Category: Current Affairs

A great Google Maps mashup allows you to define a sea level rise and see which bits of the world would be flooded as a result. Turns out that Brighton at least is comparatively OK, even with a rise of 14m, but some areas around Wish Road get it in the neck, even at the quite plausible 6m. Link via slacktivist.

Nicolas Sarkozy, now the next president of France, has taken himself off to a luxury yacht to unwind from the rigours of the campaign. Not his yacht: like our own Prime Minister, M. Sarkozy seems not to be short of rich friends now he’s in office. Pictures of the luxury accommodation at Coulisses de Bruxelles.

It’s not just those nasty European bureaucrats who have long rows about chocolate standards.

Jean Quatremer at Coulisses de Bruxelles discusses an interview with Tony Blair in Le Monde, and sums up better that I could the results of those French voters who voted ‘no’ to the European constitution in the hope of something better later on:

Le message envoyé par la France a été compris par ses partenaires comme étant un “stop” et non un “encore”. C’était prévisible. … En votant pour des partis extrémistes en juin 2002 (13% pour l’extrême gauche et 19% pour l’extrême droite) et contre le TCE en 2005, la France a envoyé un signal de repli sur soi. Nicolas Sarkozy et Ségolène Royal, en faisant campagne sur l’identité nationale, en ont tiré les leçons, surfant sur cette vague nauséabonde au lieu d’essayer de la contrer. Dommage.

So Sir Michael Lyons is going to be the new Chairman of Governorsthe new BBC Trust (report). On the basis of his earlier work, the news will now be two years late and contain nothing you don’t already know.

Le Monde has an interview with Jacques Delors on the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.

Happy birthday for tomorrow to the European Union – 50 years old. In celebration, the BBC explodes some famous mythical European regulations, including the straight bananas, the Mumbai mix, and the end of the pint.

Iraq war a bad idea? Not to the committed Republicans of the Victory Caucus, which is always a reliable place to find upbeat reporting on the fledgling democracy that is Iraq today (think Switzerland, with oil, apparently). If you think their logo and terminology is a little familiar (Victory Mansions, anyone?) Glenn Greenwald in Salon points out that you might be thinking of 1984.

An otherwise mundane article about David Cameron’s visit to Sweden contains this description of the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt.

He has been dubbed the “Swedish David Cameron”

Is it just me, or does that sound like the dubbing of a British newspaper? Maybe I’m wrong, and Swedish voters are so familiar with the cut-and-thrust of British politics that the Leader of the Opposition is a recognised political benchmark from Stockholm to Skane.

An American writer tries to live for a week with only right-wing media sources. Link.