Richard North

Well done!
Congratulations are in order for Richard North and Helen Szamuely who started the EUReferendum blog 10 years ago, eventually Szamuely left to run her own blog,

All those years ago if you were dissatisfied with the output of the mainstream media you simply stopped buying newspapers and turned the TV off. It was novel to actually do something about it. What EUReferendum did was analyse the people who were analysing the news. Then if they found it wanting provide their own version. Naturally the MSM did not like this and responded. This gave us MSM based blogs which simply put out the same material and made the same mistakes but using a different format.

In turn the general public responded to this by buying even fewer newspapers. Although TV viewing figures hold up or improve you don't go to the BBC programme, Question Time, for serious politics do you? In fact political programmes on broadcast media have become worse in the last 10 years. Question Time is more than ever like a game show and the absurd adversarial approach of interviewers like Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys achieves very little.

EURefendum inspired many other blogs and UK polities is better for it, let's hope we get another 10 years from it.

Camouflage, science well hidden!
Here at this blog Richard North is greatly admired. It's been a long term plan to try to add a little more to the great global warming debate, or lack thereof. But there have been problems. North, with Christopher Booker of the Telegraph, are so good at this subject that there's not much left over. They have taken on all comers without fear: Dr Pachuri, Al Gore, even George Monbiot. All have been damaged in the process, taken down a peg-or-two.

Afghan war
The 'man in the pub', that universal source of wisdom, had doubts from the start about the UK's participation in the war in Afghanistan, feeling it was a huge risk and of doubtful value. The war in Iraq also jarred the nerves of not just pub man but the entire nation. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was, so we were told, the only way to deal with the Weapons of Mass Destruction; so WMDs and Hussein, two easy to discern and define targets. It was only later did we find that in reality it was not like that. The fighting in Afghanistan was different, the Taliban were hard for the troops on the ground to define, pub man stood no chance.

However, pub man is patient and as the typical Taliban looked just like a nutty Muslim Cleric, gave the fighting a fighting chance. But for the UK troops the risk to benefit ratio soon became clear and the nation, in response to the rising death toll, withdrew its support for the concept whilst maintaining respect for the troops on the ground. Hence today pub man is not the least bit surprised by the articles in the Times laying out the awful truth, and blame, behind the Afghan Campaign.

But enough of pub man we need an expert here.

Dennis fire engine 1955

We write in praise of Richard North, noted for his blogging and writing,who has fixed his sights on the fallout from the Icelandic ash cloud. The best explanation available of this starts HERE (1). The articles are in date order, (2) and (3) finally (4).

This is far from the first major subject to be analysed by him: the swine flu fiasco, the performance of the UK military in the Iraq war and the great global warming scam are typical big subjects that he has covered. When the Icelandic volcano erupted and the ash cloud drifted towards the UK there was, at first, an air of merriment about it all. Following the collapse of the Icelandic banks, the UK and Iceland went a bit soft on each other. Naturally the UK MSM took it out of the errant Icelandic bankers, big time, but the UK was not without blame either. Eventually it was seen that the UK Financial Services Authority did not act wisely, if at all. So big country versus small, they've been slogging it out in the press ever since.

General Sir Richard Dannatt
Dr Richard North, co-founder of the website EU Referendum, see HERE has anti-EU politics as his 'day job' He also has carved a niche for himself as an analyst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and runs another blog, Defence of the Realm to deal specifically with this subject.

Tony Blair's wars were always a bit of a hotchpotch and lay somewhere between pure vanity and the evangelical with just a nod to strategy. North concentrates on Iraq and shows that the mistakes in Iraq were not recognised early enough, lessons were not learnt and so there is a risk of them being carried over into Afghanistan.

North's book, The Ministry of Defeat - The British War in Iraq, 2003 – 2009 has just been released and North was invited to the Frontline Club to talk about the subject and take questions. The occasion was supposed to be a proper debate with a full range of speakers, including General Sir Mike Jackson. But Jackson pulled out at the last moment for reasons not made fully clear.