to exist as laid out in the Balfour declaration. Racism and xenophobia, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, have no place in a civilised society.  And Watson, Eagle and Jowell had a perfect right to express their differences with Corbyn openly. 

I had supported Jeremy Corbyn's candidacy for the Labour party leadership in order to provide a socialist test of what might otherwise be a walk-over by a more establishment candidate. One could not have foreseen how a mistaken loosening of membership requirements would lead to a skewed result.

[Update 22:15] 

Commenting on al Jazeera news tonight, Kevin Craig, Labour influencer, stressed that Corbyn lost the Labour leadership because he did not have what it takes to be a prime minister, was shown to be indecisive and (music to my ears) was instrumental in the UK leaving the EU. I would not disagree with any of this, but query the necessity therefore of the subterranean dishonest campaign against him and his supporters.

Stagflation ahoy!

 Inflation is neatly, if possibly simplistically, summed up as "too much money chasing too few goods".  So it would seem madness to stoke our already dangerous level of inflation (9.9% at present) by increasing the amount of money available to the already well-off, while doing nothing to increase the supply of housing or of basic goods and services, including social services. 

Apart from feeding the already overheated housing market, there is no evidence that giving money to rich people stimulates growth in the economy as a whole. Their surplus tends to go into savings rather than spending. What could improve the health of the economy is to raise the income of those currently going without to a genuine living wage. It should be noted that the people at the bottom of the income ladder pay no income tax, so will not benefit from the Chancellor's cuts to income tax. They would benefit from a cut in VAT, which the Chancellor has not touched. The Bank of England hints that we are already in recession and this budget is unlikely to improve the situation.

Without growth, the tax cuts will further raise the country's debt bill. The Tories and their financial advisors are clearly calculating that the real pain of reducing that will be deferred until after they scuttle at the next general election.

Of (politically) mixed marriages, the EU and Italy

 I failed to credit Andrew Gimson as the author of the spoof news items referred to yesterday. Later in the BH broadcast, the Conservative Gimson was joined by his wife Sally, then a Labour councillor in Camden.

My parents came from different political traditions. Early on in their relationship I gather, they agreed that they would never discuss politics in the interests of a harmonious marriage. The Gimsons take an opposite line, being very open about their differences as a brief spat during the programme's review of the papers showed. Both approaches clearly work as I see that the Gimsons are still together and only death separated my parents. 

Just as I feel that my parents' personal philosophies were closer than their party allegiances would suggest, so the Gimsons agreed on some basic issues. After Andrew stressed the need for a system of cooperation in Europe, Sally reinforced the message: "Every time in history when we pull out of Europe, when we become separate, when we say we want to be a sovereign nation and we don't want to be part of Europe and we won't take part in what happens in Europe, things go wrong."

That was a view held by Denis Healey, of whom an appreciation closed the programme (the last ten minutes or so). Healey had just died at the age of 98. As historian Peter Hennessy pointed out, Healey spanned post-war British history. Presenter Paddy O'Connell observed that Healey's generation "had gone, that we are dealing with people who leave university and go straight into politics. Hardly anyone has served in a boardroom or on a battlefield." Hennessy responded with the reflection in 1988 by Willie Whitelaw, who was of the same generation, that "the big divide in politics now is not left or right, wet or dry, it's the generation that grew up in the slump and in the war and the one that didn't".

Denis Healey had been a beach-master at Anzio. (See "Anzio Landing" in the National War Museum's description of the Italian campaign.) Like so many people involved in the strike against the Axis powers who later went into politics, Healey believed in the European ideal, that tying nations together in economic bonds that they could not break would end the centuries of bitter conflict in Europe. The Italian campaign was particularly nasty. I have posted about this before, and also about the military administration which restored order to Sicily sans Mafia and sans Fascists. 

Sadly, the passing of the first of Whitelaw's generations has affected Italy, too. The history of the last century has been forgotten or ignored, leading to the rise of the Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers in Italy) party, tipped to win next Sunday's general election in the country. Although its leader, Giorgia Meloni, describes her party as a moderate conservative one, liberal and Jewish groups point out that it includes many extremists. Italy's only partly proportional voting system may give this resurgent party control over one of the founder members of the European Common Market and its successors. The tensions raised by the result in Sweden's election may increase.

BH as Nostradamus

 Seven months before the EU referendum in 2016, the Radio 4 programme Broadcasting House predicted that, if the referendum went the way of the isolationists, the prime minister would be Boris Johnson  and that his defeated opponent in the race for the Conservative party leadership would complain that "as prime minister, Boris just thinks he can make it up as he goes along".

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06f4xq2 3 minutes 32 seconds in]

3

Insensitivity of our new king

 

Coming on top of Charles III's instant decision to bestow the title of Prince of Wales on his son without even informing the parliament and first minister of the nation, the choice of this special day for his visit to Cardiff has aggravated anti-Carolean feeling. It surely was a decision born of isolation and ignorance rather than a studied insult to the nation as many nationalists believe, but reprehensible all the same.

In practical terms, the abrupt sacking of loyal Clarence House staff is worse. One expects the head of state to set an example, to be in the forefront of modern employment practices, not to revert to the style of an early Victorian mill-owner. 

Earlier, elsewhere I had posted that Charles was unlikely to emulate the character of his predecessors, the autocratic and arrogant Charles I or the louche and irresponsible Charles II. I may be shown to be wrong in the first instance, but there is still a chance to add concern for his people to the commitment made in his first post-accession address to the nation, that he would follow the path duty laid down by his mother.

About-turn in liberal Sweden

 In the words of the Bloomberg report, liberal Sweden is catching the "populist chill" which is sweeping the EU. After Sunday's election, 

The nationalist Sweden Democrats [(SD)], whose leader Jimmie Akesson campaigned on a platform of zero-tolerance to crime and slashing immigration to a bare minimum, are now the second political force in a country once known for its liberalism.

The leader of the Moderate (conservative) party, which finished third in the poll behind the outgoing Social Democrats and the SD, aims to form a coalition which would also include the Swedish Liberal party. The Moderates and Liberals will no doubt attempt to resist the SD's demands, but being the largest party in the coalition, they can hardly be denied some ministerial posts.

The Swedish Democrats have emerged from an earlier neo-Nazi party. Nazism has been steadily on the rise over the last thirty years or so, more so than in most Scandinavian countries. Sweden's treatment of immigrants is probably the most generous in Europe, which has enriched her society but no doubt contributed to the ultra-nationalist backlash. Now the danger is that she makes common cause with the even more xenophobic administration in Hungary, exacerbating tensions within the Union. 

Update 2022-09-16: EU parliament now views Hungary as an "elected autocracy". The Union does have the sanction of withdrawing support funds to bring Hungary back into line. This would not work with Sweden, who is a net contributor.

EU sanctions here to stay

 As  part of her state of the union address earlier this week, Ursula von der Leyen made no apologies for the EU's hard line against Russia.

Von der Leyen began her speech by praising Ukraine's resistance against Russia's invasion, describing the country as a "nation of heroes" and vowing the EU's solidarity will "remain unshakable."

Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, was her guest of honour and received a standing ovation from MEPs.

"Today, courage has a name, and that name is Ukraine," von der Leyen said, adding she will travel to Kyiv later in the day. "Putin will fail and Europe will prevail."

The Commission chief also unveiled several proposals to align Ukraine with the single market, including by extending the European free-of-charge roaming area, and support its reconstruction, with €100 million to rebuild damaged schools.

However, she did not present any plans for new weapons delivery, as Kyiv continues to demand in the midst of a lighting counteroffensive.

She added that the EU should have listened to eastern European countries that "have been telling us for years that Putin would not stop."

Von der Leyen then spoke about Russia, the state of its economy and the high price that Vladimir Putin is paying for his "trail of death and destruction."

"The Russian military is taking chips from dishwashers and refrigerators to fix their military hardware, because there are no semiconductors anymore," she said. "Russia's industry is in tatters."

"It is the Kremlin that has put Russia’s economy on the path of oblivion," she added.

In what appeared to be a direct rebuke to critics who claim the EU's hard line against Russia will eventually collapse under the weight of the energy crisis, von der Leyen sought to dispel any doubts.

"I want to make it very clear: the sanctions are here to stay," she said. "This is time for resolve and not appeasement."

The King and Myddfai

 There was an interesting piece in the Evening Post yesterday about Charles III's ownership of the Llwynywermod estate. He and Camilla have been frequent, if irregular, visitors to the old central farmhouse and to the neighbouring village of Myddfai. The article suggested that the royal couple was attracted to the property as a quiet place to get away to because it was out of the way and that the inhabitants of the small village were discreet. I prefer to think that Charles, a long time supporter of traditional remedies, was attracted by the legends of the physicians of Myddfai.

The two faces of the new administration

 There were leaks of the new administration's energy policy, of course, but refreshingly the details were spelled out in parliament rather than at a media conference. There was, admittedly, a delay in making the text of the relevant ministerial statement available to MPs, but I am with the Speaker when he said:

I am sorry that this has happened. I consider it to be discourteous to the House, and I hope that is not the way the new Government intend to treat the House. Rather than judging it to be deliberate, I will put it down to bad management or incompetence.

Before that debate, there was the regular session of business questions at which the new Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, was more accommodating to members than any of her predecessors since Sir George Young.in the first years of the coalition.

So it looks as if PM Liz Truss is determined  to restore the respect for the elected Commons on the part of the executive. Sadly, it is entirely a different story when it comes to Britain's civil service, still respected world-wide even after successive governments from Thatcher's onwards have chipped away at it. BBC reports:

Two former heads of the civil service have criticised Liz Truss for sacking the top official at the Treasury within days of becoming prime minister.

Sir Tom Scholar was fired this week - a move seen as part of a pledge by Ms Truss to change "Treasury orthodoxy".
[...]

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend, Lord Butler said his "very unusual and very regrettable" departure reminded him of the US, where it is common for incoming governments to appoint their own officials.

"I think they are behaving improperly towards the civil service," he told the programme.

"A government wouldn't come in and on the first day sack the head of her Majesty's defence forces, the chief of the defence staff," he added.

The crossbench peer, who was cabinet secretary - the UK's top civil servant - under Margaret Thatcher, Sir John Major and Sir Tony Blair, said the departure would prove disruptive.

"It'll weaken them, but it'll also corrupt our system, because one of those great advantages of having an independent, loyal civil service will be compromised."

Her Majesty's effort of will

 "She is comfortable and at Balmoral where she has always been happiest" were the words of BBC's Robert Hardman this lunchtime. One cannot escape the feeling that Queen Elizabeth II of England, I of Scotland and head of the Commonwealth has been aware some time of her increasing frailty and, while seeking to maintain her duty to state and people, has chosen to spend her declining days where she has marvellous memories and away from the floodlights of the media. It seems significant that of all the engagements which she has cancelled three stand out. She made an exception of the Royal Windsor Horse Show, horses having always been her predominant interest, and of the Chelsea Flower Show where she was no doubt able to renew acquaintance with Chelsea Pensioners. And she was determined to shake hands with her fifteenth prime minister. She will have been glad to welcome another woman in the post who, though clearly flawed, is more responsible than her predecessor.

 

Symbol of rehabilitation to close

 It was announced yesterday that the Clink restaurant cannot have its lease renewed. The world-renowned fine dining establishment situated by Cardiff prison ha been the flagship of the programme of rehabilitation of offenders through training in cuisine. Yesterday's report indicates that the programme will continue, but its most visible symbol of success will be lost. 

Westminster is responsible for prisons policy. The new prime minister once signed up to a progressive justice system as a young Liberal Democrat. She has already taken a step in thee right direction with the scrapping of her predecessor's plan to limit UK citizens' rights under the European Convention. Will she intervene to find a way to replace Clink?

What if care work were recognised as a driver of sustainable growth?

 The intriguing headline to a briefing from the European Parliament Research Service. It would certainly make a difference to UK's GDP ranking if applied.

[Written by Meenakshi Fernandes and Cecilia Navarra].

Care work provided in homes and institutions is a public good that is under-valued by society. Care workers are more likely to have low earnings and precarious working conditions. About 9 in 10 care workers are women.

Most unpaid care work within households is carried out by women. The ‘unpaid care penalty’ for women in the EU, which is equivalent to the earnings they lost because of this unbalanced distribution of care responsibilities, is estimated to reach €242 billion per year.

EU action in the care sector has the potential for high returns for society. Fostering the ‘equal earner – equal carer model’ could generate benefits of between €24 billion and €48 billion a year. EU action to promote affordable, high-quality care could produce an additional €90 billion to €160 billion in benefits each year.

The Plaza preserved

 No longer a cinema, but a multi-purpose facility run by the YMCA, the Port Talbot Plaza has at least had its striking art deco shell restored. I can hardly wait to view the restoration in person, but until then the media releases by Neath Port Talbot council will have to suffice. The scheme was started by the previous Labour administration, but full marks to the coalition for seeing it through to fruition, when it would have been so easy in this era of tribal politics to scrap it.

The state of the façade in 2018

A minority of a minority elects our next PM

 As has frequently been pointed out by Peter Black, an unrepresentative section of the British population has been able to vote on who becomes Her Majesty's first minister. How small that section is was revealed at today's media conference mounted by the Conservative party. Against speculation that party membership could be as high as 200,000, Sir Graham Brady announced that there were just over 172,000 members eligible to vote. Of them, Ms Truss obtained the confidence of just over 80,000. The defeated candidate, Rishi Sunak, convinced over 60,000 that he would be a more responsible leader, There were 654 spoiled ballots; one can only speculate what message they conveyed. 

Sunak has already stated that he would not serve in a Truss cabinet. It was Sunak who garnered the majority of MPs' votes in the short-listing process. Given the split in the membership vote, it may be difficult for Truss to win over Sunak supporters. A period of creative conflict in the Commons, stretching the Conservative tradition of party loyalty, may well ensue.

Of course, Truss could well pull a uey as she has done so often previously. Having made promises solely to convince the predominantly reactionary Conservative constituency, as PM she may say that the books were unexpectedly bad and that she may have to postpone some of her tax cuts. She will probably go ahead with the cancellation of the rise in national insurance, which helps her wider natural constituency, but there is otherwise no incentive for her to help the working poor. I hope I am wrong, but she will probably go ahead with one of her consistent ideas: removing carbon taxes, rather than targeting them more precisely.

Coming just after a TV report from Somalia on the famine brought on by unprecedented years of drought, it was dispiriting that there was no mention of global warming by our soon-to-be prime minister. Indeed, it was remarkable that someone who still holds the portfolio of foreign minister should make virtually no reference to affairs outside Britain. It really does look as if it will be the Johnson continuation ministry, just as John Major continued the Thatcher project.

Rail progressives' conference cancelled - because of rail strike

 Clearly there are no Railfuture (Rf) members among the higher echelons of the rail unions - and there should be. Railfuture has announced:

"A rail strike involving train drivers and signallers has been called for the day of the conference (15 September). Because some of the organisers, speakers and those who had booked were relying upon the train, Railfuture has reluctantly decided to postpone the event until March or April 2023, when hopefully industrial action will have ended.[...]

"How ironic that Rf’s Annual Conference in Leeds on 15 September on the Turning Point for the Railway has had to be postponed until March or April next year due to industrial action, as any turn will be for the worse. The unions think they have the Government over a barrel, but the barrel is in danger of going over Niagara Falls, with any gains in the short-term funded by cancelling long-term projects."

A rare sight

 

Mick Bates remembered

 The factual biography is here, but it doesn't really say what the man was about. I am grateful to Gavin Cox, for letting me copy a more vivid picture first posted on Facebook

Let's face it, Mick Bates was a crap politician. He had no time for tradition nor process. Mick was the ultimate in unconvention. To Mick, party politics got in the way of progress. There was nothing he hated more than spending 3 days in Cardiff committees or the debate chamber. This was valuable time lost to the real people who had real issues. He'd dismay at politicians toeing the party line. He despised tribal politics and spoke out for the need for more consensus and grown up thinking.

Yet he also held a very genuine concern should Montgomeryshire fall into opposition hands. Should this happen, all the progress, everything we've worked for over the years will be lost, he would say. 'These Tories don't care for people, they care for nothing but money and power for themselves". How prophetic he was. Still, he shouldered the blame when the Severn Valley flooded, or when there was a drought. He was happy to be blamed for snow or when autumn gusts uprooted trees. And did he laugh!

This crap politician led the campaign that saw free school milk reintroduced to Welsh school kids, giving the Welsh dairy industry a much-needed boost and doing his bit to halt growth and learning deficiencies in the youngest and poorest of kids. This crap politician set the agenda for sustainable and renewable energy growth across Wales. This crap politician was at pains to speak out, alongside the National Farmers Union and Farmers Union of Wales, how Welsh agriculture needed the EU markets but that the EU needed reform, not abandoning. He longed for that Thursday 3hr drive northwards on the A470 to be home with Buddug, Ruth and Daniel and have the chance to sort out Mr Edwards' Tir Gofal payments, or see Mrs Brown who needs a disabled parking space outside her home, or to simply spend time in hills of the countryside of Llanfair Caereinion but he always had to be at The Smithfield market on a Monday morning. That's where Mick was most at home.

Mick was not so much a boss than a partner and a leader. I was once his wingman, his straight man. I helped put organisation to the disorganisation; to build a plan to match Mick's vision; to get him to slow down to at least 100mph so everyone else could catch up and attempt understanding. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't challenging. I remember turning up one particular morning of media briefings, live TV studio hopping and radio broadcasts wearing my new sharply pressed tailored suit eager to impress on a big public facing exercise. Mick gave me a look of disgust, "Blimmin' heck Gav, don't turn into a grey person. Be normal! If anyone tells you what to wear never ever listen to them. Don't ever let anyone tell you what to do!".

We got on because we were both non-conformists, we'd question stuff rather than accept at face value and we'd spot a bullshitter a mile off (and we met a few!) and we'd out bullshit them and then we would laugh some more. I'd like to think he saw a little bit of himself in me.

The stories I have to tell are legendary. One began in a lift of either a Brighton or Bournemouth conference hotel as we were on our way to dinner. Mick held the lift and gave me one of his pointy fingers to the chest talks with a half cocked smile, that made one sense it might be serious or it may just be a laugh. "Whatever you do Gav make sure I don't get pissed because when I get pissed I get properly pissed." Ok Mick.. thinking how do I stop this 6ft wide rugby prop from drinking and live to tell the tale? The night ended with Mick stood on a table in the conference bar, his tie tied tight around his forehead, reciting poetry of a derogatory but hilarious nature about the then president of the Liberal Democrats as I sat with my head in my hands not knowing what to do or where to look. The term 'force of nature' has been used previously to describe visionary folk who have achieved change with breathless energy. On this occasion I feel it suits the giant of a man that was Mick Bates. A Leicestershire boy who became a wily mid Wales farmer and community leader and remained Bob Dylan's #1 fan and I am so happy that I got to visit him on his farm and have a good chat and catch up while I was back in the UK. And this is one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. God bless you Mick.

We have power to spare, but cannot export it

 Wales has plenty of potential renewable energy capacity, both off-shore and on-shore wind, and even solar electricity generation. However, as NFU Cymru complain, connecting it to the National Grid is not possible at present.

Garry Williams, a sheep and beef farmer on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park, said: "We've got 3.9kw of solar panels on site at the moment. We're looking at the possibility of expanding the renewable energy production as a form of diversification.

"But we've got a major problem, and the problem is there isn't the capacity in the National Grid to take the electric produced down the line."

According to NFU Cymru's president, Aled Jones, the lack of capacity on the electricity network is a major barrier for farmers wanting to produce clean energy.

He said: "A lot of members who've been trying to get into diversification projects and renewable energy have found themselves unable to get grid connection because the availability in the grid was insufficient.

Elon Musk states the obvious

 Stavanger clearly provided the most friendly audience anywhere in the world. Norway's economy has been buoyed by oil and gas, but is also moving towards renewables. There are probably more Tesla cars on the streets of Oslo than in any other capital city.

Before plugging his company's future projects,

Musk said the world must continue to extract oil and gas in order to sustain civilisation, while also developing sustainable sources of energy.

"Realistically I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilisation will crumble," Musk told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.

Asked if Norway should continue to drill for oil and gas, Musk said: "I think some additional exploration is warranted at this time."

"One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy," he said. "That will take some decades to complete."

He said offshore wind power generation in the North Sea, combined with stationary battery packs, could become a key source of energy. "It could provide a strong, sustainable energy source in winter," he said.