What if….the United States left NATO?

(Posted Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022)

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s a common trope of the political thriller was a devious plot by the KGB to break up the western alliance, normally through the dismantling of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In Alfred Coppel’s “The Hastings Conspiracy”, for example, a plot involved the KGB revealing to the leftwing British government that there existed a secret US plan to invade the UK (landing at Hastings, in case you’re interested), Colin Forbes’ “The Stone Leopard” involved a group of French, British and German agents racing to stop Moscow putting a Soviet agent into the Elysee Palace and pulling French forces out of Germany ahead of a Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap. Chris Mullin’s “A Very British Coup” hinged on a plot by the CIA to stop Jeremy Corbyn Harry Perkins pulling Britain out of NATO. Both “The Fourth Protocol” and, eh, “Octopussy” had key plot points hinging on something very similar.

There were some books that speculated at a US withdrawal back into isolation, but relatively few: it was taken as read that the US was the anchor of western defence both out of value belief and in its own naked self-interest.

Then Donald Trump was elected President, and the party of Ronald Reagan and Eisenhower became the party of Lindbergh. Under Trump it was mostly mouth, a man who was too chaotic to pursue a policy of withdrawal even if he really believed it, which probably depended as much as what day it was as any intellectual conviction. But Trump aside, isolationism, fueled by Fox News charlatans who see any sort of engagement with liberal elements abroad as grounds to whip up hysteria have seriously undermined American commitment to NATO, and the idea of the US withdrawal, whilst still unlikely, is no longer ludicrous. What if it happened…

The near future. The new administration had moved much faster than anyone had expected, given the relative closeness of the election result. This was primarily at the hands of a bevy of new National Security Council appointees who would never had seen the inside of the building under the Bush, Reagan or indeed any previous post-war administration. These were young men who had been born in the 80s and 90s and even later and were more familiar with The Turner Diaries and Ayn Rand and sarcastic put downs on cable news shows than strategic thinking. Withdrawal from NATO was more, to them, about sticking it to foreigners, effete socialist Europeans who had lived off the backs of hard working Joe Sixpack for decades. America didn’t need alliances. America was strong. And any way: China was the enemy that needed to be faced down and Europe was of little or any use in that regard.

In Europe, as ever, surprise was the first call of the day. Yes, the new president had been very clear about his intentions, but no one is capable of self-delusion as Europeans are. Even watching the president announce that, whilst Congress debated withdrawal, he was signing an executive order to pull out US forces over six months and disavow any US commitment to defend any NATO country. He signed the document live on air and held it up to the camera, his massive signature covering half the page. He liked signing pieces of paper on camera.

The news that the US was leaving NATO triggered the European response to everything: a summit in Brussels, attended by the remainder of NATO. To say it was chaotic was an understatement. The Canadians earnestly stated their commitment to NATO which was received with the grateful eyes of a mortgage defaulting parent being offered a child’s piggy-bank. The Turks glowered at everyone. The French and the Germans immediately flew to Moscow. The British looked pained and paralyzed and announced a defence pact with New Zealand. The Hungarians wrote down everything everybody said. In Russian.

The Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians had their own meeting, with the Finns and Swedes quietly sitting in. The Poles revealed a secret, to gasps.

The moment the last US plane lifted off, that very moment, Russian troops ploughed across the border and annexed another chunk of Ukraine. The Ukrainians, with limited support from the British, Poles and Baltic states, put up a noble, robust and doomed defence, surrendering after three weeks of vicious fighting. The EU made a very robust speech at the UN.

A new summit attempted to confront the reality: that for the first time in over 75 years, European nations were now solely responsible for their own defence. There was no Deus Ex America to save them from the Russians.

As with so many challenges facing Europe, the problem was not finding the right or even credible solution. A small group of nations proposed the creation of a Combined European Defence Force, putting into physical existence the reality that Europe was both big enough and wealthy enough to defend itself from almost any threat, if it had the will.

As ever, it was the will that was the problem for Europe. The new Le Pen government in France was only remaining in NATO, critics said, to wreck NATO from the inside, and was openly hostile to contributing to the defence of the Baltic states. Germany’s political system was dominated by Russian penetration and overly optimistic free traders concerned only really with German exports. The British were divided between a pro-Russian left and an anti-European right that couldn’t really believe the US had left, and openly discussed some sort of merger with the US and Canada to guffaws from even their ideological allies in the new administration in Washington.

Having said that, neither France nor Germany was dumb enough not to recognise that US withdrawal also presented a huge commercial opportunity. A European Army in whatever form it took would need to purchase fighters, drones, tanks and all the high tech infrastructure needed to operate them effectively. The problem was that those nations genuinely concerned for their safety, within striking distance of the Russian border, were out of patience. As they looked at the tent cities holding refugees from Ukraine dotted throughout their countries, they saw the threat for real, and decided that their foot-dragging neighbours, whilst free to join, would not be permitted to hold them back.

The Treaty of Warsaw, creating a European Defence Community, was signed by Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Norway, Finland and Sweden. A request by Hungary to join was humiliatingly rejected as long as FIDESZ remained in office, and a robust method to expel rogue members was put in place. Unlike previous aspirational political compacts, the treaty clearly outlined what forces from each nation would be transferred to a combined Continental European Defence Command (CEDC) under a Supreme Commander, European Forces (SCEUR). The treaty dealt with wavering nations by formally transferring command of the assigned units for a fixed two year period with a 12 month period required for a nation to regain command early. A respected Polish general was appointed on the same day, with a Finnish deputy. The treaty also committed CEDC to purchasing specific numbers of fighters, tanks and other equipment and to raising a volunteer force in addition to existing transferred national troops by specific dates. Members that failed to reach their targets would be suspended from voting and possibly expelled. Finally, CEDC agreed to raise a €100 billion bond to fund the new force, with the money earmarked to be spend primarily in the member nations unless the equipment was unavailable. This particular clause caused ructions in the United States, where the new administration discovered that, having stepped away from Europe, it had far less leverage on getting its share of European defence procurement. Anti-NATO Republicans were shocked to see the big defence firms suddenly develop an interest in Democratic congressional candidates.

The response in Berlin and Paris was different. Le Pen flew into a rage on discovering, a week later, that the wily Swedish prime minister had secured British membership of the organisation by agreeing to English being the official working language, a proposal that had few objectors. He also agreed that the next supreme commander of the CEDC would be British. In return, the British contributed both physically and financially.  The French president found herself being lambasted in the National Assembly for allowing France be outmanouvered, especially given that huge defence contracts were about to be issued and France, having refused to join, was not eligible to seek them. In the Bundestag, a different state of affairs reigned, where those in the German parliament who had always supported a European army were now demanding of the government why Germany was not joining it? Again, German arms manufacturers were asking the same questions their French counterparts were: why was Germany not in line for its share?

The French government had to settle for an association with the CEDC where France could bid for contracts in return for a financial contribution to the organisation, as the Baltic states vetoed France joining as long as Le Pen was president because “we believe her” about not defending them. It was humiliating, so much so that her two-term centrist predecessor returned from his honeymoon to announce that he had changed his mind and would seek a third term on the pledge of France committing to the CEDC fully from day one. Looking fit and tanned in a crisp white open-necked shirt as he strolled through Charles De Gaulle holding hands with his beautiful new wife, he told the gathered media that it was obscene that Le Pen had created a situation where “Les Rosbifs” were taking a greater role in Europe’s defence than the republic. “An attack on Finland, an attack on Estonia is an attack on France!” he declared.

The German government agreed to the terms quietly and it went through the Bundestag with only the extremes of left and right objecting. The German Constitution was amended to permit the transfer of command of a section of the Bundesweher and Luftwaffe to SCEUR. Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands quickly joined. The Italian parliament erupted into a blazing row nominally over the European Defence Community treaty but in reality over a string of political corruption prosecutions. The Italian president and former ECB president rang the young Polish President to reassure her that despite the political drama, if Russia invades, “Italy will not be found wanting.” Ireland called for the United Nations to do something.

In Moscow, the aging Putin, seeing the lay of the land, decided to mobilize quickly, ordering a build up on the Estonian border before the CEDC could be organised. When his generals revealed that the actual ability of European forces was now that they could inflict serious damage on Russia’s forces, probably not enough to stop them but enough to turn the war into a long-running conflict that Russia could not afford, Putin let it be known that Russia would consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons if European forces did not capitulate quickly. He had never really believed in the concept of the NATO nuclear umbrella for one simple reason: the nations that needed it most had no nuclear weapons of their own, and Paris, London and Washington were simply not going to invite retaliation on their own soil despite all the bluster.

That night, the Polish president, accompanied by the Baltic and Finnish presidents put out an address in English. She announced that, on hearing the Russian threat to detonate tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, the five countries had been working on a Polish-led nuclear weapons programme, and that they had the ability to respond with short-range weapons in response to any Russian first use.

“We cannot destroy Russia,” she declared. “But we can respond in Kaliningrad, Belarus, and even in a city President Putin holds dear, so let the president understand us very clearly. We will never use nuclear weapons first. But we will respond in kind. We will, after this broadcast, communicate to you the size and yield of these weapons, and you will realise they can be carried by a single fighter, a drone, a fishing boat, a team of special forces with huskies over a border or even on the back of a truck sitting in St. Petersburg traffic. If we, the leaders of our respective countries die in a first strike, the protocol is in place to retaliate. Do not test us on this, Mr President.”

An Occasional Guide to Irish Life: The Gigolo.

Over the breakfast bar, love?  

Over the breakfast bar, love?

 

He kind of fell into the job. He’d been with some mates in the Hampton Hotel on Grab-A-Granny night, caught the eye of an aul wan showing more skin than Katie Price, more orange than Peter Robinson, and with her 2012 5 series outside, courtesy of her ex-husband, he’s back to the townhouse off Morehampton Road for a scoop-fuelled knee trembler. He wakes up in the morning, shudders at her ReadyBrek glow on the sheets, and is then shoved out the front door by her as she settles down for “Midday” on the telly and two Neurofen, but not before she pats two €50s into his shirt pocket “for a taxi”.

He’d been out of work for a while, and suddenly, there it was. The hotels and nightclubs with a more “mature” clientele were identified, a new suit and a bottle of Paco Rabane was purchased, and he was away. Sure, some of the old dears, God bless them, had thought that their wily charms had done the trick, but a quick request “to borrow a hundred quid” had clarified the matter. He even left a card with them, just in case. 12 months later, he had a list of regulars and was pulling in about €800 a week, notes in the hand, never you mind Mr. Revenue Man.

Of course, there were overheads. He’s in the gym everyday, and is visiting six different doctors to get the magic blue pill, which even he needs after a busy schedule. He could swear after one mad day he’d seen smoke emit from his member. Some of his clients liked a bit of spice, a visit from the scruffy plumber with his tool belt and “don’t forget to bring some pipe!”

Then there’s the husbands, whether they’re arriving home from Aintree early or sitting in a wardrobe in nothing but rubber gloves watching (that’s an extra €25). He’s never had a problem, at least, not yet. One husband, who opened a broom cupboard to find him bollock naked save for a cowboy hat, looked him up and down, said “rather you than me, mate”, and fecked off for a round of golf and one freshly minted “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

Are there side effects? Funnily enough, he hasn’t suffered any STIs, as the aul wans tend to be careful. Having said that, he has to fight the feeling, when he’s with his own girlfriend, that he’s giving away free stock.

Ireland 2035: Live! From Leitrim!

Dateline June 2020. Leitrim.

Counting is continuing in the county plebiscite to legalise prostitution and gambling in the county, following a turnout of 72% in the vote yesterday. Opinion polls have shown the result will be very close, but Mayor of Leitrim Billy Murtagh (Independent) has expressed confidence that the people of the county will endorse the proposals of his administration. The Mayor told reporters “When I was directly elected Mayor of this county by the people last year, I told them that Leitrim, like every county under the new devolution and local government laws, has an opportunity to make its own economic way, and it is my belief that this county can be the Las Vegas of Ireland. We’ll even take a more relaxed approach to drink driving, although I understand the Sligo Police Department will have checkpoints on the county border, as is their right. We will of course have proper regulation, but this is going to be the entertainment capital of this whole island, and remember, what happens in Leitrim stays in Leitrim!”

Opponents of the plan include both of Mayor Murtagh’s opponents in the mayoral election. Angela Hartigan, the Fine Gael candidate, has savaged the idea saying that “it will turn Leitrim into the gutter of Ireland”. She has proposed that Leitrim, because of its important place in the heritage of Ireland, should have its economic growth subsidised by other more prosperous counties. “Leitrim is entitled! It just is!”

Although Leitrim is the first county to exercise its powers under the new legislation, other counties and their mayors are looking on with interest. Mayor Tom Morray (Sinn Fein) of Louth has said that he is considering copying the Leitrim proposals. “It would be a shame not to use our position so close to Belfast for economic advantage. The north of Ireland is absolutely crawling with perverts willing to pay good money. Of course, we’d probably have to put in a few gay knocking shops as well, you know, for the DUP lads, but sure, a euro is a euro.”

Interestingly, not all counties intend to use their new devolution powers to liberalise. Some members of Roscommon County Council are discussing designating North Roscommon as a “family values area” with a ban on the sale of pornography, restrictions on drinking, off licences and nightclubs and a tough zero-tolerance approach to law and order to attract Leitrim residents with young families.

“Not everyone wants to live surrounded by hos and bitches jiving like it’s New Jack City,” Thomas Hartigan, a local farmer and undertaker, remarked.

An Occasional Guide to EU politics: The Lonely MEP.

Twitter-phoneHe found one of those apps that tells you how much time you spend doing things, and it gave him a fright. Apparently he spends two-thirds of his day on Twitter trying to pick fights with people back home. What’s worse is that they’ve got the measure of him now, and just ignore him. He doesn’t get mentioned on the news, or in papers. He’s just gone. Like he’s dead.

He was going to show this crowd out here in Brussels, boy was he! But of course they’re well used to him and others like him coming out and shouting. Even Paisley tried it back in the day. Know what happened? Nothing. They ignored him. Anti-Christ this and Anti-Christ that and they just ignored him and went for lunch, and this guy ain’t no Big Ian.

He finds that he’s getting up later in the day, and watching a lot of boxsets in his apartment. The other MEPs from his country, the men and women from the parties he was going to make a holy show of when he got out, now just treat him like one of those fellas you buy a Club Orange and a pack of Tayto for down the pub on a Sunday afternoon. They don’t even argue with him now, just give him that “ah, bless, the poor creature” look. The women ask him is he OK? One even offered to sew a button that had fallen off his good jacket back on. He spent a whole day walking around not knowing that he was trailing a long piece of toilet paper on his shoe and nobody’d said anything. One of the Dutch MEPs thought he’d been trying to make some sort of avant-garde protest about waste.

He’s afraid to spend too long on the phone back home because he knows some bastard will FOI it, and he can’t even go home because it’ll effect his voting record, the one thing the public (or at least the media) seem to get stroppy about at election time.

What on Earth was he thinking coming out here?

GUN LOBBY SUCCESSFULLY DEFEND RIGHT TO CARRY WEAPONS ON AIRCRAFT.

News Future logoDateline: Austin, Texas, 2099.

Lobbyists for the National Rifle & American Values Association last night successfully defeated an attempt by the minority Democratic group in the Texas state legislature to end the right of passengers to bring assault rifles onto an aircraft with their hand luggage.

Unlike the states of the north-east and west coast, Texas remains with those states that support the so-called 9/11 law, inspired by gun lobbyists who suggest that if passengers had been armed the infamous terrorist attack of a near century ago would not have occurred. In Texas, the right is so vigorously defended that even Texas Airlines cabin crew wear sidearms as a point of principle.

As it happens, since the Second Amendment was devolved to state level, Texas has had the greatest number of IFIs (In-flight Firearms Incidents) of any state. A small number of planes have been brought down through explosive decompression.

In 2095 two men on a Texas Airlines flight from Houston to Nashville got into a drunken row, and in the gun battle that followed the flight crew were all killed by armour piercing bullets through the door of the flight-deck. The Attorney General of Texas attempted to sue Boeing-Airbus for not supplying an aircraft capable of landing automatically and instead crashing into a mountain.

The company pointed out that the plane did indeed have automatic landing capacity, but its flight controls were not designed to survive a burst of armour piercing machine gun fire. The Texas AG regarded that as an admission of liability, and wanted to know why the entire plane wasn’t armoured. Boeing-Airbus pointed out that it would then be a tank. The case is continuing.

The north-east states, Illinois and the west coast refuse to recognise the law, with flights from “Right to Carry Onboard” (RCO) states not permitted to fly into non-RCO states with armed passengers.

Guns continue to be very much a defining issue in the late 21st Century United States. Those essentially “blue” states have become less tolerant of the casual, if anything hysterical attitude to guns in the south and mid-west. With the Second Amendment now devolved, the borders of the states that take gun control seriously have heavily armed checkpoints of state police and National Guard to prevent Right-to-Carry (RTC) hardliners entering whilst armed, and it gets heated.

Last year, 32 Virginia law enforcement officials were killed in gun battles on the border with North Carolina, both states representing the frontline. On the Illinois/Indiana border in the same year a group of drunks decided to load up their pick-ups and taunt the Illinois State Police, who responded with an anti-vehicle missile fired from a drone.

Kennedy Airport, despite being in the heart of a gun control state, still has to take a tough line with the flights coming in from RTC states. Often, the security at those airports is deliberately scant, sometimes as a political point, and so when the flights land in NY they have to be met by state police with heavily armed combat drones to provide support if the situation gets out of hand.

Last month a newly-elected US Senator from Montana, C. James Dickerson III, found his flight directed by bad weather away from Dulles airport in DC, which as the federal capital turns a blind eye to RTC. Instead he arrived in New York, where his automatic pistol was detected by a SecuriDrone(R) and he was requested to surrender his weapon. Still giddy from his election, and possibly taken in by his own rhetoric, he refused to surrender his weapon, finally drawing it against the drone, which machine gunned him to death.

The US Senate protested vigorously, but the Governor of New York defended the actions of the drone.

World Health Organisation says Virtual Reality “zombies” potentially becoming a different species of human.

News Future logoDateline: Geneva, 2099

Officials at the WHO have expressed concern at the continuing social effect of large numbers of humans over reliance on  Virtual Reality devices. WHO Director Carmen Yin suggested that there is now statistical evidence from every industrialised state that large numbers of people, especially young men, are opting out of physical social intercourse at “an alarming rate” and spending huge amounts of time on their VR devices.

So-called “Oculus dRrifting”, named after the groundbreaking device from the early 21st Century, has been a concern in the media for a number of decades now, but this is the first time the WHO has issued a warning that the practice may have a detrimental effect on human development.

Yin said: “There have been issues since the 2020s on this technology, and the occasional story of individuals actually starving to death whilst playing for ridiculously long hours, but these stories tend to be more urban myth than reality. However, we are seeing clear evidence of young men in particular, especially if living on modest social welfare supported incomes, withdrawing almost entirely from real life. Obesity, bone brittleness, bedsores, sensitivity to actual daylight, even fear of interaction with other humans are now a common outcome of prolonged exposure to this technology.”

The WHO Director confirmed that the availability of VR pornography has played a significant role in the problem.

“That goes without saying. Despite the efforts of governments to regulate access to VR pornography, the actual market demand allows for the creation of more and more specific and indeed violent disturbing “V-Porn” programs. We are now witnessing a generation of young men who remain actual sexual virgins and instead immerse themselves in sexual VR which is of such high levels of intensity and stimulation as to make them incapable of sustaining a normal sexual relationship. In fact, our evidence suggests that much of the extremist material they are using is provoking violent reactions in them. The only thing that is saving us from having a generation of possible sexual serial killers is the chronic obesity and physical lethargy that accompanies inappropriate use of VR devices. Although they do have curiously well developed right arms, generally.”

“RefugeeLand” continues to thrive as EU debates independence.

News Future logoDateline: Merkelville, 2099.

Recent economic figures continue to show strong economic growth in the 4m strong European Union Migration Transition Zone, nicknamed “RefugeeLand” in Libya. The city and its surrounds, founded in 2017 by the EU in response to the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis continues to be run and funded jointly by the United Nations and the European Union.

The current governor of the city, former Irish premier Willow Kiely, has confirmed that whilst the EU is willing to look at devolving more power to the city’s elected assembly, it was not willing to grant the city independence.

“The truth is, Europe still needs the Zone, and that means we need to control it, and both access and egress from it. Despite the fact that business continues to grow, and unemployment is very low, this city only started generating more revenue than expenditure in the last ten years. Having said that, that’s more than can be said for most EU member states.”

The city, despite a difficult beginning and still with its fair share of attacks from various religious extremist groups, has turned out to be a fascinating spectacle for the world, its huge open air markets now a major tourist draw for cruise ships.

Commissioner Kiely points out: “This is one of the few places on Earth where Christians and Muslims are pretty much equal in numbers. Everybody has to get along. By force if necessary.”

The EU maintains a large number of combat drones, both air and ground mobile, to respond quickly to terrorist incidents. But Kiely has been quick to point out that local city militia, raised by prominent leaders in both communities, often deal with extremists faster than the drones can.

“This city is the only access point for refugees into Europe. You have to be processed here, and indeed many people here have family members who live legally or commute to the EU having been processed here. As a result, both communities have a vested interest in maintaining order here. A good clean record serving with the militia, for example, earns points towards a residency visa for the EU. “

The commissioner also pointed out that both communities take turns providing a small militia force to protect the city’s one synagogue.

“There’s a real pride about that here. People value what they have, want to protect it.”

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Fairweather Revolutionary

Repost: “We’re not taking it any more! It’s time the country be taken back by the ordinary people! Feck the bankers and the political parties!

It’s time for a country based on social justice and equality and housing and health and education as rights! Yes to free healthcare! Yes to free education! Yes to…sorry, say that again…you want to pay for free healthcare by doing what?…means testing children’s allowance….now, hold on a minute there…putting Capital Gains Tax on private residences…wait there one minute now…the rich should pay higher taxes, but not ordinary people like me, yes, I know I bought my house for €300k and it’s now worth €500k, but that’s MY MONEY….tax MY profit???….to fund free healthcare and social justice?…….get away from MY money, d’ya hear, that €200k profit is MY money, not yours! Get your stinking thieving hands off my filthy lucre!”

PIRATE ATTACK ON BILLIONAIRES TAX HAVEN ISLAND RESULTS IN 1200 DEAD.

Dateline: South Pacific, 2099.

News Future logoChinese naval forces have confirmed that at least 1200 people have died in a large-scale pirate attack on the southern Pacific tax haven of Liberty Island yesterday. The attack, which began at approximately 2am Pacific time, seems to have been well planned and involved several hundred well-armed and disciplined pirates, who quickly overwhelmed the island’s small security force and communications centre. Widescale looting, killing and sexual assaults have been reported, and large fires are engulfing the island.

Liberty Island, an artificial atoll which first opened in the 2060s as a tax shelter for those persons of exceptional wealth wishing to escape global tax treaties, is a sovereign nation owned by its residents as shareholders. Although it does boast a well-resourced private security force, the sheer size and surprise nature of the attack led to most of the force being wiped out. Rumours that a number of the security force helped the pirates are unconfirmed.

The founder of the island, libertarian billionaire T. Rawle Jessup, was killed in the attack. Footage has since been uploaded onto the web of the tax exile businessman sobbing and begging nearby governments to send help.

Chinese and Australian naval forces were alerted by desperate residents pleading for help by satellite phone, and arrived as the last of the pirates were leaving, engaging them in a two-hour gunbattle and killing an estimated 70 pirates.

Initial reports suggest that the main pirate force may have escaped with jewelry, gold, cash and treasury bonds worth billions of dollars and yuan. A number of celebrities are also missing and maybe have been kidnapped. The well-known transexual model Leslie? is amongst the missing.

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Professional NGOer.

It’s all about hedgehogs. If you don’t care about the welfare of hedghogs, and want to spend whatever it takes to ensure hedgehog utopia, you’re a bastard. Never mind the old, and the sick, and poor children, and the third world, the beauty of being in the non-governmental organisation sector (the “third” sector, as it calls itself audaciously, in that it wants public money and pay, but private sector independence from the state that gives it its shekels) is that you can live in your defensive spined creature bubble and live there alone. If they don’t give you what you want, and you’ll always want something, they are absolute monsters.

Not that the money they give you will actually be spent on hedgehogs. It’ll be spent on websites and glossy brochures and fundraising drives the purpose of which is to fund more resources for more websites and brochures and fundraising efforts. And let us not forget the European angle: The vital need to go to Europe-wide hedgehog welfare conferences to consult with other concerned bodies. But the main thing is that at the end of it all the hedgehogs get the money they need. And they will. Eventually. When the NGO has gotten itself an “appropriately” remunerated chief executive and training officer and community liason officer and new “branding” and new offices in the city centre (Never in the more affordable suburbs, curiously enough.) and a development plan which seems to focus on getting more public funds for next year’s development plan.

Then, finally, money will be spent on hedgehog welfare. Normally for a shovel to scrape them off the road after they’ve been driven over by a truck.