You can tell Saturday has come round again. I’m here with another of those ‘mindless’ posts. Still, anyone not suffering from too much of a post-halloween hangover, and looking for a cool bit of culturally-correct entertainment should try this (especially mousing over top-right exhibit two). If however you are in the mood for a culturally less-correct but nonetheless fairly enjoyable quick read try this. And the point of all this, the place I found the links: Henry Schroy’s Blog. Now Henry is a musician (more culture: check out the music for Orixas), born in Rio and now living in Brooklyn New York: so what the hell has this got to do with Europe? Good question. The answer is probably very little. However…….
Continue reading
Author Archives: Edward Hugh
Get Well Soon Tobias
Just a short line for Tobias:”God Speed Your Recovery”. We and Europe need you. BTW: doesn’t this make an even stronger case for good public transport and walking!
just a short note to let you know I will presumably not be able to write much for the next four to six weeks as I broke my left arm yesterday and am right now reeducating myself to get on with single handed typing, which is not too easy once being used to ten fingers on the keyboard. I will try though, as part of my physiotherapy ;). One tip from the expert: Don’t ever attempt ride a bycicle in autumn when the streets are slippery…
Tobias
If I were you I would try the local zoo. See if they have any macacos, because with “Um n?mero infinito de macacos, com um n?mero infinito de teclados…………….”
Sex and the Singapore Issues
OK, before anyone tries to get us round to the painful reality that I’m a tiresome old bore: some titilation for you. Unfortunately, this is not about ‘sexual tourism’, except, that is in the most general sense. (Although if anyone wants to pick up on this in the comments, I think we’re in the same ballpark). No the ‘topic du jour’ here is a bit nearer home. And the underlying issue is – believe me – one of the Singapore Issues: use and abuse of ‘indirect obstacles’ to prevent the free exercise of a service. Whatever the ethical stand you take on this, my feeling is that the French law got involved because the business was being ‘outsourced’ in the wrong direction. Well, at least we British are good at something.
French court officials looked baffled and bewildered by the sheer scale of the scrum of British journalists, photographers and camera crews waiting to get into Courtroom 14 of the Palais de Justice
Life Before Power Point
Another quiet Saturday morning here in Barcelona. This post is definitely for those looking up at the grey sky, and feeling the need for some pretty mindless entertainment. Power Point presentations: ever been subjected to one of them. Or put another way: what was life like before Microsoft? Well Peter Norvic has been thinking about this, and I for one had a good laugh. Looking for a European connection in all this: well what would count as our equivalent of the Gettysburg Address? Suggestions Please.
BTW today is Diwali in India, so happy Diwali everyone (and no, my real name isn’t Dilesh, but would it matter if it was?).
Anyone Want to Play Ball With Me?
Even though it may appear that this post runs along much the same lines as my last two or three, I should warn you: appearances are sometimes deceptive. The origins of what I want to say here stretch back in time two or three days to some comments I made on an earlier post and a subsequent piece which I have entitled the ‘Pele-Ronaldo’ effect. Surprising as it may seem, the topic here is only tangentially football. The real topic is the so-called brain drain, and how our initial intuitions may mislead us. The aforementioned effect is associated with the apparent detail that all those Brazilians ‘heading the ball’ here in Europe have not notedly had a detrimental effect on the rate at which Brazilian football produces outstanding new stars. In fact quite the contrary.
Now here’s the rub: just think of all those Indian IT ‘stars’ working at NASA, Microsoft and the like, and try to imagine the consequences back home in India. Well then try to imagine the consequences of the secondary effect in India on the employment situation in the US and now increasingly in Europe, and we get to the point of all this. We are experiencing a phenomenon which some are calling ‘hollowing out’. This has been noticed in the first place in the US, but with the EU structural reforms, and the relatively high euro, this tendency is going to make itself felt more and more over here. So this is the purpose of the post. To find out what people think.
Continue reading
From Gunboat Diplomacy to Compassion?
The sinking of a boatload of Somali immigrants off the island of Lampedusa seems to have set off something akin to a feeling of collective remorse in Italy. (Would that the human tragedy that is occuring on a regular basis just off the straits of Gibraltar could provoke a similar reaction here in Spain!) Indeed Belusconi (always the master of great theatre) appears to have had them near to tears over in Strasbourg.
Irony apart, even his old ‘enemy’ – the good-soldier schultz – is quoted as saying he has “the impression that what Mr Berlusconi said came from the heart”. He could not however resist a reference to remarks which were last year attributed to Italian Reforms Minister Umberto Bossi to the effect that he wished the navy would open fire on ships carrying illegal migrants. Schulz is quoted as saying: “We are very happy that it is not those members of your government who want these boats sunk who are responsible for this issue in the (EU) home affairs council.”
Well this is the second time this month I find myself asking whether Berlusconi is having a change of heart. Since I try not to engage in type M speculation, I don’t need to answer this. What we might note is the way Interior Minister Pisanu is making the direct link with Italy’s ageing population and (hence) pension difficulties. After the Greeks tried to raise the question in Thessalonika, we could ask ourselves whether the South of Europe (where the demographic collapse is most profound, and immigrants are traditionally less in evidence) is about to adopt a collectively different approach on this question.
Continue reading
IGC: ‘Decisive Measures’ Needed?
Well it certainly seems to have gone eerily quiet over here. Meantime the Intergovernmental Conference has been working its weary way onward. Perhaps it’s a measure of the magnitude of the boredom that no-one has felt sufficiently inspired to get down to writing about it. This definitely hasn’t been the case with fellow blogger Eurosavant, who has a substantial piece reviewing the response across some parts of the European press. His principal conclusion on the progress: there hasn’t been any. His feeling: that we Europeans need to ‘be more decisive’. Maybe he has a point. He certainly is right that pragmatically this might have been better sorted-out if things had been done before the membership expansion. I suppose in the end we will ‘muddle through’. I don’t share the disintegration perspective, I don’t really think there’s anywhere else to go in an increasingly interconnected world, but equally I don’t really suppose we have missed an opportunity to inspire the world with our dynamic and vigourous European leadership. I don’t think things ever were going to pan out in that direction. The future is looking as if it’s going to have a decidedly Asian flavour about it.
Continue reading
Immigration: Europe’s Difficult and Perplexing Road to Reform
The Economist has a couple of useful pieces this week ( here and here ) comparing the politics of immigration in the US and the UK. Meantime US economist Richard Freeman has an NBER paper where he argues we should “Stop spending so much time thinking about the WTO. Technology transfer, international migration, and financial crises have orders of magnitude more important impacts on human welfare and the state of the economy”. In other words globalisation is not after all so much about trade as about labour migration and capital movements. And just how is Europe shaping up to the challenge? Well, by all accounts, not very well. But a surprising proposal has just surfaced from a very unexpected quarter. Immigrants in Italy may (eventually) get the right to vote. Even if this is a very limited proposal, it is certainly a positive one. I am just very surprised by its source.
Continue reading
Spain in the Line of Fire?
OK here’s a post about Spain that’s all in English. Juan informed comment Cole has a piece about the assasination of the Spanish intelligence officer in Bagdhad yesterday. Cole argues that Bernal may have been singled out in an attempt to get at Spain, who may be seen as a ‘soft’ target. Support for Aznar’s Iraq policy has never been exactly universal in Spain, and elections are due early next year. There is a big disconnect between the declarations of Spanish politicians in the international arena and what they say here in Spain. Officially Spain hasn’t even participated in a war, and any Spanish deaths in Iraq are highly sensitive. Cole’s speculation about the Baathist connection seems to be borne out by the statement from the Spanish government about the victim’s long-standing connections with Iraqui security.
Continue reading
Off the Hook Again
Now since nothing in life ever comes entirely free, a post to balance my last one (as we say in Spain: one hot one and one cold one). The French are to be given an extra year to get their fiscal act together. This is more a sign of impotence than a seal of approval. In the end I agree with this approach, there is really nothing – except ridicule – to be gained from imposing a symobolic fine. But the point is that this should not be necessary. Everything here seems to be calculated. But still Austria, the Netherlands and Finland don’t seem too happy. So how fine is the calculation? How often can you take advantage of the impotence of the other before a limit is reached? I have no answer to this, but I know the answer is out there somewhere. I guess we’d better all just hope the EU Commission growth provisions are fulfilled, and that we aren’t going to see an even worse re-run of this next year.
Continue reading