Ross Clark

Ross Clark wonders whether Iraqis would prefer clean water and electricity or Britain’s taxpayer-funded ‘gender advisers’ Following the successful liberation of their country from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein, ordinary Iraqis are once more beginning to experience some of those things which we in the West take for granted: electricity, telephones, fresh running water and the likes of Deirdre Spart from the Haringey Women’s Collective. If there is still a lot of work to be done in establishing security in the country, one thing which isn’t being ignored is the agenda of Western feminists.

Every year, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation, 150,000 people succumb to the effects of global warming, which, it asserts, is responsible for 2.4 per cent of cases of diarrhoea and 6 per cent of cases of malaria. And if we in the first world think we can feel smug, it adds, 25,842 Europeans died in last summer’s heatwave, while Britain sees a 12 per cent increase in salmonella cases for every one degree rise in temperature. But what about all the elderly and infirm people who would have died had this winter been as cold as those frequently experienced in Europe during the 19th century? Strangely, these non-deaths do not appear to feature in the World Health Organisation’s one-sided ledger on the effects of global warming.

Given President Bush’s refusal so far to lift his illegal tariffs on steel imports, European retaliation is almost inevitable. But a potentially even graver battle is brewing between the US and its fourth largest trading partner, China. Last year America ran a $103 billion-dollar deficit with China, something US unions blame on ‘unfair’ trade practices. Last month US commerce secretary Don Evans warned the Chinese that they faced retaliation, saying, ‘China’s current trade practices are exploiting our open markets and are creating an unfair advantage that is undercutting American workers.

The Food Standards Agency has decided that the nation is too fat, and has suggested several policies aimed at persuading us to eat more healthily. The measures include stopping the likes of McDonald’s and Walkers crisps from sponsoring sports events and banning junk-food ads during children’s television programmes. One does not have to walk far down a high street to agree with the FSA’s assessment that a lot of children eat too much. But its suggested measures smack less of a fight against obesity than one against global capitalism.

Ross Clark says we should ignore the eco-brigade’s hysteria over genetically modified food After years of trampling crops, the anti-GM food lobby believes that it has finally drawn sap.

Ninety-eight per cent of the British population, according to the results of the government’s ‘national debate’, say that they do not wish to eat genetically modified food. Eighty-four per cent say that GM food is ‘an unacceptable interference with nature’, and 93 per cent say that not enough is known about the long-term health effects of GM foods. So much for the views of the average Briton, chomping his way through a burger of mechanically recovered meat and slurping some lurid concoction from a can plastered top to bottom with E numbers.

Sven Goran Eriksson and David Beckham have launched a charity to bring about world peace through football, with Mr Beckham's immortal words: 'I think my advice to any children out there looking for world peace is, you've got to enjoy life, be happy, and if football or sport is going to make a difference, then, you know, go for it, because it's important to people.' If football really is a promoter of peace, Mr Beckham might like to try to explain why Britons, many of whom simply wish to potter harmlessly around cultural sites, have been advised, for their own safety, to stay away from Turkey on 11 October, the day England plays Turkey in a European Championship qualifier. Football does play a role in international relations, but it is not the one imagined by Messrs Eriksson and Beckham.

In spite of our late and grotty trains, it comes as a relief to return to work in Britain. A fortnight in France reveals a country that has been greatly affected by the obligatory 35-hour week since I last took the family on holiday there in 2001. It is peculiar to be driving through the middle of a holiday district, Brittany, in the middle of August to find restaurant after restaurant shut for business. When we do eventually find somewhere to eat – a pizzeria, a supposed ‘fast-food’ outlet – the food takes an age to come. After several days of this, we give up and eat at our rented apartment instead. Fortunately, the flat faced away from the street, which in the absence of any effective cleaning smelled like a toilet.

The council estates of King's Lynn, Harriet Sergeant recently revealed, are groaning with Chinese migrant workers, 50 to a house. The Daily Mail, naturally enough, is outraged by this threat to society and house prices, playing on rumours that workers are controlled by Triad gangs. Equally upset is the Guardian, which complains that many workers are illegal, they are being paid less than the national minimum wage and their gang masters won't even let them join the Transport and General Workers' Union. Why is it that migrant workers have to be received so negatively? The Daily Mail has made an art of attacking 'welfare scroungers' over the years; now it seems the paper is no fonder of people who work hard for little reward – at least not if they are foreign.

Anyone who believes that the anti-competitive ethos in state schools originates with a handful of ideologues in our local authorities should take time to study the United Nations output on education. The UN Commission on Human Rights's 'special rapporteur on education' recently attacked British schools for being too competitive. Katarina Tomasevski, a Swede, complained that the Department for Education's regime of tests for seven-, 11-, 14- and 16-year-olds breaches Article 29 of the Human Rights convention. Forcing children to sit down and take exams, she says, perverts the aims of education, which should be 'directed to the development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential'.

What would it take for the Guardian to argue that mineworkers are a baleful influence on otherwise peaceful rural peoples, and that trees and flowers are more important than well-paid jobs down the pit? The answer is when the mining jobs in question are in Madagascar. The paper has joined the environmental groups campaigning against a plan by Rio Tinto Zinc to mine for ilmenite, a mineral used to produce titanium oxide, used extensively in the paint and plastics industry. 'In an age where ethical investment has become common, the proposal seems to be a throwback to Africa's plunder by grasping Europeans and greedy multinationals,' thundered the Guardian. 'Life will change utterly in the town most affected, the coastal community of Fort Dauphin.

The opportunity to applaud French farmers comes along once a century at most, so an overpriced, oversubsidised champagne must be in order. As I write, France is on the point of scuppering talks on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), thanks to lobbying from its dairy and cereal farmers. This is entirely predictable and might not be seen as much of a cause for celebration – until one examines the proposed reforms. It isn't easy to conceive of a more absurd system than CAP, which consumes half the EU's annual budget subsidising the production of food which European consumers do not want and which ends up being sold cheaply to the Third World, thus undermining their own agriculture. But the European agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler has managed it nonetheless.

Sir Edmund Hillary has demanded that the Nepalese government closes Mount Everest for a few years to 'give it a rest' and thereafter opens it only to serious climbers. Tourists who pay £40,000 to be led up Everest by experienced guides are not real mountaineers, he says, and they have no right to be there. It is entirely logical that Sir Edmund should be happier at the idea of Everest being put out of bounds. Was his ascent of Everest really such a big deal, he perhaps fears people will ask, when pot-bellied American tourists and beer-swilling students are doing it every day? But why Nepal should be expected to decline to make use of its principal asset and deprive sherpas of valuable income is another matter.