Sunday Thinkpiece: interference

‘It is not for us to interfere’, I wrote at the end of a post on Egypt, but of course that is not how everyone will see it. There is a certain type of politician who sees interference in other countries’ troubles as quite acceptable. Tony Blair was one such, and indeed often said he saw it as his moral duty. A bit patronising, but he’s not alone. So what will be going on in the emergency committees of the Great Powers (Britain’s committee goes by the spy-thriller name of COBRA, which stands for the more mundane Cabinet Office Briefing Room A)?

There is an interesting parallel between the Second Gulf War and the Vietnam War. Both left the public slightly sickened at what military intervention could do, and both left the public depressed at what interference could not do. There was the feeling that an inordinate amount of damage had been caused and we lost; either one of those might be acceptable, but not both. I exclude the First Gulf War because its purpose was to rescue an ally from invasion and it succeeded in that (I personally had grave doubts, believing that we went in to rescue the al-Sabah family rather than the people of Kuwait, and still wonder if they were worth rescuing).

But the Vietnam War and the Second Gulf War left the West in the position that no further international adventures would be tolerated by its people (at least not for a while). Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron, representing the great Western military powers, know that whatever they think personally, it will all have to be done by the book. ‘Soft Power’ would be best.

The Maghreb is going through one of its periodic transformations, as serious for its people, in my view, as the decline of the Roman Empire and the takeover of the forces of Islam in the 7th century. In more recent times the area went from colonial subjugation to government by the anti-colonial rebels, and now these partisans are old and corrupt and are having the reins taken from them. The problem is we don’t know by whom or what.

Some decry the domino theory, that this is spreading across the region, but I do not. The almost simultaneous popular uprisings and the access to new media threaten a new phenomenon. Executing a coup d’état on Facebook is, if nothing else, something new. Demographics play a part: The Arab World numbers around 300 million, around the population of America, or of the five largest European countries. But of those, 200 million are under 24 - two thirds, against around one third in America and less in Europe. The struggles for independence in the 1950s and 1960s are far, far away for most people. They are better educated, richer and want something better for themselves.

Our emergency committee will note all this and try to plot the direction of travel. In the 1950s, when a change in government in Egypt caused the nationalisation of the Suez canal and another failed intervention, the fear was that the new rulers would go over to Russia. Now the fear is that they will go over to militant Islam.

But does it matter? They will see it like this: firstly all these countries are already Muslim. It’s just a question of how Muslim. Morocco has a young king and may well not be a party to this. Algeria is a hotbed of Islamic militancy and is a risk. But against that its gas stocks are running out and it will see declining income over the next five years. It is not another Iran with almost infinite supplies. Libya is already ruled by an unreliable character and is already not a dependable ally. Tunisia is too small to make any difference. Egypt, by contrast, has a population of 80 million, and governs the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline, between them transporting around 2m barrels of oil a day (global demand is around 90m b/d). But there are alternative routes for this oil, albeit 6,000 miles longer. And why should a new government of any complexion cut itself off from this revenue?

Our committee will conclude that there is no case for intervention, and scarcely any for even soft interference. All the West has to do is to make sure China doesn’t interfere (Russia, being a net exporter of energy, won’t mind the odd competitor imploding). Let them get on with it. Let’s hope that's the conclusion. anyway

The Titian position

This from the BBC:

A 450-year-old Madonna and Child work by Titian has sold for $16.9m (£10.7m) in New York, setting a new auction record for the Renaissance master.

A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria was sold at Sotheby's to a European telephone bidder.

It beat the previous Titian auction record of £7.5m ($11.9m) paid at Christie's in London in December 1991.

Ring any bells? I reported back in August 2008 that The Duke of Sutherland had offered the nation a pair of Titians. The first would be £50 million and if we bought that we could have the other for another £50m. Apparently we have raised the money for the first and are now saving up for the second. I hadn't realised that this was nearly seven times the highest price then paid for a Titian and even now nearly five times the highest price. In fact, looking back through the newspaper archives, nothing was said about that at all.

The Duke of Sutherland said they would fetch five times his price at auction (although he would, wouldn't he?), that is to say they would each fetch 33 times the highest price ever paid for that artist.

Now, I am no art market expert, but my rat odour detector is beginning to flash.

And what is all this 'saved for the nation' stuff? The picture (both, if we can afford them) will be on display in Edinburgh and as I said at the time it would cost someone in, say, Wales, no less to see them than if they were in the Guggenheim in New York.

So who accepted this £50m figure?

That smell? A rat, surely? A perceptible rat.

Mubarak

I remember once remarking to a Cairanese taxi driver that there seemed to be a lot of police about. He said yes, but there are even more that you can’t see. Hosni Mubarak, who came to power after the assassination of Sadat, has kept a tight grip on things these 30 years. I wonder what he is thinking now.

Cairo has a population of around 8m, but the same number again come into the centre each day, working or looking for work, making the city a hotbed of talk, rumour and now violence. Nevertheless, the number involved in the demonstrations is in the tens of thousands, a tiny percentage of the population, and the number killed is a lower percentage than when the police opened fire at Kent State University forty years ago (Hillary Clinton please note, before mouthing off again about police violence). Mubarak, who was Vice President to Sadat for 6 years and before that Commander of the Airforce, is not a man of the people and will be wondering if all this will soon blow over. In this, I think, he is wrong.

As I write, we learn that Mubarak has dismissed his cabinet. He will feel that he has been let down by others; dictators always feel that. Has it spread from Tunisia? We read in the Daily Telegraph this morning that all this has been encouraged by the USA. To be double crossed after turning a blind eye to all that rendition business! And after his help in the Gulf War!

But eventually Mubarak will see that it wasn’t the cabinet the people were complaining about; that the crowd of demonstrators was growing and they were not Americans, but Egyptians; that they are burning pictures of him, and demanding that his son Gamal doesn’t take over after him.

In short, they are demanding change, and some time, maybe even this week, Mubarak will see this and go. What he will leave we can only guess. It is not for us to interfere, but we must watch it carefully, and hope.

Bad luck

This blog's congratulations to Nelson Mandela, who, despite being detained in hospital for a couple of days, has not died.

You could almost taste the disappointment of the 24hrs news media, who had to concentrate on more difficult things, like North Africa and the British education system.

The Holocaust

Today is of course the anniversary of the freeing by Russian soldiers of the survivors of Auschwitz and is observed in many countries as Holocaust Memorial Day.

Of course at the time, in 1945, the Russian Gulags were already open and many more would be built; not long afterwards millions died in China for a belief no more defensible than antisemitism; persecution of religious and tribal minorities still goes on in Africa, and we have had ethnic cleansing as close as the Balkans.

Holocaust Memorial Day is important to some, but there is no practical value to it; it has not brought an end to these horrors and nor will it ever. It is an opportunity for smug politicians to make worthy speeches. You can read them in the papers tomorrow. I shan't.

Ship of Fools

A strange tale to tell. In 1983 the people of West Belfast, which is part of the United Kingdom but scarcely part of the real world, elected as their MP one Gerard Adams, a terrorist.

Adams did not take up his seat in Parliament, not believing that West Belfast was subject to Her Majesty the Queen but, hypocritically, accepted an office and staff allowances.

Now he has decided to leave, indeed quit the country, and try for election in the Irish Republic later this year. I don’t suppose it matters very much to his constituents, who haven’t been represented in Parliament anyway.

But there is a problem. The only way an MP may resign is by taking an office for profit under the Crown, which of course Mr Adams does not want. He sent a notice of resignation to the Speaker of the House of Commons and thought that was that. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that he has been appointed to such an office, the Prime Minister has announced it in Parliament and Mr Adams says he has accepted no such thing.

Now, I am all for a bit if intrigue, a bit of political point scoring, and have no truck with Mr Adams who, as I say, is or was a terrorist, but all this is daft. It is like children bringing some abstruse rule of their sport to catch out someone with less detailed knowledge. It makes Britain look daft.

Here is what I propose:

- if you don’t take up your seat in Westminster within a certain time (and taking up your seat involves the oath of loyalty to the Queen) you can’t have an office or expenses and a by-election must be held so the constituents can confirm they don’t want to be represented at all.

- If you want to leave office just write a letter and there will be a by-election.

Many in the House of Commons – and this seems to include the Prime Minister - are cackling with delight at this confusion. They shouldn’t be. It makes us all look like fools.

The hand that feeds them

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports on a survey carried out for it on Germans and how they regard the EU.


67% had little or no trust in the EU.

Only 12% favour faster integration

68% have little or no trust in the single currency.

These responses are at almost British levels of euroscepticism. It is only one opinion poll but it shows increasing intolerance, and this will surely become a feature of the German political scene. There is a string of regional elections in Germany due this year and we shall be watching them closely.

If Germans come to see the EU in black and white terms, as hard working Germany bailing out idle Mediterranean countries, there may come a time soon when Angela Merkel will be faced with a choice: the bailout programme or re-election.

Hacking

Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, has asked police to investigate whether his phone was hacked while he was Chancellor, joining Sienna Miller and several others. Soon it will be the turn of the ‘C’ list celebrities and you won’t be able to get on a reality TV show unless you can claim the News of the World had got into your ‘phone.

Perhaps we are not being told something, but I think it is worthwhile recalling exactly what is alleged to have gone on. Phones have voicemail, what we used to call an answerphone, so if you don’t answer a call – let’s say you are asleep – the caller can leave a message. These messages are accessed by the owner of the phone, even from another phone, by entering in a 4-digit number. The phone manufacturer usually sets this as 0000 or 1234 and you can change it to your choice, but most people don’t bother. The guilty reporters are said to have called a number at a time when it wouldn’t be answered, and guessing the 4-digit code to access the voicemail. Technically this isn’t hacking but let that pass.


So what we are being asked to believe is that despite there being all night staff at the Treasury, the controller of the nation’s finances simply doesn’t answer his phone if he is in a meeting or asleep. The Governor of the Federal Reserve, not realizing this, leaves a message ‘Hi Gordon, Ben Bernanke here, I wanted to talk about your plans to pour tens of billions into the banking system, which will depress the pound against the dollar’. Gordon has set his voicemail code as 4321, to be clever, but the wily hack guesses this and the story is out.

As I say, it may be we aren’t being told something, but it looks more likely to me that this is a simple case of paranoia.

Sunday thinkpiece: setting an example

I remember when some footballer – it might have been Wayne Rooney or it might have been any of a number of others – committed some idiocy or act of unfaithfulness, there being a call for him to ‘set an example’. And I thought ‘why should he, though?’ – here is some uneducated thug with more money than is really good for him who regularly receives the adulation of other uneducated thugs with less money than they’d like. Where in the deal does it say he should be in part responsible for the behaviour of a younger generation? That he should conduct himself in a manner befitting.... what?

But our protestant morality makes us keen to condemn. I once compared imaginary newspaper headlines with an Italian. We came up with

England: John Smith – my three in a bed shame

Italy: Forza Giovanni! Two in one night!

So how should we regard the doings of the famous? Who should be setting an example? Obviously times change: there was a time when a politician getting a divorce would have had to resign, but not now. Let’s take the example of a judge. If his marriage breaks down it is just unfortunate. Surely there is no reason for criticism. Supposing His Lordship indulges himself perfectly legally with a prostitute – aaah!, we are beginning to think, respectable pillar of society sees tart! – but prostitution is legal as long as it does not involve pimping, kerb crawling, keeping a brothel etc. And it would not affect his ability to do his job, as it would if he had been caught with his hands in the till. But we would like him to behave with Victorian propriety, setting an example.

Now politicians. After the recent resignation of Alan Johnson, the shadow chancellor, there was no suggestion he might have behaved better – nor, I think, should there have been. Boris Johnston, the Mayor of London, is said, by the girl in question, to have persuaded her to have an abortion, and, it appears, has fathered a child with another woman while still married. There seems to be no suggestion that this behaviour should disqualify him from office. Should there be? What would disqualify him?

And so, to the inevitable Silvio Berlusconi. Let us suppose for a second that he is not convicted of sleeping with an under age prostitute (by the way, this is an odd law. Prostitution is very common in Italy; is the man supposed to demand a girl’s ID before giving in to her charms? And lumped in with having sexual relations with her is the Clintonesque ‘Palpazione concupiscente’ which means, more or less, heavy petting or groping). Anyway, let’s assume that he is not guilty of that (which would, I have no doubt, be a resignation issue) what has he done?

And yet we all know, at least the press do, but I think the people as well, that he has not been setting an example, that he has let the country down, or as Gianfranco Fini colourfully put it, ‘muddied the good name of Italy’. Why, though? Is it because he was elected to represent his country and his private life must be whiter than white? What about Boris Johnston, elected to represent a city more populous than Switzerland or Ireland?

I think there are two answers. One is that Boris, the cheeky chappie, can look a bit of a victim of circumstance whereas Silvio, the worldly wise self made billionaire, looks as if he is above the rules. And the second is that Berlusconi seems to be a serial performer, creating an overall impression of falling short of the ideal.

Should there be rules as to what a politician can and can’t do? Should they be nuanced, such as (sorry to bring up Clinton again) smoking a joint but not inhaling? I think not. Voters must see things in the round, the overall picture. Churchill is an obvious example: no one complains about his drunkenness, in the light of his having been so magnificent in the war. Perhaps people perceive Boris as a wonderful mayor of London. They will turn a blind eye to his little peccadilloes if he makes a success of the Olympics, as they will to Wayne Rooney as long as he keeps scoring goals.

And Berlusconi? Well, he needs to chalk up a success or two. With that to show off, people will forgive anything. And anyone.

Brian Cowen

One thing which hasn't been said about the resignation of Brian Cowen, the Prime Minister or Taoiseach of Ireland, is that he was the least attractive political leader in the world.

It is a tribute to Cowen that in an age where politicians are expected to be as smooth as game show hosts he got to the top while remaining unashmedly ugly.

How is Silvio?

Not too good, if you read the papers. 'Everyone is against him except the United Nations' wrote la Stampa. Even the Pope has weighed in, and I must say, having your morality questioned by someone who was a member of the Hitlerjugend and then turned a blind eye to paedophilia in the Church must leave its mark on a man.

But as so often there is a disparity between what the press thinks and what the public think. In a poll conducted by Ipsos for the University of Milan, whilst 70% did not think he was being persecuted by the courts, they did not intend to punish him at the polls. Most people, it would appear, think there is no realistic alternative to Berlusconi.

But still the stories roll in. The Guardian eagerly quotes Nadia Macrì, who, you will recall, was mentioned in this blog back in November for charging €5,000 to Berlusconi but only €300 to the Minister of Public Administration, as follows:

'after sharing a swimming pool with an allegedly nude prime minister and five or six other girls, she watched as he headed for a room used for massages.


"After a bit, he said: 'Next one. Next one.' And every five minutes we opened the door and had sexual relations. One at a time."

This would be a remarkable performance for any man, let alone a 74 year old. It is probably worth another 100,000 votes to Berlusconi.

How the other half live

The Opposition finance spokesman, or Shadow Chancellor, Alan Johnson, has resigned. Half the media seems to think it is because he was having an affair with a civil servant, whilst the other half think it is because his wife is having an affair with his bodyguard. Perhaps both are true.

So, where was the bodyguard when....no, let's not go there.

Mr Johnson is 60, and, one would have thought, extremely busy. He does not appear to have resigned out of shame about his marriage, but because he found it difficult worrying about the press. I don't really know whether these people should be setting an example to the nation or not. I rather think that sort of thing went out of the window some years ago, except when talking about Silvio Berlusconi.

Anyway, details of Mr Johnson's private life have been leaked to one of the Sunday papers by an assistant to Ed Balls, Mr Johnson's replacement. Happy days.

Booze and bad behaviour

The British Government is about to impose minimum pricing for alcohol, with the result that a bottle of wine will cost at least £2.10 (€2.50) and a bottle of spirits at least £11.40 (€13.70). This idea is very wrong, and in a number of respects.

They say it is targeted at the 25% of people who drink more than the Government guidelines, a group amongst which I number myself. It’s not, though. It’s targeted at poor people; people who don’t fit into the social category of our rulers and therefore need to be controlled. Poor people sometimes want to get drunk.

This is a tax on behaviour the political class doesn’t approve of. Now, in my opinion, the State has no business regulating behaviour. We did not elect it for that.

I might mention in passing that this is not a good time to be taxing poor people.

The economist and statistician Sir Robert Giffen identified what has become known as the Giffen good. This is a good for which demand can rise as the price rises, a reversal of the traditional demand and supply equation. An example used is the price of bread for a poor family. Because of a rise in the bread price, the family has less disposable cash, and so cuts down on the more expensive things – meat, cakes etc, and makes up for the loss of food by buying more bread, still the cheapest thing on the shopping list.

For a poor family used to heavy drinking, alcohol can be a Giffen good. Following this discriminatory price rise they could well be drinking the same, cutting back on other things, or more.

Lastly, as I have said before, we shall begin to solve the problem of alcohol induced loutishness once we realise that it has nothing to do with price. Here in Italy, where wine costs a third of these levels and spirits a half, there is nothing like the problem that exists in the UK. This problem stems from the collapse of the family and the normative moral relativism encouraged by bien pensant liberals – the idea that there is no moral standard by which to judge others and so we should not judge them. Or as my grandparents would have put it, there is no sense of shame.

The problem, and I accept that there is a problem, has everything to do with social liberalism and nothing to do with the price of lager. We should either let people behave as they like - which may be preferable - or we should teach them how to behave, not punish them when they don't.

Italian Economics explained

A letter to the Financial Times

Sir, Italians love their friends and relatives but do not trust other Italians. This is why they save a lot and their private affluence is so high (as described by Rachel Sanderson in “Wealth of the nation is a private matter”, December 23). There are, however, four corollaries.
One, Italians do not invest in their enterprises, which remain small.

Two, those who can (mainly the self-employed) do not pay taxes.

Three, they do not care about value for (tax) money (and elect politicians who care even less).

Four, they manage to export enough to pay the oil bill, despite the small size of their enterprises. Of course, points two and three build up in public debt.

In the short term this may protect the country from financial shocks. Is it sustainable in the long run? According to most economists it is not. Italians do not have the technology (because of point one) and the level of education (because of two and three) to compete in the global arena. However, point four is a puzzle. Does an economic talent exist that does not depend on technology and education? If it does, Italians may continue to enjoy their “amoral familism” for some time yet.

Sergio Lugaresi,

Rome, Italy

Wikiluvvies

Anyone who uses the service will know that it was Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary last week. I have been using it almost since the day it began and have found it most useful. And it is getting better and better. And it’s free.


There is only one criticism I have heard, exemplified by this mean spirited little article in the Guardian

‘Still, it's more fun than Wikipedia, which celebrates its 10th anniversary today. Like many 10-year-olds, its grip on reality isn't strong. I once read my own Wikipedia page....’

Yes, it is the self-important who find it unsatisfactory. The celebrity broadcaster Jeremy Paxman once made a huge to do about something inaccurate on his page, and it turned into such a snivelling fuss that people were queuing up to alter the page and make it even funnier.

Wikipedia is updated by humans and there are mistakes. But most articles are referenced and you can use it as the start of a piece of research. Most of us who are not self-worshipping luvvies find it excellent.

What Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, needs to do next is create a separate Luvvypedia or Wikiluvvy so these people can read about themselves to their hearts’ content without using up the bandwidth.

Sunday Thinkpiece: The lessons of Tucson

To many of us outside the USA it seems that mass shootings are a common occurrence there, and we found it a bit of a surprise that the most recent one, in Tucson Arizona, should achieve such notoriety. Anything which can capture the American media for a week has to be exceptional.

Perhaps a Democratic congresswoman being severely injured has raised the temperature a bit, and it is indeed a time of overheated political debate, as the electorate reconsiders its views on Obama, and mulls over the media successes of the new right Tea Party movement. Congresswoman Giffords is Jewish and in favour of abortion and these two aspects have received a lot of media coverage, largely to no conclusion.

In truth we know very little about the motives of Jared Lee Loughner, who seems, if not deranged, a bit odd, a loner, perhaps the sort of chap you wouldn’t mind knowing but wouldn’t want owning a gun. As to his politics he has said that he is equally interested by the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf (anyone who says either of these books is interesting simply hasn’t read them).

Gun control, or lack of it, is what the foreigners say, and indeed Arizona has some of the laxest gun laws of any state. Loughner’s pistol had an extended magazine, of the sort which would have been illegal in the USA if they hadn’t relaxed the restrictions on assault weapons in 2004. He bought the ammunition in Walmart.

Most non-Americans cannot understand why gun ownership should be called ‘the right to bear arms’, a romantic euphemism which seems to muddy the waters of reality, and why it should be so loosely regulated. I must admit myself, amid brief flashes of understanding, to finding it a bit confusing. The aim of the Second Amendment was to make everyone equal, as a tool against tyranny so it wasn’t just the ruling class which had the guns. Malcolm X’s Black Power Movement raged against gun control, advising its followers to grab a gun before it was only the police which had them. I remember hearing a Texan say he kept a gun in case the Federal Government staged an unconstitutional coup. It is unimagineable that any politician would have the courage to regulate gun ownership. Americans have to live with it.

The current media fad, led by the liberal leaning New York Times, is to blame it on Sarah Palin. It seems that Ms Palin put out publicity on target seats they could win (does the word ‘target’ make you itch for an automatic weapon? Thought not) with these seats marked by the crosshairs of a gun sight. It seems also that one of her favourite phrases is ‘don’t retreat – reload’. The idea that these words might spur even an idiosyncratic young man to homicidal violence seems quite absurd.

But that didn’t stop President Obama, in an otherwise good speech, from suggesting a toning down of the language of politics, a rather cheap de haut en bas dig at his opponents from a politician who is on the ropes (and carries the curse of this blog). Obama has clearly forgotten that he himself said ‘when they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun’.

So it wasn’t the dialectical politics of the last century, or the confrontational politics of this one. It was a young loner raging against the machine. Mr. Loughner who, unlike most protagonists of mass violence, did not manage to end his own life, will go through the judicial process and perhaps be executed. Motives will be attributed and discarded and slowly he will be forgotten.

The lesson which will be drawn from Tucson is that there is no lesson to be drawn.

The first domino?

In my post of the 12th January I voiced my fears that the unrest on the streets of the Maghreb countries could be the start of something worse. Now we see: the immovable dictator Zine Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia has gone, fled to Saudi Arabia. Ben Ali had been President since 1987, only Tunisia’s second President since independence in 1956.

He had already said he would not stand for re-election but that was not enough.

Tunisia has had growth averaging 5%, and is the most competitive economy in Africa, with the highest per capita income. It has oil and gas and what until last week was thought to be a stable government.

If Ben Ali can fall, so can the others.

Clouseau and integration

An interesting little vignette from François Fillon, Prime Minister of France, on a visit to the UK. M. Fillon, who unfortunately looks far too much like Inspector Clouseau, declared roundly that France and Germany 'will do everything, absolutely everything, to save the euro'.

He goes on
“In order to consolidate the euro we will need gradually to harmonise our economic, fiscal and social policies, hence we are going to go towards greater integration

“The question is is the UK ready to accept or encourage greater integration of the eurozone or is the UK distrustful of that and will it create obstacles and make it more difficult to happen?'

It sounded a little bit more of a threat than a plea, but that is the usual language of the integrationists so let it pass.

Britain, as Clouseau also pointed out, has a great interest in this. So assuming we don't wish to join (and the Government could never get a law passed, even if it wanted to), and that we, as the French always do, vote in our national interest on treaty change, where does that interest lie?

In one sense, what kind of a mess these people make in their own stables is a matter for them. But until we can redirect our economy towards the Far East, and away from the moribund 'Old Europe' it is in the interests of our exporters that mainland Europe be economically buoyant. Where Fillon goes wrong is to assume that that is the same as the full political integration which would be required to control the budget deficits of the new sinners (the first countries to breach the guidelines were of course, France, Germany and Italy but we have forgotten that).

But I think it is becoming clear that full integration is not the right road for Europe. It will cause massive political upheaval as those countries with an independent frame of mind dither and horse trade over a treaty change. And someone will always get round it.

The solution to Europe's problems lies either with the weak countries leaving the eurozone or, better, the strong countries leaving it. Europe's best hope is not to hold back the efficient by making them give a blanket guarantee of the inefficient. It is to let the best maximise their performace and help the weakest up that way.

We should say politely to M. Fillon that Britain's long term interest lies in the euro breaking up, and as friends, the best we can do for them is to save them from the insane, one-track minded political class that would prefer poverty to taking a step backwards politically.

We should oppose any treaty which will make Europe poorer.

Digital learning

I read that the UK has the greatest usage of digital blackboards in the world, with some 7 school classes out of 10 boasting the new technology. The equivalent in the US is 4 out of ten, and Canada 3.

The odd thing is I read it in an Italian newspaper, today's Corriere della Sera. I suppose that with an election having taken place last year, the new government doesn't want to give the old one credit for the investment.

Perhaps digital blackboards aren't a very good idea, I don't know, but one gets the feeling the UK isn't too good at blowing its own trumpet.

More from the home of the brave

''We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.'  said President Obama, which will come as a blow to the hundreds of families of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan so that Tony Blair could be taken seriously in Washington.

We're just going to have to face it: this guy is simply not on our side.

And we, of course, shouldn't be on his.