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.
A great resource: ViaMichelin helped me find the location of the best ice-cream in the world (corner of Rue des Deux Ponts and Rue St. Louis-en-l’Ile, Paris).
It also told me that it would take 16h01 to drive from my home to the village in Poland that my family are named after (1,447km away).
Metafilter discusses the Bobacabana, a house entirely devoted to Star Wars merchandise.
To celebrate our arrival in our new house, a sad story of a gas leak in the street, 94 years ago.
On a Virgin train from Oxford to Brighton, and once again I find myself wondering why Virgin Trains is pretending so hard that it’s an airline.
We are back (almost) online after our house move, and are now based in sunny Brighton. So the blog has a new name, not least because I was getting a bit tired of the old one. It also has a new URL (islingwordstreet.com), though lewes.typepad.com will still work.