Usually, it’s impossible to argue with people who make comparisons between the incumbent US administration and various past totalitarian systems, particularly when the argument turns to a comparison between George W Bush and the Austrian guy with the Charlie Chaplin moustache. Whatever you think of George W Bush and his administration - still a mystery [...]

2000 British readers of the Radio Times voted Homer Simpson for President. The cartoon character tops a list of several fictional TV characters, which UK tellly viewers would prefer as US president. According to the BBC, “The West Wing’s” “real” fictional US President, Josiah Bartlet, polled second, only slightly ahead of radio therapist Frasier (link [...]

While most observers still expect a compromise between incoming Commission president Barroso and those groups in the EP which threatened to block his entire team over the Buttiglione row - Mr Barroso will meet with leading MEPs tomorrow -, according to EUPolitix.com’s press review, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reports that Rocco Buttiglione may “resign” today [...]

For all its amazing sensoric and analytical abilities, more often than not the human mind is simply overwhelmed with the world’s complexity, confused by its uncertainty. Philosophers have dreamed of an easy life without the pain inflicted by their insatiable urge to reflect, to question everything, to leave no stone unturned.
Of course, no philosopher is [...]

There’s a fair amount of talk again this week about the various government deficits and what to do with them. Earlier in the week the FT had a piece about the current state of play with the US deficit whilst the Economist is busy musing one more time over the ongoing saga of the [...]

It’s sometimes interesting to give some thought to the things we believe, and don’t believe, about people. For some George W Bush is one of the most ruthless US Presidents we have seen in years, for others he is apparently the perfect gentleman, playing exactly by the rule book:
Financial markets may be all ears on [...]

I have already posted on my own blog about what I see as the surreal consequences which might follow from this wish becoming a reality. If what I think happens next to the Spanish economy really does happen - and I have no doubt whatsoever that the housing bubble will crash one or other of [...]

As someone who lives and works in Barcelona (capital of Catalonia, and formal definition in the eyes of the local nationalists of being Catalan), it is really rather frustrating to find that about the only time we make it to the European headlines (apart, of course, from when Bar?a wants to buy some world famous [...]

I’m mighty flattered that I’ve been promoted to “guest blogger extraordinaire” even though I’ve been silent the whole of this year so far (due mainly to illness). Sorry about that!
Well, here goes.
Take a look at this Czech press review from today, in which Prague daily Lidove Noviny reports that Miroslav Grebenicek, the Communist [...]

Jiri Pehe – once an advisor to Vaclav Havel, now an academic and a go-to man for international journalists seeking smart quotes about Czech politics — once pointed out to me that Czech president Vaclav Klaus is more anti-integration than just about every mainstream politician in Europe with the exception of one branch of the [...]