I know a Blair apology is a rare old thing, but I’m sure that the poor people who are being asked to pay back tax credits they received due to government errors, despite the fact that they can’t afford to do this, are terribly grateful.

And, in a classic Blair non-apology, he didn’t apologise for the error itself, but for the ‘hardship or distress’ it caused. Which could easily have been avoided if his government had simply drawn a line under its own mistake, instead of effectively penalising those on the receiving end of the error.

And then he launched into a speech about why tax credits are normally wonderously marvellous things, and that the whole system is bascially perfect except for this one small error, that’s resulting in people having to live on £56 per week. He’s not even suggesting any way of helping these poor people out.

He should be ashamed of himself, and he should take some action to sort this mess out, not try and brush over it with a vacuous apology and self-congratulation. Pathetic.

As widely predicted (even by me), Nick Robinson is on the move from ITV to the Beeb, as their new political editor. He’s not the person I would’ve chosen, but the only other real candidate is Martha Kearney, and she’s not a favourite of mine either – of the two, frankly I’d prefer Robinson.

But there’s a wider issue here, as Polly Toynbee points out in tomorrow’s Grauny: Robinson is yet another macho attack-dog of a politcal reporter, in an organisation full of them. Personally, I would prefer to see someone like Elinor Goodman as political editor. But clearly the decision has been made, and, no doubt, I’ll come to like Mr Robinson over time. Even if at the moment, I think he’s a bit useless – but that’s probably more to do with ITV that it is him. Hopefully.

Apologies for the slight technical hitch which meant that this post only appeared about 24hrs after it was supposed to – I clicked the wrong button!

From the Times:

Potato farmers held a noisy protest outside Parliament today to get the term “couch potato” removed from the Oxford English dictionary, claiming it harms the vegetable’s image.

A similar rally took place outside the offices of the dictionary’s publishers in Oxford, with demonstrators carrying signs that read “couch potato out” and “ban the term couch potato”.

The British Potato Council wants the expression stripped from the Oxford English Dictionary and replaced in everyday speech with the term “couch slouch”. It says the phrase makes the vegetable seem unhealthy and is bad for its image.

That seems foolish. What seems more foolish, however, is that Nigel Evans MP has spent in the region of £1000 of taxpayers’ money tabling an EDM on the subject. Normally I wouldn’t object to that, especially given that there have been such protests – it is important that these people’s feelings are recognised. But when the OED has already told the protesters that words are not taken out of the OED, since their usage has contributed to ‘the patchwork of the English language’.

So either Mr Evans has wasted your money by expressing support for a futile campaign, or else he wants to change the nature and function of one of Britain’s most respected institutions, the OED. Which is it?

Gordon Brown, in a very Prime Ministerial speech, today announced that the G8 finance ministers have agreed, subject to conditions, to wipe out 100% of the debt owed by eighteen countries with immediate effect using an IVA. Those countries are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. A further nine (Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Malawi, Sao Tome, and Sierra Leone). This will cost, in total, around about $55bn.

That at first glance, seem relatively laudable. But really it’s not that helpful. Adding all of the debt African countries owe to external countries and bodies, we get to $300bn. This is aid worth $55bn, and Bolivia, Guyana, and Honduras aren’t actually in Africa. So it probably leaves Africa around $250bn in debt. According to Freedomdebtrelief.com reviews, ActionAid reckon that there’s another forty countries that need immediate 100% debt relief.

And as a sidenote, how many of those people walking round wearing white bands supporting this kind of action could point on a map to any of the countries named above? Some people would say that’s irrelevant, and that they are showing caring for people rather than demonstrating their knowledge. But the campaign is a political one. How can they possibly support a particular political campaign if they don’t understand it’s mechanisms and implications, and can’t even place the countries on a map?

Back to the point… Compared to what’s gone before, this debt relief is a pretty big leap. But far more needs to be done to make a huge impact, and I hope that the G8 will throw up some bigger and brighter ideas. Whether debt relief is the best way of helping these countries is also open to question, and I have to say that I’m not convinced. We need much more open public education and debate on these issues. The campaign should be raising awareness and educating, not just asking people to send letters that they quite possibly don’t understand to Tony Blair.

Essentially, whilst the action that’s been taken is clearly laudable, a lot more must be done, and it’s not time yet to rest and feel good about ourselves. Hundreds of thousands of people die needlessly every day, and this won’t stop that. We just have to hope that one of the great minds of our generation can think of a real solution, and that the conscience of the world will lead us to implement it – even at great cost.

There’s a title I never thought I’d be writing. I refer, of course, to his little performance in the Commons today:

The UK rebate will remain and we will not negotiate it away. Period.

His choice of American idiom has caused something of a storm. As the ObserverBlog puts it,

Has someone, like, just come back from the States, or what?

I have to say that his particular choice of word doesn’t particularly bother me: It just highlights how out-of-touch he is with the British people. And that hardly constitutes news.

But with Mrs Blair yesterday and Mr Blair today, one does have to wonder if this blog is turning into something of a family affair. Tomorrow: Meet Ewan.

Not really.

Given the slightly silly way in which Mrs Blair has had to be included in the recent trip by the Prime Minister to the USA, with the two just ‘co-incidentally’ being in the US at the same time on different trips, and Mr Bush just ‘happening’ to invite her along, would it not seem logical to formalise the arrangements and have an official role for the Prime Minister’s spouse, a role on which they could be elected alongside their husband rather than just happening into a job of such power?

Even the Prime Minister’s Spokeswoman agrees with the general idea that Mrs Blair is an important stateswoman: After all, earlier today, when asked why Mrs Blair was introduced to the President by Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Washington DC, she responded that this was normal for

any prominent British citizen visiting Washington DC

I might be overanalysing this, but my dictionary defines prominent as ‘conspicuous in position or importance’. As far as I am aware, Mrs Blair has no official elected position, and certainly no formal importance.

I have no ideological problem with the Prime Minister’s spouse taking a bigger official role – I think that a First Lady style position could be very useful in some circumstances – and I think Mrs Blair is given an exceptionally bad press in this country for no good reason. But to take a bigger role means that they will no longer be able to hide behind the ‘privacy of the family’ excuse when things get tough. Mrs Blair simply cannot have it both ways: She cannot be both a stateswoman and also free from accountability. She has to take one with the other. And if she does, then good luck to her.

Anybody who follows the news will know that Newsweek recently made the slightly absurd claim that a soldier at Guantanamo Bay had flushed the Koran down the toilet. Clearly, they didn’t think through the physics of the situation, and evidently later had to retract the story. The official White House line was that Newsweek had done ‘lasting damage’ to the US image in the Muslim world. Given that the Pentagon have now released details of incidents at Guantanamo Bay where guards kicked, wrote obscenities in, and threw water and splashed urine on copies of the Koran, this frankly makes the White House look plainly and openly vindictive.

Before condemning Newsweek, the White House must surely have looked into the case to confirm it wasn’t true. And in the course of that investigation, these other incidents must surely have cropped up. And yet the White House has the audacity to condemn not the soldiers who have abused the Koran, and by association the Muslim world as a whole, but Newsweek. Even though the central message of the story – that the Koran was being mishandled – was effectively true. It’s not even that difficult to see that the ideas of covering something in urine and that of flushing it down the toilet are not that far removed from each other, and could easily become confused in translation.

The Newsweek story caused riots across the Muslim world, and thus indirectly led to the deaths of at least fifteen people in Afghanistan. Does the White House really believe that these people were protesting because of the particular details of the Newsweek story, or does it believe that the riots were caused by the US’s lack of respect for other cultures? Or does the White House no longer hold any true beliefs, other than belief in the supremacy of the US and US citizens?

Of course, this action is not a million miles removed from our own Andrew Gilligan incident, whereby he reported that the Dodgy Dossier had been ‘sexed up’. Effectively, it had. And yet, for tripping up on the details – in this case, misrepresenting the position of David Kelly – Gilligan and the Beeb were condemned. Yet the story was basically true.

Is it right that administrations should cover their embarrassments by ridiculing the relatively minor errors of others? The argument can be made that the media are forever condemning politicians for minor slips and lexical errors. But, in my mind at least, this does not mean that they can do the same to the media. Politicians, whether they like it or not, are quite rightly held to a higher standard. They have to prove to us that they are worthy of leading the country, and that they have the moral standing necessary to lead a country morally. To refuse to admit to a wider problem because of small errors in accusations – indeed, to ridicule the person who made those accusations – is neither moral nor open.

And to think, politicians wonder why the public don’t trust them.

Just days after the French rejected the EU constitution, the Dutch have done the same. Not that it was much of a surprise. Mr Juncker, President of the EU, is obviously not happy. The Beeb says

Mr Juncker seemed so distressed that he could hardly take in the fact of the second “No” vote. The mood in Brussels is deep gloom.

I’ve never really imagined Brussels as a happy place anyway. But maybe that’s just me.

Last time I wrote about this, when the French rejected the Constitution, I couldn’t come up with a viable solution to get around this impasse. Now I’ve come up with one. And it’s remarkably simple: Separate out the Constitution from the Treaty. Make the Constitution a short statement of self-evident rights and truths – which one would expect to be in a Constitution – and then have a separate treaty with all the legal eagle stuff in it. Then you can treat the Treaty as a Treaty, reforming it and remolding it over time until you eventually find the right mix, and the Constitution should sail through and easily be ratified by all twenty-five countries.

To the papers… The Guardian still appears to be mourning the loss, though it’s overcome its initial anger: “Crushing defeat leaves EU vision in tatters”; it also appears to think we’re “facing the prospect of a protracted period of recrimination, conflict and crisis”; The FT is somewhat less emotional: “Europe in turmoil as the Dutch vote No”.

Judging by the state of The Guardian, you’d expect The Indy to be in floods – and yet. whilst it’s clearly not a happy chappy (“The Netherlands has delivered a crushing “no” vote on the European constitution and plunged the EU into a crisis of confidence unprecedented in almost five decades of European integration”), it does at least seem to be looking forward, rather than excessively wailing over spilt milk.

I’m really quite surprised at The Guardian’s reaction to all of this, and for the first time in a long while feel slightly alienated by it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this degree of apparent grief, bordering on depression, from a national newspaper – and particularly not the Guardian. It’s so far gone that it’s bordering on parody – I almost expect to see the Constitution get a full page obit.

So where will things go from here? It’s hard to say, because this is European politics, in which logic seems to play no part. After a brief period of depression, the politicians will just have to regroup and see where they can take us. They’ll probably try redrafting a bit, and trying to get it past the countries again. And failing. And then they’ll have to do something pro-active, like reconsider the need for a Constitution and what should be in it. And then we might just get somewhere.

With fifty-five percent of the French voters giving the EU consitution the thumbs down, many of today’s papers are using words like ‘crisis’, ‘confusion’ and ‘fear’ today. There’s even talk of ‘huge’ margins, which seems a bit over the top. Even The Indy, which declared on Saturday ‘The significance of this poll lies in the campaign, not the result’, gets its knickers in a bit of a twist. Though it does seem to accept the result of this referendum, unlike Tony Blair’s victory in the General Election. Nobody seems to even mention the 70 percent turnout, and ask what it is we could learn from this. If we Brits have a referendum, I’d be surprised if fifty percent of voters bother to vote.

The Guardian has Europe stunned by the result, and its wesbite has Tony Blair calling for a time of reflection. This combination makes it sound rather like somebody’s died. They even seem to be progressing through the various stages of grief: We’ve had denial all this week, while they’ve been clinging on to the hope that a ‘Yes’ vote might just happen, and today we appear to have moved on to anger:

France’s no is highly damaging to the credibility and popularity of the EU, already in very poor shape as shown by the record low turnout in the European elections last summer.

You evil French people… You’ve let the EU down, you’ve let Chirac down, but most of all you’ve let yourselves down.

The Telegraph is obviously pleased that the vote has gone their way, and they’ve done the predictable thing of printing a picture of a smiling Chirac casting his ballot.

The Mail’s position can be summed up by saying that it’s the fifth headline on their website, just below “Rod’s daughter steps out with stepmum’s ex” and two Big Brother headlines. Despite the fact that today’s print edition says Big Brother has ‘reached new levels of debauchery’.

So what does all this mean for the future of the Constitution? Well, pretty much what we’ve all known for weeks. It’s not going to get very far without some redrafting. Which is incredibly predictable: You won’t get hundreds of millions of people of different countries and cultures to agree to a 400-page document easily. And, to be perfectly honest, I’d be surprised to see it happen at all.

It’s clear to anybody that the EU isn’t working, and is in need of reform. But the reason it isn’t working is because it’s tried to become something it never intended to be in the first place – so the foundations are not appropriate. And to wait until there are twenty-five members and then try and negotiate a new set of firmer foundations seems rather silly. Yet this is the situation in which we find ourselves, and there’s not an awful lot that can be done to change the past. So, where do we go from here? I don’t know. It would be impossible for the EU to break up completely, because some of the bonds are too strong. Piecemeal reform of existing agreements wouldn’t solve the overall problem. So it looks like we’re stuck with what we’ve got for now, with all of its quirks and inconsistencies. The existing treaties may not be a practical way to manage the newly enlarged EU, but, at the end of the day, when has European politics ever been straightforward and practical?

When trying to decide what exactly the document Lord Goldsmith produced and put before the House of Commons before the vote on the War in Iraq actually was, it would seem sensible to consult it’s author directly. Not surprisingly, when the Daily Telegraph interviewed him earlier this week, they did, and received the following response:

I never said it was a summary.

Except, if we flip back to November 2003 in Hansard, then he was, erm, saying it was a summary:

This statement was a summary of my view of the legal position

So he did say it was a summary, whether he likes it or not.

To provide you with a summary of my own: When the full document was secret, his document was a summary; Once the full text was released and everyone could compare, it suddenly wasn’t a summary. Funny, that.

We know that the Blair government likes massaging the facts a little, but here he’s on record as directly contradicting himself. He’s absolutely doubtlessly proven as lying. Yet, far from resigning, he hasn’t even been sent out into the frenzied world of the media to apologise, or even clarify his comments. And all of this from a government which promised to be ‘whiter than white’.

If we were observing a developing nation with a government that was lying about the process of deciding about launching an internationally condemned war, not only would we have a few nasty things to say about said government, but there would be those in our government who would want military action taken against it. And yet when it’s people in their own government doing it, they don’t seem to mind quite as much. Talk about double-standards.