European Political News

Today has been a little quiet for blogging - I have been working on this, which turns into a public beta test at 11.00pm. There are a couple of glitches, but comments are welcome. I will be writing an explanation of what is what and how it all fits together during the day tomorrow. Tags: wardman wire, politics [...]

This week's Britblog Roundup is at Philobiblon.

Come back on Wednesday morning for the podcast, which is a short interview about the roundup on Radio 5's "Pods and Blogs" programme.

 

A cartoon from Jesus and Mo.

There’s an excellent short interview with a “Blog Producer” from Weblogs Inc. by Darren Rowse over at Problogger. It points up a few of the issues that arise and skills that are needed to take a blog from being the “voice of one person” to being a slightly larger enterprise - with a range of [...]

According to the NSPCC up to 5,000 children and young adults may be working as prostitutes in Britain, and the number appears to be rising. They are also being trapped into a life of prostitution at a younger age than previous.

In some cases, the NSPCC states, peer pressure is to blame. Clearly, children are being increasingly sexualized through the media, and this, of course, feeds very rapidly into the way in which children see themselves and how they see the world. Girls, particularly, are encouraged to think of themselves as virtual adults, or, perhaps more especially, as virtual adult stars. A month ago, for example, an online ‘game’ called Miss Bimbo  was launched which, although aimed at children, gives players a naked virtual Bimbo character to be dressed, embellished with breast implants, and its virtual weight controlled by virtual diet pills – hardly a good example of womanhood.

However, according to the BBC’s investigative reporting program Panorama many British girls (some as young as 12) are “groomed” for prostitution by criminal gangs with networks that extend across the country. Such girls are typically not the out-of-control youths lacking parental guidance, such as we might assume. They are merely teenagers, easily manipulated and easily controlled by ruthless, older men. “Grooming” consists of an emotionally and mentally paralyzing mix of flattery and gifts from boys only slightly older than their victims, introductions to older men, drink, drugs, sexual abuse, and rape. According to Jane, who talked on Panorama about being forced into prostitution at the age of 13:

"The grooming starts where you meet them [slightly older boys in a group] and they're nice to you and take you to McDonald's and buy you cigarettes."

"I was flattered that older boys were interested in me, which at 13 is nice.”

"And then you start to meet the cousins and the brothers, and then you realize that you've been passed on because suddenly you're hanging around with older people."

"They [the older men] start to touch you and say sexual things to you."

"And then the abuse starts. I was pinned down by two men while a third man raped me.

"And there were other men watching."

The Daily Mail ran a couple of stories that drew on this particular episode of Panorama (‘Sex for Sale’) even before it had aired, though it concentrated largely on the racial composition of Britain’s various gangs, in contrast to the television program itself. The newspaper states, for example,   “these crimes frequently have a racial element: in many of the identifiable cases, the pimps come from the Asian or Afro-Caribbean communities”. The racial composition of Britain’s gangland is, accordingly, “largely Asian in northern England, Afro-Caribbean in the West Midlands and elsewhere White, Turkish and Kurdish.”  However, while the documentary focused on a specific few Asian criminals and their White, female victims, it only very briefly touched on the subject, and a description of the documentary on Panorama’s homepage makes no mention at all of the race of the pimps or their victims, though, not surprisingly.

Race and sexual abuse is a sensitive issue in multicultural Britain. The fear that racist groups will exploit the situation to enflame tensions, or that accusations of racism will emerge in response to any official enquiry, seem to run through the sad tale of child exploitation in Britain. A Channel 4 documentary made in 2004, claiming that Asian men in Bradford were grooming White girls for prostitution, was cancelled for fear of public anger. The Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (CROP) has, likewise, a lengthy statement against racism on its website noting that it will not cooperate with racist organizations, as:

“Racist and political exploitation of the issue confuses the issue and undermines, or even prevents, active responses by relevant responsible agencies.”

Both Conservative M.P. Philip Davies and Director of the Ramadhan Foundation Mohammed Shafiq have suggested that the police have so far failed to tackle the problem of Asian gangs pimping White girls for fear of being accused of racism. Shafiq, who appears in the Panorama show, has said:

"These are criminals they should be treated as criminals. They are not Asian criminals, they are not Muslim criminals, they are not White criminals. They are criminals and they should be treated as criminals."

"If there is a drug dealer grooming a White teenager into prostitution then I don't want the police service or local authority not to be open about it."

Although the police appear to have a good idea about the ethnicities of Britain’s gangs, according to the NSPCC little is known about the ethnic composition of its child prostitutes. Last year the press highlighted the plight of young women trafficked from Eastern Europe, though thousands are also brought into Britain every year from Asia and Africa, usually under the pretext that they will have a better life in the U.K. Yet they are uquickly used by their traffickers to obtain government benefits, and in many cases are made to work as prostitutes. Interestingly, the NSPCC does acknowledge that racism plays a part in the experiences of sexually exploited ethnic minority children, though it does not state exactly how, or whether the racism they experience comes primarily from pimps or those who pay to abuse them, etc.:

“We know very little about the experiences of Black and minority ethnic children and young people involved in prostitution, but available accounts points to racism as being important in understanding their experiences.”

As we are now becoming increasingly aware, different cultures conceive of sex, women, marriage, and homosexuality, etc., very differently. Notably, even within the Western world the age of consent, for example, can differ quite substantially. On the continent of Europe it can be as low as 13 or 14; in the U.K. the age is universally 16; and in the U.S. it can be 16, 17, or 18.

The authorities seem ill equipped to cope with such a complex problem as the child prostitution, crossing racial boundaries but yet evoking the issue of race as it does so. The mantra of British political establishment has long been that cultural “differences are to be celebrated”. Yet while it champions “multiculturalism” it understands not even one single culture, and, perhaps for this reason, treats the worst of every culture as if it must somehow be representative of the whole, and, as such, beyond criticism. It also clearly fails to understand young people.
With teenage pregnancies vastly increased in number in the last decade, the authorities – in an apparent attempt to rectify the problem – have encouraged teenagers to engage in oral sex (instead of copulation), and are now examining the idea of compulsory sex lessons for 5 year olds.  As if Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is playing out before our eyes, government minister Dawn Primarolo has even suggested that teenage girls should be sterilized.  That way they would be free to have sex with anyone they want, or don’t want.

The authorities are no less inept when it comes to children of specifically non-British backgrounds. If Mohammed Shafiq has suggested that the police go softly on Asian gangs pimping White girls for fear of being accused of racism, the same fear raises its ugly head at the mention of the forced marriages of teenage girls – often to much older men from abroad. But, other, cultural issues emerge as well.
Bradford police support worker Philip Balmforth, who has spoken out about the scale of forced marriage in Britain – winning even the praise of M.P.s – now finds his position helping vulnerable young girls under threat, as members of the Bradford Council claim he has damaged the city’s reputation.  This response is not, perhaps, entirely unsurprising, however. The notion of reputation is central to some Asian cultures that have a very large presence in Bradford. According to an NSPCC survey of 500 people of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi origin, two thirds believed that reporting suspected child abuse would “have a negative affect on the 'honor'” of the victim’s family.

Again, in his report, The Poverty of Multicuturalism, for the Think Tank, Civitas, Patrick West observes that judges have regarded the ethnic culture of the murderer as a mitigating factor in some so-called “honor killings”, thus giving Asian-British girls, for example, less protection under the law. Likewise, Saira Khan in The Daily Mail has also denounced the National Health Service’s policy of performing “virginity repairs” on Muslim girls who fear that their families may harm or even kill them if they discover they have had sex out of wedlock:

“It's effectively condoning an increasingly fundamentalist Islamic culture that is patriarchal, regressive and increasingly demeaning to women.”

The government seems to have finally woken up to the scale and seriousness of child prostitution in Britain. The police will have new targets, and schools will receive educational videos tackling the issue. Yet, if children are to be protected across the board the government must also abandon issues for principles, seeing that the human rights of minors are upheld and that criminals are treated as criminals.

Ellee remarks: The outfits were elegant and demure imageand deliberately understated to accommodate the renowned British reserve. But one thing stood out and disappointed me about Carla Sarkozys carefully planned wardrobe during her visit to the UK last week -where were the heels? I’m the biggest fashion ignoramus in the world, but it must be the height, [...]

This week, Pippa Wagstaff writes her first column for the Wardman Wire about events at the National Assembly for Wales (the Senedd) in Cardiff.

Via Bob Piper's post "Never Mind the Width" I (memo to self: spend an hour a week "wasting time" surfing new blog), I found a new and interesting blog from my area (Dronfield), Three Score Years and Ten - with the excellent tag-line:

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" - Søren Kierkegaard

Harry Barnes was Labour MP for North-East Derbyshire for the years 1987-2005. He writes about local life (especially Sheffield Football Club - the world's oldest club founded in 1857), Iraqi and Iranian events. Here are some posts that I enjoyed reading from the last couple of months. You have to navigate the blog via the archives or search facility, as Harry does not use labels or categories.

A quote from Life Site News, 26 March 2008

The Dommuseum in Vienna, the art gallery attached to the historic Catholic cathedral of St. Stephen, is running an exhibition of works by a self-avowed Marxist atheist [Alfred Hrdlicka], titled “Religion, Flesh and Power”, that includes depictions of explicit homosexual sex acts in “religious” themed art. Prominent among the works is a rendition of the Last Supper with Christ and His Apostles depicted as homosexuals engaged in an orgy. […]  The director of the Dommuseum, Mr. Bernhard Böhler, said that visitors have asked “in a more or less emotional way,” why the Apostles are depicted copulating. According to the director, the artist responded, “There were no women around”.

Gloria Television made a short video of the works that shows Hrdlicka’s depiction of the flagellation of Christ with a nude Roman soldier performing a lewd act on the Lord's body. […]
 
Vienna’s Cathedral and Diocesan Museum was founded in 1933, and describes itself as “one of the exquisite gems amongst the many museums in Vienna”. It is located adjacent to the Archbishop’s Palace of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, O.P.

 

Which is why cricket is so great? It's one of the only games in the world where you have sufficient time to wander round a field thinking 'why am I doing this?'

During the winter of 2006-007 I lived in Wales for 5 months. Just.

To be exact, 200m on the Welsh side in the village of Llanymynech, in Powys - while I was working in Shropshire.

Llanymynech sits on the A483 a few miles from both the Shropshire town of Oswestry and Welshpool - next door to a village called Pant (I kid you not). Llanymynech means "Church of the Monks" in English. The A483 is one of three major routes between North and South Wales.

It has 12,500 vehicles a day (2001 figure) travelling down the road. And no bypass. Since I lived next to the A483, I knew more about the 12,500 vehicles than about anything else - especially at 7.00am in the morning.

The problem is that this is one bypass which has been mooted, examined, considered, cancelled, delayed, thrown into the long grass, relisted, repromised, reconsidered, residelined ... you get the picture ... since before 1960.

A quote from Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 29 March 2008

The Dutch government has distanced itself from the strong condemnation issued by EU chair Slovenia of the anti-Qur’an film Fitna by far-right MP Geert Wilders. Slovenia says the film incites hatred, which in the Netherlands is an offence punishable by law. The Dutch government said the film only aims to hurt people’s feelings. […]

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also has issued a strong condemnation of the anti-Qur’an film. The UN chief said there was no justification for inciting hatred or violence.
 

A quote from the Italian press agency AnsaMed, 28 March 2008

“On behalf of the European Parliament I fully reject the interpretation contained in the film that Islam is a violent religion,” European Parliament President Hans Gert Poettering said […]. Poettering expressed his solidarity with the Dutch government, which “believes in an open and tolerant society”.

“The film’s content seems conceived with the purpose of offending the religious senses of the Muslims in Holland, in Europe and the world,” Poettering said. “The mutual respect and tolerance are the preconditions for Muslims, Christians and people of other faiths or without any to be able to live together in peace.” “Freedom of expression is a fundamental value of the EU and must go side by side with the respect for the profound religious beliefs of the others”.

  

See the film here.

The bits in the mosaic of our time are overlooked as we focus on the big chunks. This column presents some issues that might deserve attention.
 
1. Charge and countercharge. Clinton attended the 2005 funeral of a Communist who served the cause from the 30s through 9/11. One that celebrated the Soviet Union (“Black men should associate their hopes with the promises of Socialism”) who went on the street for the atom-spies, the Rosenbergs (guilt confirmed by post Soviet Russia). Would Clinton have taken part if this individual had not been black? Is the answer “unlikely”? If so, what are we to think of the Clintonista charge that if Obama would be white he would not have gotten where he is?
 
2. Witnessing a strange game. Iran is working on a nuclear project. At best, those ingredients are being prepared which, when assembled, allow for the quick completion of a bomb. US diplomacy tries to enlist other powers to apply pressure on Iran to desist. These efforts are consistently emasculated, hindered or blocked. A possible consequence: direct action once the political process fails to provide for security. Once this happens, those now blocking a political solution will complain. They will allege that America‘s imperial preference for unilateral military solutions has deprived diplomacy from a chance to work.
 
3. China has the means and the local prestige to pressure North Korea economically and politically to live up to the promises it had made for juicy bribes. The West does not have unlimited time to write off concessions made in exchange for lies, deception and insults.
 
4. Regardless of “April 15” (for Americans) taxes are perennial topic. The more so since cutting taxes is becoming a mainstream issue. The left’s standard reaction to such nightmarish outrage is to claim that tax-cuts favor the rich. This is correct in a way not meant by those who raise the charge. Expressed in absolute monetary units, reduced tax rates affect the above average more than the below average. This is especially true when the lower 10-20% enjoy tax exemption. “No tax, no refund” is the principle that applies. Actually, lowered taxes do not damage the “poor”, they only hurt the left. In exchange for power conferred through votes cast, it has less to fork over to bribe its clients. Of some of these dependents, you can say that they are paid for being poor. Doing so assures us that they are likely to continue to live under precarious conditions.
 
5. Success! Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s Marxist dictator (sorry to use two adjectives when one suffices) has finally scored. The inflation rate is over 100 thousand per cent and so it might topple the hither world record set by occupied Hungary after WW2. An additional achievement emerges. No one is counterfeiting the papers used as imitations of money in the once prosperous country kidnapped by Mugabe.
 
6. Elections show how the voters reacted to the facts they thought they knew. However, contrary to what some party platforms imply neither elections nor the elected have the power to change the real facts.
 
7. A quick glance at platforms and party-programs reveals something significant about politicians and parties. They tell what some politicians think people want and how high they rate the street-smartness or the gullibility of the vowed. The matter is two pronged. For one thing, there is a tendency to promise to change the facts. (Shutting down nuclear power stations in Germany and gaining the needed energy from the sun and the wind.) Even more frequent is the case when the challenging facts are ignored to imply that doing so amounts to a solution. In this case, the core of the political dogfight is about whether a problem exists or is properly beyond the pale of civilized discussion. (Almost everything connected to immigration falls into this category.)
 
8. It is often hard to determine whether those that ask for tolerance aim at ultimate domination. It is equally difficult to tell whether the advocates of compromise seek, a common denominator based on reason or, driven by self-hate, they just need an excuse to give up.
 
9. Under new management, France and Germany express greater solidarity with Israel than shown earlier. What will be the substance once the situation demands more than declarations? Both countries are democracies with elections and are led by politicians in need of votes. There is no majority appreciative of Israel’s predicament, in fact there is no awareness that a nuclear Iran’s will have an impact on Europe’s security either. A majority might even be lacking for military self-defense. Regarding the Near East, 3% of the Germans support Israel, 91% are neutral. Merkel has admitted the problem. She is also willing to educate her public. This, if seriously attempted, produces credentials that make her rise from mere politics to statesmanship.
 
10. Serbia proposes (24 March) to divide Kosovo along ethnic lines. With this she takes a position she had opposed when Kosovo’s independence was the issue. A detached logic, which might not convince the Albanians, demands that, this partition be supported. The earlier separation of Kosovo from Serbia implies that territorial integrity, wile preferable, is not sacrosanct. If borders are subject to revision when the principle of their inviolability collides with that of self-determination, then it applies to Kosovo, too. Therefore, the Serb districts adjacent to Serbia should be allowed to revert to Serbia. Kosovo’s reaction was “we do not discuss such proposals” as they are “reminiscent of the old way of thinking”. How this is proven as implied is unclear. What is clear, however, is that chauvinism catapults the infected into an exalted sphere to which common sense cannot rise.
 
11. Ignorance rules. The scene is a US quiz show. The contestant is to name the country whose capital is Budapest. It might be France, is the answer. Being wrong causes no embarrassment to the person who has never heard of a country called “Hungry”. The wide spread ignorance (in America and also in Europe) regarding politics, economics and even the recent past, is stunning. It is one thing to hold the educationalists responsible. Regrettably, permissiveness’ destruction of knowledge and values is allowed to continue. Even more frightening is that thanks to this cultivation of ignorance the past can, and is, coming back.
 
12. A connected case is the March 16 celebration of the Latvian Region in Riga. Even with much empathy for the tragedy of a small people trapped between unscrupulous great powers, there is reason for raising eyebrows. Helping the occupier that hurt your family less than did his enemy, is understandable. Especially when your community is small and is left without a decent ally. What is an understandable act in a desperate moment is still subject to subsequent review. Joining the Waffen SS to fight the Reds, or – this was more rarely the case – linking up with the Soviets to fight Nazis, was plainly wrong. That it happened is a sign of a predicament for which the Latvians were not responsible. This still leaves little reason to celebrate those who succumbed to the hopelessness of a moment that left them little choice. To praise those involved –instead of commiserating them at best – is a symptom of the mixture of ignorance and half-truths that determines the public affairs conscience of many of our contemporaries.
 
13. More regarding political culture and its Conservative component. A reader reacted to my previous posting by suggesting that the Palestinians should be “destroyed”. This must have been a from-the-hip reaction prompted by (understandable) frustration. The writer regrets that his piece has provoked this reaction. Extremism does not fit the conservative profile. We are individualists and as such resist the assignment of guilt based on group membership. Radical simplifiers have done that. Among the highlights are the Inquisition, the “Terror” of the French Revolution, the Communist in Eurasia and the National Socialists. We also believe in limited government and that the less force is used by it the better. As a related matter, conservatives regard individual morality and sense of responsibility as the factors best suite to set the limits of man’s actions. It is also these forces that are to guarantee the judicious yet resolute use of power once the safeguarding of life and liberties require it. We therefore also believe in the rule of morally sustainable laws that are made by individuals capable for, and committed to, rational thinking.

A cartoon from ASBO Jesus .

Geert Wilders publishes Fitna The Movie on LiveLeak.com

 

For this week’s Friday Free For All question, we are asking if you have managed to make the news in your town or community, and what you think about it. So: Have you made the local press? Why and what happened? Do you have any tips? (Note: making it into the local press in such a manner that [...]

While he had spent all that time away from Parliament...

...George had lost his ability to "catch the Speaker's eye"..

Inspired by Friday Lolcats meme.

A quote from Charlemagne in The Economist, 27 March 2008

Belgium's linguistic communities pay a high price for sticking together, resorting to fudges that range from the silly to the destructive. Put like that, you can see Belgium's new government not as a relief, but as an awful warning. A political union hatched together by a fractious elite, and answerable only to itself, is not a model for anybody to follow.

On Wednesday evening the three main candidates for London Mayor (and Sian Berry from the Greens) met in the city for a business hustings session watched by members of London First, the CBI and London Chamber of Commerce " and I was there too. First up the candidates were given the platform for six minutes to [...]

This morning Charlotte Green totally lost it on Today on Radio 4, after reading out a short piece about an 1860 recording of a human voice on smoky paper (which sounded like Just William playing his comb). Unfortunately she giggled through an obituary of Abby Mann. Here's the clip.

Iain has come out with a list of 75 top political books with links through to Amazon. This is probably the most widely use way of earning pocket money on UK Political Blogs. Nearly everybody does it - including me.

The way the Amazon affiliate programme works is that if a person purchases anything from the Amazon website within 24 hours of a click through on an affiliate link, then the affiliate receives between 4% and 10% of the purchase value.

France’s first President born after the Second World War has paid handsome tribute to and given fulsome thanks for the double sacrifice of the flower of Britain’s youth in two world wars. It is not without irony that such has been so conspicuously and gratingly lacking in the words of his predecessors.

Nor is it without irony that such graceful comments should come not from a Frenchman of long native lineage, but from the diminutive bantam cock of a son of a Hungarian-born father and Greek Mother of the Jewish faith who contrasts so strikingly with the lofty mien of his recent more haughty predecessors (excepting always Georges Pompidou who never managed to shake off the look of the onion-seller). Whilst remaining deeply suspicious of French motives in all things, Britain should not fail to appreciate his comments:

France hasn’t forgotten, she will never forget that when she was almost annihilated, Britain was at her side.
She will never forget the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish blood mixed with the French blood in the mud of the trenches.
She will never forget the welcome the British people gave General de Gaulle and Free France.
She will never forget the heroic resistance of the British people without which all would have been lost.
She will never forget the fine young people who came from all over the British Empire and laid down their lives on the Normandy beaches and in the surrounding bocages.

It is notable that Sarkozy also gave the lie to the myth upon which France has constructed a narrative for the last sixty-seven years, a myth which began with Charles de Gaulle's claim on 18th. June 1940:

La France a perdu une bataille, mais la France n'a pas perdu la guerre. [France has lost a battle, but has not lost the war]

This bold, but ludicrous, assertion was backed by the mantra of many Frenchmen who claimed : “On nous a trahi!” – “We were betrayed!” Upon such soft sands France has built its alibi for the failings of its politicians and generals for far too long, an alibi that none of its modern executive Presidents has had, until now, the courage to disavow.
 
Now Sarkozy spells it out for all to see: France was close to annihilation and it was Great Britain who remained constant in the cause of restoring her to her place from the first day to the last. The myth has stood obstinately in the way of truth for far too long and one must commend Sarkozy for spelling out the stark reality for once.
 
But what of the rest of his speech to the British Parliament? There are three things which struck me as worthy of note.
 
In his opening remarks he said:

…it is an exceptional honour to address members of both Houses of the British Parliament.
It is indeed here, within these walls, that modern political life was born. Without this Parliament, would parliamentary democracy have ever existed in the world? Hasn’t this parliamentary practice, begun in this place, become the best guarantee against tyranny?

I wonder if he realised quite what he was saying. If we contemplate two facts: (1) that 70-80% of the laws which now enter into force in the United Kingdom every year emanate not from the elected representatives of the British people but from an unelected and wholly unrepresentative coterie of foreign civil servants; and (2) that with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon Britain shall yield up almost all that remains of its sovereignty to that same group who will thus acquire almost unlimited power to impose the Brussels Diktat upon British laws, is it not then right to assert that the ‘best guarantee against tyranny’ of which he spoke has been recklessly and casually thrown away? And has not thus Parliamentary Democracy, so long in the evolution, been in a few short years ruthlessly stifled?
 
For we should be under no illusion but that what we understand by Parliamentary Democracy, which is indeed a formidable (though not impervious) bulwark against tyranny and which we have now effectively abandoned, has been replaced by a formidable Euro-theocracy. And from them tyranny we shall have, the tyranny of laws to which neither Her Majesty’s Government nor the British Parliament has assented as more and more ‘competences’ are given up to the thrall of Qualified Majority Voting.
 
Of Parliament and the other institutions which have hitherto been the very fabric of the British nation Sarkozy observed:

The history of this institution today influences most contemporary political regimes. This Parliament has become what it is through the fight for the protection of essential individual freedoms and the principle of the consent to taxation.
These two fundamental conquests, which this Parliament was the first in the world to achieve, are still today the cornerstones of all our democracies. It is here that parliamentarians have gradually developed what is a party, an electoral programme and finally a majority.
It is through these institutions that the United Kingdom’s greatness has emerged. And I am so honoured to address you precisely because the political heart of the United Kingdom is beating under this roof.
I profoundly believe in the strength of politics. I profoundly believe in the ability of politics to improve the fate of the peoples. This is the whole purpose of politics.
Institutions, however much you upgrade them, exist only to serve the people. The strength of the British people has always been that of a free people who take their own decisions and are ready for the greatest sacrifices to defend their freedom.

It is precisely because the British have always been a free people, able to take their own decisions, that they have become what they are. Now that very institution is, for all legal and practical purposes, subordinated to another sovereign power: how then are the British to defend the freedoms so hard won and at such price? How then are the British to preserve their way of life when others who are not of their kind shall have the whip hand over them? And how ironic that a foreign President should come to praise Britian at the very moment of its eclipse.
 
Nicolas Sarkozy has, in some places, been lauded as a skillful politician. If so, his praise of Gordon Brown for railroading the Treaty of Lisbon through without a referendum in these terms:

I am not the only one in Europe who appreciates what he has done. What he has done was necessary for Europe.

was surely a grave mistake, bearing as it does the clear and unambiguous implication that this has all been done not for the benefit of the British people but for the benefit of others. It leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

A cartoon from Indexed.

A quote from Yves Daoudal at his blog, 26 March 2008 [English translation here]

The [French] National Assembly resumed work on a bill that reiterates three directives from the European Union on the fight against discrimination. […] You will remember that the European Commission demanded in particular that France define indirect discrimination and specified that it is forbidden to enjoin someone to practice discrimination.

And in the first article they did as they were told:

An indirect discrimination constitutes a disposition, a criterion, or a practice that is neutral in appearance, but which is capable of causing, for one of the reasons mentioned in the preceding line, a particular disadvantage for persons in relation to other persons, unless this disposition, this criterion, or this practice is objectively justified by a legitimate purpose and the means to achieve this purpose are necessary and appropriate.

Discrimination includes the act of enjoining someone to adopt a behavior forbidden by Article 2.

You will note that the scope of “indirect discrimination” is so wide that they had to add a restriction: discrimination is not discrimination when it is “objectively” justified...
 
The language of the directives is so absurd that in the section on gender discrimination it was necessary to add a series of derogations indicating that in a certain number of areas “different treatment” because of sex can be justified...

A quote from the Dutch press agency NIS, 27 March 2008

According to 56 percent of the Dutch, Islam is a threat to the Dutch identity. As well, 57 percent named admitting large groups of immigrants as "the biggest mistake in Dutch history".

Which is why cricket is so great. It's one of the only games in the world where you have sufficient time to wander round a field thinking 'why am I doing this?'

Three Line Whip suggests that politics is becoming personalised again:

It appears that the magnificent Ken Dodd has a gag in his current stage show about the Prime Minister: “Every time I see Gordon Brown on the telly I think: ‘I bought that suit’.”

Via Simon Dickson on Twitter.

10 Downing Street has started putting out "headlines" via Twitter. I am number 8 in their followers. So Twitter now needs to be renamed "Twister".

Welcome to this week's Holyrood Herald. In one sense, this is quite an easy Roundup to put together as there has only been one big story, and it's Scotland's place in the Union. Momentum has been gathering on this matter since before the election: when an SNP-led Government looked like a possibility (around the Summer of 2006, after the Moray By-Election which saw the SNP not only hold the seat but increase their share of the vote, aong with the collapse in the Labour vote in a handful of Council By-Elections), pundits began discussing independence in the most serious terms since the 1970s - even the constitutional discussions of the 1990s centred around devolution.