The Europeans are looking to Iraq for gas (you'll need to help stabilise it first, gentlemen) and even Iran, and are banking on a regime change in the Islamist state to secure a steady supply.

Doubtless Moscow has much to offer both Baghdad and Tehran in exchange for a say in their resources.

It's clear we're entering a new era of energy diplomacy. The Guardian report is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/nabucco-pipeline-problems 

And so, in these troubled times, with many savings accounts below zilch and pension schemes committing suicide, it is perhaps appropriate to search for a source of aged wisdom (ie. someone older than David Bowie).

This correspondent found retired Fed chairman Alan Greenspan (with the aid of one of his more-or-less experienced ‘staffers’). Directions were received: Go  to his latest Podcast.

Greenspan’s advice  was: “Don’t ask for help. We’re taught from an early age to do it all yourself and that if you ask for help, something’s wrong. Nothing is wrong today”. I could not but help but ask myself if this former economic advisor to four US presidents  (1987 – 2006) was being prescribed the wrong medication. There was more: “Get rich, it’s  a team sport”.  And then: “Take the nest egg and gamble it. But only after leveraging that nest egg with complicated dirivatives that will come back to bore the crap out of you”.

I took Allan’s advice and I have now placed my ostrich egg in a ‘Sportif’ hedge fund based close to the coast of Devil’s Island, 6 nautical miles offshore from French Guiana.

My new Gallic accountant-financial advisor-new-best-friend, Jean-Marie Delaporte – who has recently been granted parole – has assured me that at the moment when my “Golden Years” arrive, I will be the proud owner of  3 Trillion dirivatives. (Although he wasn’t quite sure about the spelling).

He plans to change the three-storey building's layout to reflect the needs of a modern prince and his family. Four new elevators are planned (the building already has three); the courtyard is to be dug up in order to build a fourth level underground, to be used as a car park. The room layout will change to reflect the Prince's taste for en-suite bathrooms (in each of the building's twelve bedrooms). Air conditioning (no small endeavour in a building of this size) is to be installed.

19th century additions such as skylights will be removed, while the chimney pots are to be remade in 17th century style. 

The renovation is priced at 13 million euros.

The plans have angered Parisians, who won't even get to see the vandalism committed inside the building: One of the proposals is to knock a hole in the Hotel Lambert's famous curving exterior wall, so the Sheikh can drive his fleet of vehicles through it without having to negotiate the narrow street which the property's main door currently faces.

Will the Sheikh give up without a fight? Mayor Delanöe has asked culture minister Christine Albanel to encourage the new owner to come up with a more "friendly" plan for his new property and has vetoed the creation of the underground car park and its "hole in the wall" exit.

Centre-right minister Albanel responded that the Sheikh's hiring of architect-in-chief of France's "historic monuments" Alain-Charles Perrot suggests proof of "seriousness and skill" in the new design. She says that the Mayor's protests are politically motivated (he is a Socialist) and notes that the swimming pool installed by previous owners - not in itself a likely feature of 17th century buildings - will also be renovated).

The minister's office has suggested that she, not the Paris Mayor's office, will have the final say on the changes. Sceptical observers note that Nicolas Sarkozy's government has assiduously courted the Qatar royal family since Sarko was voted President in 2007.

Will the building once described as the "most beautiful house in the most beautiful city in the world" survive this local quarrel? 

Europe relies on Russia for around a quarter of its natural gas needs, though those nations closer to the Russian border - or in its sphere of influence - are even more dependent on Moscow. The little Baltic nations are 100 percent dependent, while the likes of Germany and Greece receive sixty percent of their supplies from Russia.

Russia's recent assertiveness under Vladimir Putin has raised fears among Europeans that gas will be used as a political tool by Moscow, now determined to make its presence felt among its former satellites. Ukraine, whose relationship with Russia is strained at best, argues that it has paid its bills and scorns Russia's demand for higher bills; for its part, Moscow says that the prices it charges the former Soviet state are well below market rates. Ukraine says that rather than "stealing" Russian gas meant for Europe (as Moscow has accused it of doing) the pipelines are facing technical difficulties.

Ukraine is the main route for Russian gas into western Europe.

Despite assurances that western governments trusted Russia to keep the lines open despite political differences, Germany has admitted that it has reserves of gas for such an eventuality. Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who works for Russian state gas entity Gazprom, was known as a close associate of Putin's. Yet even he had a Plan B! 

The European Commission, significantly, does not target Russia alone for the gas cuts. It says that both Russian and the Ukrainian authorities are failing in the guarantees they gave the EU when supplies were agreed. The EU sees the issue as an economic rather than political dispute and called on the two governments to patch up their differences. However, a EU presidency official on the Slovakian border with Ukraine told reporters that the situation was "becoming worse by the minute."

‘The Economist’ named the main man “Supersarko”. The editors noted that the President had persuaded his European counterparts in “record time” at summits in Brussels. This, in itself, is an achievement, considering that the so-called capital of Europe is better known for record-time debates and record-time lunches.

This April Sarko plans to return France to NATO’s integrated military command – after an absence of too long. An example of being an Atlanticist; someone who believes in close co-operation between North America and Europe.

 In ‘Time’, Tony expressed his opinion that “There are times when Nicolas Sarkozy resembles a force of nature rather than a conventional political leader”. Also: “Nicolas is determined to do what he believes in or do nothing. (…) Of his determination there is no doubt. And that is what makes him a leader of significance and stature”.

(Of course, we must not forget  that Blair and Sarkozy  remain best pals and text-message each other on a semi-regular basis).

Many press and jalouse commentators attribute Sarkozy’s success to Star Sex Goddess First Lady Carla Bruni. There is no doubt that this dangerous-but-good liaison has had its desired effect.

 However, Nico’s real inspiration is a chum he met in a comic book, while reading with a flash-light, illicitly, under the covers. His name is Tintin, a Belgian cub-scout reporter who had a father who told him not to be lazy. Tintin’s adventures involved pluck, fair play, restrained violence, a search for the truth and protection of the weak.

Tintin is supposed to have been immune to sex. This is the only lesson young Nico forgot to learn from his mentor.

The French police are chasing a cell of left-wing saboteurs accused of bringing the TGV rail system to a standstill; they fear that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could spread to the streets of Europe. Other nations worry that Muslim hardliners plan terror attacks on western targets. The rioting in Athens, led by anarchists and far-left extremists, took a deadly turn this week when a police guard was attacked with a Kalashnikov and a hand grenade. These riots have already spread to Barcelona and many commentators are concerned that as the economic downturn continues, similar violence from hard-left and anti-capitalist groups could happen in other European cities.

Meanwhile, the British police are pursuing the spectre of "far-right extremism."

Nice to know where their priorities lie.

Link to Iain Dale's story:

http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-there-right-wing-extremist-under.html 

It was published anonymously in Paris by a dodgy far-left group calling themselves "the Invisible Committee"; it has been linked to the "Tarnac 9", a group of middle-class rebels living in a commune in rural France, who have been arrested in connection with sabotage against France's high-speed rail lines. The French government has identified it as part of the mosaic which suggests that France and the rest of western Europe will follow Greece into riots, far-left terrorism and anarchy as the economic crisis deepens. It must be hot stuff: Either the French state is allowing itself to be carried away with its own paranoia, or there must be more to it than the usual "smash the state" gibberish which emanates regularly from France's infantile extreme-left.

Read it at 

http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/

You can also watch the video here. 

A look at the home page shows some films registering around 22,000 views, while a lower level of around 800 is also common. As for the subscribers, well, just as every Eurosceptic blog has a large following of Euro-enthusiasts who love to have their blood boiled every morning (or just a good scrap on the comments pages), it's fair to say that a proportion of those who visit EU Tube regularly do so to moan about the EU. Others simply mock the Commission's cack-handed attempts to seduce EUrope's youngsters with "yoof" slang and crappy rap videos praising the federalist vision.

These poor figures are hardly likely to spell the end for EU Tube or the EU's efforts to exert influence on the new media universe. Indeed, we ought to pray it begins to enjoy more success in this field, as this might give Eurocrats a better idea of where the future for European business lies. With European political leaders like Nicolas Sarkozy planning to tax new media to pay for old and members of the European Commission plotting to treat online video in the same way as traditional broadcasters, a few years experience in the new media world might persuade them away from such growth-averse policies.

*This figure can't include the near 8 million who have watched the EU's "sex video" compiled from sex scenes in films subsidised with European cash. 

Contrast our situation with that in France. The French authorities have no trouble whatsoever in kicking out hate preachers, even if they may face the tender attentions of the security forces in their own country when they return. Faced with a cleric who ranted against the freedom western states granted women, yet who enlisted western lawyers to resist his removal to a nation where his views may have been more likely to be realised, former President Jacques Chirac ordered that the law be changed to make it easier to deport others like him in future.

Clearly, France is determined to resist Britain's fate.

But when we are make an international statement about who we exclude from our society, we ought to send an equally powerful message about the people we value. And, again, France has done just that. Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi writer who has lived with death threats from Islamic extremists for more than a decade, has been given shelter in the form of an artist's studio paid for by the city of Paris.

Nasreem has spent a decade more or less on the run. Since fleeing her native country, she has lived in India, the US and Europe: She applied to be settled in France a few weeks ago, a year after being awarded honorary citizenship there. She moves in next month, the Guardian reports.

The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë has described her as a "freedom fighter," adding that she is "at home here... where men are born and live free and equal."

Good for the French. 

(* the original Spectator article has more on the "golden crescent" of London, which Liddle says "begins way out west in leafy Ealing, swings north and east to Notting Hill and Holland Park, traverses the gentle inclines of Hampstead, Highgate and Primrose Hill, touches the funky little hem of Crouch End and then ends — where perhaps all life should end — in Islington, N1"

Here, he continues, lives Britain's media and political elite, in a wholly desirable but utterly exceptional world of peaceable multicultural consensus. Perhaps it would be great if the rest of Britain shared the same comforts and thus (perhaps) values of our friends in the north (London). Not if they have their way, though. Liddle continues:

"If you work for a single-issue pressure group agitating for better rights for Bengalis, equal employment opportunities for women, more ramps for the disabled, civil partnerships for homosexuals, rights for lunatics not to be called lunatics, you do not stop agitating when those perhaps laudable battles have been won. If you did that, you’d be out of a job, for a start. You’d have to buy the Guardian and work through those capacious jobs pages once again. So instead you battle ever onward, regardless of the fact that the balance has long since been tipped overwhelmingly in your favour and that your organisation should really do nothing more energetic than disband; instead you agitate for more and more and trouser the government grants. Have you ever heard of a pressure group saying, ‘Well, um, we’ve got everything we wanted. You know, I think we’ll call it a day.’ They don’t do that sort of thing."

Liddle reckons this isn't a Marxist plot, but an elite determined to continue feathering its own nest. EURSOC would argue otherwise, but wouldn't deny that financial self interest plays a role.

We'll let him off with it because he's so bloody funny. He's working on a series on animals and how we see them. Here he is on cats and dogs:

"Cats took over from dogs as Britain's most popular pet in 1997, just as [Tony] Blair was elected. Cats are metropolitan, insular, sexually deviant. Dogs are family, conservative, heterosexual. I've got neither, but I don't like cats and have always been pro dogs.")

The Sixties revolution, which destroyed the authority of parents and teachers alike, will soon reach its long-cherished goal.

Everything stuffy, traditional, repressive, old-fashioned and boring has been swept away in the world of the young. They are all free now.

The trouble is that they do not know how to be free, because they have also been taught that morals are ‘judgmental’, religion is ‘outdated’ and that adults are just obsolete ex-teenagers groping their way to the grave, a nuisance to be ignored or violently shoved aside.

They have discovered that the law is not just feeble (though it is) but that it frequently punishes those who try to uphold what used to be the rules of civilisation. 

And that, while we now have armed policemen licensed to kill virtually at will, our authorities recoil in horror at the very idea of an adult smacking a child. 

Full story here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1102112/PETER-HITCHENS-Peek-inside-schools-shudder--future.html

Or the site of the Brixton riots in 1981? Or the scenes of melees between police and strikers during the 1984-1985 Miners' Strike? Or, closer to the present, the treehouse homes of today's eco-protestors, railing against plans to develop rural areas or build roads?

According to the Guardian, archaeologists have also travelled to Malta to investigate links between the red light district of Valetta and British servicemen who may have availed themselves of its services.

A fit subject for research? Forget about shards of pottery and arrowheads - so far, the excavation of Greenham Common's "Emerald Camp" has uncovered some empty crisp packets; in the H-Blocks, old paper messages have been reportedly discovered.

It adds to the sense of unreality of the moment; the very recent past is now the subject of archaeological research, just as if we were looking into our distant history: Has the "break" under New Labour been so traumatic? Furthermore, the subjects of the digs are sinisterly contentious: From the Irish hunger strikers to the striking miners, from the Greenham Common women to the Brixton riots, each holds special significance in the pantheon of far left and anti-British radicals. Contentious moments that any future historian might want to understand? Or sacred sites for radicals determined to write the history books of tomorrow?