No doubt the usual suspects will be hugely enjoying the claim by Austria’s hard-right interior minister Elisabeth (Liesl) Prokop that 45 per cent of Muslims are “unwilling to integrate”. In fact, it’s more than a claim - as well as rhetoric, she’s got a “study” to support her election positioning. Unfortunately, the study still isn’t [...]

Since the withdrawal of the CPE and the resulting collateral damage to Dominique de Villepin, not to mention Nicolas Sarkozy’s unexpected appearance as a unity figure at the height of the crisis, it’s rapidly being promulgated as conventional wisdom that France “is ungovernable”/refuses to “reform”/cannot be “reformed”. There is only one problem with this discourse, [...]

I suppose I should be happy that there is a recent, one-volume general history of the Hungarians. Their history is not exactly the stuff of bestsellers, even if Hungarians were crucial in everything from computers to the atomic bomb to Hollywood studios. Ten million people, give or take, speaking a non-Indo-European language in and around [...]

What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it?
Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes, was published 20 years ago; [...]

Two years ago, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung began publishing a series of 50 great novels from the 20th century. It’s a good list, and I’ve been slowly reading my way through it. Emphasis on slowly. The newspaper never planned on keeping the editions in print indefinitely, and indeed, the smartly designed and inexpensive (EUR 4.90!) hardbacks [...]

Chris “Stumbling and Mumbling” Dillow has a very interesting post on signs of German economic recovery. Interestingly, the bellwether Ifo confidence index has shown a dramatic uptick, reaching its highest level since 1991. Dillow proceeds to examine its correlation with the DAX stock market index.
Now, as Chris points out, DAX-constituents are likely to be the [...]

Discuss, if you like, to what extent the following quote is still applicable today. To what extent is success policy-driven, if there is any success at all, and not the accidental consequence of the actions of a few exceptionalist individuals? Where does Europe stand right now? Should we still count our blessings? Please keep the [...]

Everyone’s been terribly worried about France. First of all, last autumn’s carburning outbreak saw a lot of people who really ought to know better gathering to hail the end of days and the Islamofascist conquest of Eurabia, or something. Now, the students are out on the streets to protest the government’s new labour laws, and [...]

Today is Saint David’s day, or Dewi Sant, so greetings to you all everywhere. As you know I am not a person with nationalist sentiment, but a good excuse for a celebration is always fine with me. One of my cousins, she must be in her seventies now, wrote to remind me:
“Greetings to [...]

“I suggest you blog Barca vs Chelski later this week, in order to disperse the fog of wonkishness that hangs over AFOE.”
Alex Harrowell
Well, to please Alex even if it will please no-one else, I will. I have just two wordsto say: Leo Messi.

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