Pie Fight

Denmark

A handy overview of Danish social policy (provided by the Danish govt)

Slobo and his Tory Slobettes

Johann Hari puts the smackdown on the Tories' abettment of Slobo's ethnic war

France's selectively enforced secularism

Scott Martens has a good - and angry - post about the absurd, and unevenly prosecuted French law demanding secularism. Ie, it's used to prevent Muslim girls from wearing headscarves, but god forbid it be used to prevent Christian traditions or behaviours. And now, they are apparently saying that Muslim children will be expelled for failing to eat the meat on offer in school cafeterias. Surely this isjn't the case for Jews as well? I'd even argue that if you allow vegetarians to skip the meat on secular grounds, you have to allow Muslims to skip it on religious ones.

Opening the door to Turkey?

At AFOE, a long and intelligent post looking at potential Turkish accession to the EU, and the prejudices of a leading German who opposes it.

Is Europe unimportant because someone says it is?

Martin Jacques, fresh from whining that New Labour isn't true enough to socialist ideology, moans that Europe is neither important nor impressive enough. All I can think is that it really must be tough to come up with two column ideas per week. The cranks agree:

Europe is doing rather well, actually
Monday August 2, 2004
The Guardian

It is ridiculous of Martin Jacques (Face it: no one cares, July 29) to claim that Europe is insignificant; and this type of sloppy assertion based on anecdote rather than analysis cannot go unchallenged.

Europe's economy dwarfs those of China, India and Japan and is larger than that of the US. Europe's citizens are among the richest and best-educated on the planet. Europe has immense political power with two permanent seats on the United Nations security council and the power, if it wishes, to thwart the ambitions of the US.

Europe is collectively the second military power on the planet and its record of multiculturalism and pluralism puts to shame those eastern societies Jacques so admires. The European Union may not be a super-state, but the refusal of UK commentators and politicians to face up to the UK's role as a powerful nation within the European Union and their obsession with denigrating all things European cannot hide the fact that Europe is far from insignificant. It is indeed a superpower.
Michael Barry
The European Movement

Martin Jacques usually makes sense, but his attack on European "hubris" is as good a bit of paper-tiger mauling as I can remember seeing. Europe is no longer the world's top dog? Gosh, really? China and India are on the rise? Well I never.

Whatever made Jacques suppose for a moment that Europeans have any delusions about their place in the global order of things - or, crucially, give a damn?

Surely it is, on the contrary, a sign of European maturity that we care less about how "they" see us (whoever "they" might be) than we do about the fact that our people are, broadly speaking, better-housed, better-fed, better-clothed, better-educated and better cared for than those of any other region either now or at any time in history.

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Nor need it be said that the European project, for all its flaws, has succeeded triumphantly in its chief objective: preventing the reoccurrence of the wars that blighted the continent's history for centuries. "Face it: no one cares"? Me neither.
Alan Paterson
London

Poland cf Spain

From a Fistful of Euros, a brief comparison of accession Poland in 2004 with accession Spain in 1986. It's not a valid model, says Edward.