Le Monde has a short interview with Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, on his new book “United States of Europe”, which presents his vision for a federation of eurozone states.
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how interesting the contents are, but I liked this comment of his:
Les Vingt-Cinq ont décidé, en juin 2005, d’ouvrir une période de réflexion qui me fait plutôt penser à une sieste espagnole.
The coverage of the terrible Entwistle murders has shown up the difference between US and UK reporting standards. Whereas I generally assume that the US press will be more responsible than their British cousins, I was very surprised to read the presumptions of guilt and sweeping statements in the Boston Globe’s coverage (use BugMeNot to get through registration).
Given the apparently complete absence of a “sub judice” rule, there is no hint of the British phrases “helping the police with their enquiries”, or “the trial continues”. Only a lone ‘accused’ before ‘killer’ gives any hint of the presumption of innocence, while the family of the victims are allowed to invoke the devil in their quoted comments to the press.
A different and worrying legal culture indeed.
The NYT has a collection of doccuments showing the collective failure of US and state governments to prevent the disaster in New Orleans.
Nice illustration of speed camera hypocrisy in a story from today’s Argus. The residents of Brighton Road, Lancing, want speed restrictions on a stretch of dual carriageway where a pedestrian was recently killed. One resident said:
“I’m not a big fan of speed cameras at all but if that’s what it takes, so be it.”
Or to put it another way:
“Speed cameras near my house improve safety, but speed cameras elsewhere are an evil New Labour tax on motorists. Why? Because when other people speed it’s dangerous, but when I speed it’s safe.”
Hear, hear! Down with other people speeding!
E J Dionne at the Washington Post lays into the administration’s fiscal indiscipline, as exemplified by the recent Budget.
Just came across a section of George Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism” that perfectly sums up George Galloway:
There is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty.
The forty different people Mark E. Smith has sacked from the Fall.
Repulsive self-publicist George Galloway, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, has shown exactly what he thinks both of his duties as a Parliamentarian and of his constituents by becoming a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother.
Celebrity Big Brother lasts for 23 days, during which time the citizens of my former constituency will be without a representative in Parliament, whose sittings resume on 9 January. It’s more important for Galloway, it seems, to hobnob with Dennis Rodman, and grub around for text message votes, than to serve either his constituents or his country. I bet they’re sorry they voted for him now. If they’re lucky, they’ll get Oona King back next time.
And Galloway grumbles that politics has a bad reputation – with oily egoists like him in it, it’s not hard to see why!
Does Russia’s action in restricting gas supplies to the West strengthen the case for nuclear power? A Fistful of Euros discusses.
Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP for Lewes, has just made Lewes DC’s ridiculous campaign against Falmer Stadium even more ridiculous. Apparently, because John Prescott has gone to see his team (Hull) play at Withdean, and has been given lunch by the directors, he should now recuse himself from every planning decision taken in relation to Falmer.
Apparently three warm prawn sandwiches and a glass of cheap red are going to influence the Deputy Prime Minister in deciding on Falmer’s fate. I used to have a lot of respect for Norman Baker, but I have to say, if that’s all it would take to bribe him, perhaps we’re lucky he’s a Liberal.