France 2005: the quest for greatness?
It has now been a year and a half since I moved to France. I am not going to bore you with all the domestic challenges the move caused me, do not worry, but I need to mention this since I have only...
View ArticleSparkling Spain
Spain’s economy is of course booming, (as it has been for the last ten years). The inflation rate is booming too. Some even go so far as to suggest that Spain should now become a member fo the G8....
View ArticleThe liberalism of fools?
I cannot recommend highly enough Ken Macleod’s post (found via Crooked Timber) on how the “socialism of fools” – Engels’ description of anti-semitism – was accompanied by a sort of “liberalism of...
View ArticleOh We Are The Champions
Yes we are really, aren’t we. Especially if we are called Arcelor, or Danone, or Endesa, or Eni, or Enel, or Banca Antonveneta or Pekao. And what these champions have in common, and it is this which...
View ArticleSaving The Euro
Do you want to save the Euro? Well one idea for how to do it has been proposed by University of Missouri-St Louis history professor John Gillingham: reissuing the 12 national currencies that were...
View ArticleThe Catalan Statute
Well here in sunny Catalonia we don’t have a fooball team of our own right now, so maybe that’s why we chose this precise moment to hold a referendum about our future. Now the first thing to get...
View ArticleThe Bastille Day that isn’t
This is obviously just pedantry on my part but I must take issue with this all-too-common characterization of France’s national holiday: France celebrated Bastille Day on Friday with the traditional...
View ArticleThe Gay Chancellor?
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the governing Social Democrat (SPD)s got whipped, to the tune of a 10 percent drop at the polls. In Berlin, by contrast, the SPD picked up 1.1 percent, received the most...
View ArticleFranco-British Union
Well, it’s now well-blogged that in September, 1956, the French Prime Minister Guy Mollet made an offer of a union between France and Britain to the then PM, Anthony Eden. General reaction has been a...
View ArticleDepartment of Unexpected Consequences (Balkan Division)
I don’t usually cite whole articles, but this recent piece over at birn.eu is too good to miss. After years of vigorously opposing the eastwards expansion of the European Union, extreme-right-wing...
View Article
