Latest news with #Godly
Daily Mail
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
QUENTIN LETTS: The Colombian's interpreter at Ed Miliband's global energy shindig had a growly voice worthy of any Spaghetti Western bandido
Well that was a bit of a diplomatic floater. Ed Miliband's global energy shindig started yesterday at London 's Lancaster House. The gilt-chandeliered room filled with climate-change illuminati and renewable-energy snoots from every corner of the civilised world. Self-congratulation suffused the air and it was all going swimmingly – they had just taken a delicious thrashing from a Barbadian lady who claimed her island was about to sink under the waves owing to global warming – when a chap from the Trump administration was handed the microphone. He proceeded to tell them that the US of A, under its bracing new management, couldn't give a fig about Net Zero. Washington intended to go on burnin' fossil fuels and anyone who argued to the contrary must have a national death wish. He offered this view as an act of Godly love. Oil and gas were a Christian leg-up to the world's poor and needy. Cue silence. Not a single clap. Nor even a boo. There was just the frigid, absolute noiselessness Lady Bracknell might observe if the under-butler, serving luncheon, dropped a warm pork rissole down her cleavage. Energy secretary Miliband had made the first speech on a morning of glutinous virtue. Hailing the 'distinguished delegates', Red Ed honked and spluttered his way through a spiel about 'the shifting global landscape' and how 'countries need to collaborate' to overcome energy-security problems. 'Shared challenges invite shared solutions,' schnorfed our hero, spraying the front row with spittle as he bared his cow-catcher teeth. 'We are the optimists!' he added. How cruelly this sanguine mood would soon be shattered. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and IEA Executive Director, Fatih Birol, on day one of the Future of Energy Security at Lancaster House in London, Britain, 24 April 2025 Mr Miliband kept referring to his great friend 'Fatty'. This turned out to be Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, a global quango. Mr Birol, in rather heavily accented English, gave a chewy lecture about his 'three golden rules', the first of which was diversification. 'Not to put all da eggs in vun basget,' said Fatty. The bien-pensants nodded knowingly, veritable connoisseurs of such fare. Rule two was 'predictability' (this has possibly never been a problem with Fatty, for he was no sparkler); rule three was 'de kooperation', which meant countries not competing too much with one another. Conference's moderator Francine Lacqua, from Bloomberg telly, launched the first plenary session with various excellencies: Spain's minister for ecological transition, Iraq's oil minister, a chatty Egyptian, an impenetrable Malaysian, a lad from Colombia. Iraq and Egypt were keen on crude oil but said this subtly enough not to cause offence. The Colombian's English-language interpreter had a growly voice worthy of any Spaghetti Western bandido. I was so gripped by it that I failed to follow the content of his speech. After windy pieties from the floor we moved to the second plenary session: a smooth Frenchman, the Barbadian dame and Tommy Joyce, acting assistant secretary at Donald Trump's energy department. He was in a pinstripe suit of a type Marks & Sparks stopped selling a few years ago. Add a Mormon haircut, college-kid accent and a clipboard speech he served on the assembly's snoots like a bailiff's writ. Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer, center, meets Britain's Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, left, and Fatih Birol, right, Executive Director at the International Energy Agency (IEA) for day one of the International Summit on the Future of Energy Security at Lancaster House in London, England, Thursday April 24, 2025 The White House intended to 'bring back common sense' on 'so-called renewables'. Joe Biden was attacked, as was China, which had too much of a grip on the wind turbines industry. Net Zero and corporate wokery caused human suffering. The US would have no truck with such lunacies. Every other speaker was clapped. Mr Joyce put down his clipboard to the racket you hear at rush hour on planet Jupiter. The Bloomberg TV woman finally broke the silence by saying, somewhat stickily: 'The messaging is pretty clear.' Later Mr Joyce returned to the fray to say that 'we remember God's golden rule that we should love our neighbour as ourself and let others lift themselves out of poverty' by using oil. Sir Keir Starmer made a fraudulent speech. The EU's Ursula von der Leyen queened over the conference as if she owned the place. Fatty repeated his golden rules. But after Trumpster Tommy it was all pointless.
New European
05-02-2025
- Business
- New European
Josh Barrie on food: All praise the heavenly hams of Saint-Flour
In rural south-central France, an agricultural cooperative in the town of Saint-Flour is helping fund its cathedral by curing hams beneath the ceiling. Since 2022, premium hams have been suspended for a year apiece within one of the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre's two 135-metre-high towers, something that its rector, Philippe Boyer, described as 'getting back to the fundamentals of the great abbeys that have always worked with the agricultural world'. It followed Boyer's beehives, which he installed on the roof soon after assuming his role in 2011. The charcuterie project began after money to restore the organ fell through. 'I said to myself: 'why not make a product in the spirit of the great medieval abbeys, who made their own food, which they sold to survive, to live?'' Boyer told the local press at the time. 'In this case, it's not for us to live, but to give new life to heritage.' At their installation, the initial 50 hams were even blessed by Bishop Didier Noblot, top man in the diocese. The bishop asked for the hams to be granted the protection of St Antoine, patron saint of charcutiers. Last year, the profits made from sales – about €150 per ham, retailed in the church cathedral shop – proved to be enough to fund repairs. It was something of a victory in a town of less than 7,000 people. Churchgoing numbers in Saint-Flour, a hilltop town in the rural Auvergne region somewhere between Lyon and Bordeaux, have been declining in recent decades, much as they have across Europe. But the cathedral is an impressive Gothic building built in the early 1400s and is championed by all. The Association of Friends of the Cathedral said the hams are 'used in the renovation of the works and buildings of the parish of Saint-Flour en Planèze'. And the cathedral happens to be the perfect place to cure fine pork. It is one of the highest places of worship in Europe at almost 3,000ft above sea level. At a confluence of dry winds which bluster through the town's surrounding plateaus, meat ages supremely, much as herring does by the coast in northern Scotland. The dark and hallowed space is also a safeguarding against damaging heat and light. Today, it is a butcher named Patrice Boulard who ascends the bell tower's 145 steps to hang hams, each in a swaddle. They age quietly among the Godly tolling. As the congregation gives thanks, their song carries high into the clouds, up to the lord, but not before it strokes the fatty skin of pork. If you would like a Hemingway joke here, I filed this article with 'For ham the bell tolls' as its title, in faint hope. Boulard works for the farming cooperative Altitude, which manages the meat. Thirty farms in Auvergne provide hams, all of excellent quality and, in terms of supply, process and production, produced in a similar way to Comte in the Jura region. What's more, the ham, Jambon d'Auvergne, has long been granted the same protected status as Champagne or Roquefort. Naturally, as with any radical new idea involving the church, the hanging hams of Saint-Flour have proven to be controversial. Recently, a representative of the Architects of the Buildings of France – I am getting some National Trust vibes, are you? – called for their removal on safety grounds. In the French newspaper Le Monde , a spokesperson from the organisation said the curing pork threatens the cathedral's ancient structure, as 'the grease released from the ham would deteriorate the edifice and pose safety problems in the event of fire'. The paper reported that French culture minister Rachida Dati must soon decide whether hams will still be allowed to hang and called the debacle a 'bizarre story that questions the relationship between the church, the rural world and the government.' Which it is. A fight is on, one in which locals are railing against Paris, against central governance as they so often do in France's rural enclaves. I pray to God their hams are allowed to remain. You should not have to be in Nice to have your trotters up.
