European links
A 101 year old former librarian and war veteran bear hugged a 47-year old robber into submission. Tough folk, those librarians.
A Scottish brewer has released Nanny State Beer™.
Largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold found:
It is no longer politically correct to refer to the period as the dark ages - but Anglo-Saxon England remains a shadowy place, with contradictory and confusing sources and archaeology.
There is a dramatic drop in written sources (the original reason it was called “Dark” because it was “dark to history”), Greenland glacial cores show a dramatic drop in metal production not recovered for centuries, there is a dramatic drop in shipwrecks in the Western Mediterranean (not recovering until c.1200), gold coins disappear from Western Europe (until c.1200), the size of cities shrink dramatically and many disappear, the extent of pottery finds drops dramatically as does the quality of the pottery, the use of counting boards disappears until about 1000, in England the cows get smaller but it was not a “collapse” or a “Dark Age” it was just a “transformation”. Gee, it must be comfortable in those academic common rooms.
Historian Tony Judt on the creation of the EU, relations with Russia, mistakes over Turkey and delusions about the US.
About the year the Iron Curtain fell.
Socialism in Europe seems to be in a bad way.
The three opposition parties in Germany (the Free Democrats, the Greens and the hard-left PDS) have their best results ever, the SDP has its worst post-war result, the Christian Democrats have close to the worst, but the incumbent Chancellor will be serving another four year term with more congenial coalition partners.
Musing on the problems when European cultures who do not have any strong ground of identity deal with large numbers of immigrants sharing a strong religious identity.
Vaclav Klaus on whether there is a common European idea:
am happy that I can live in Europe and that I belong to Europe. For me, Europe is one of the reference frames of my life as seen from its spiritual and cultural dimensions. That's not a modest role. But it's nothing more than that. Europe not only fails to have any common idea: it can't have one and it doesn't need one.
Assisting suicide is set to be decriminalised in the UK.
Massive expansion in ambit of quangos under British Labour with a sevenfold increase in their expenditure. Including attempting to purge language.
The EU is threatening to take the Czech Republic’s toys away if President Klaus does not sign on to the Lisbon Treaty. Some German and French diplomats want to see him removed.
The UK Tories have highlighted the problems of the poor in the UK:
The overwhelming thrust of this new Toryism is to tackle the causes of poverty, not just its symptoms. For Cameron’s new ‘One Nation’ Tories there are five main drivers of poverty.
They are:
Economic dependency: the UK has the highest proportion of children living in workless households out of any EU country;
Educational failure: 44,000 school leavers each year are illiterate;
Family Breakdown: 70 per cent of young offenders are from lone-parent families;
Drink and drug addiction: one million children have alcohol-addicted parents;
Debt: British consumers are twice as indebted as those in Continental Europe.
... For example, marginal tax rates imposed on those trying to get off welfare are so high that the poor are often worse off working than they are claiming benefits …
A Scottish brewer has released Nanny State Beer™.
Largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold found:
It is no longer politically correct to refer to the period as the dark ages - but Anglo-Saxon England remains a shadowy place, with contradictory and confusing sources and archaeology.
There is a dramatic drop in written sources (the original reason it was called “Dark” because it was “dark to history”), Greenland glacial cores show a dramatic drop in metal production not recovered for centuries, there is a dramatic drop in shipwrecks in the Western Mediterranean (not recovering until c.1200), gold coins disappear from Western Europe (until c.1200), the size of cities shrink dramatically and many disappear, the extent of pottery finds drops dramatically as does the quality of the pottery, the use of counting boards disappears until about 1000, in England the cows get smaller but it was not a “collapse” or a “Dark Age” it was just a “transformation”. Gee, it must be comfortable in those academic common rooms.
Historian Tony Judt on the creation of the EU, relations with Russia, mistakes over Turkey and delusions about the US.
About the year the Iron Curtain fell.
Socialism in Europe seems to be in a bad way.
The three opposition parties in Germany (the Free Democrats, the Greens and the hard-left PDS) have their best results ever, the SDP has its worst post-war result, the Christian Democrats have close to the worst, but the incumbent Chancellor will be serving another four year term with more congenial coalition partners.
Musing on the problems when European cultures who do not have any strong ground of identity deal with large numbers of immigrants sharing a strong religious identity.
Vaclav Klaus on whether there is a common European idea:
am happy that I can live in Europe and that I belong to Europe. For me, Europe is one of the reference frames of my life as seen from its spiritual and cultural dimensions. That's not a modest role. But it's nothing more than that. Europe not only fails to have any common idea: it can't have one and it doesn't need one.
Assisting suicide is set to be decriminalised in the UK.
Massive expansion in ambit of quangos under British Labour with a sevenfold increase in their expenditure. Including attempting to purge language.
The EU is threatening to take the Czech Republic’s toys away if President Klaus does not sign on to the Lisbon Treaty. Some German and French diplomats want to see him removed.
The UK Tories have highlighted the problems of the poor in the UK:
The overwhelming thrust of this new Toryism is to tackle the causes of poverty, not just its symptoms. For Cameron’s new ‘One Nation’ Tories there are five main drivers of poverty.
They are:
Economic dependency: the UK has the highest proportion of children living in workless households out of any EU country;
Educational failure: 44,000 school leavers each year are illiterate;
Family Breakdown: 70 per cent of young offenders are from lone-parent families;
Drink and drug addiction: one million children have alcohol-addicted parents;
Debt: British consumers are twice as indebted as those in Continental Europe.
... For example, marginal tax rates imposed on those trying to get off welfare are so high that the poor are often worse off working than they are claiming benefits …