Cripes, I need to get posted to Bulgaria which this week has introduced a 10% flat rate on its income tax.

From January 1 2008, income of physical persons in Bulgaria will be taxed at a flat tax rate of 10 per cent, Parliament decided on December 17, when it accepted in second reading changes to the Law on taxation of income for physical persons.

Income from life-insurance contracts after the end of the contracts, would be taxed at 7 per cent, Dnevnik dialy said.

Income taxes on dividend and liquidation of shares will be five per cent in 2008.

A quote from the German Catholic website Kreuz.net, 2 January 2008 [English translation here]

The well-known Turkish nationwide television station ‘Show TV’ aired on 8th, 15th and 29 November 2007 a new episode of the old series “Kurtlar Vadisi-Pusu” – The Valley of the Wolves. [...] The film is about the relationship between the state and four powerful Mafia families, which in the film control the economic life of the country.

A quote from the German-Turkish author Zafer Senocak in the German weekly Die Welt, 29 December 2007 [English translation here, French translation here]

Even if most Muslims refuse to face this truth, terrorism comes from the very heart of Islam, arriving straight from the Koran. […] You do not encounter the true face of Islam at the Conference of German Islam. You find it in countries like Pakistan. That Islam launched a world war. But the world acts as if it never heard anything about it. For many of our contemporaries, the battle is being waged far beyond Turkey. But in the modern planetary village, there is no "far beyond". There is only a "right on your doorstep." […]

A quote from the editorial in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard, 3 January 2008

American presidential elections are not “home affairs.” American decisions have repercussions all over the globe. The American mortgage crisis affects banks in Europe. The insatiable American demand for oil makes the Arabian sheiks rich. The American refusal to care for the environment causes the North Pole ice to melt and coastal areas in Asia to flood. A weakened dollar and an immense budget deficit affect the global economy.

Politicians who run for office need loads of campaign cash. The candidates in this year’s presidential campaign are busy raising money from corporate America. Critics warn that this makes politicians dependent on big business, because the politicians are obliged to do something in return once they get elected. Some liberals are proposing to outlaw corporate donations and replace them by state subsidies. They cite Europe as the example to follow.

Walking past the European Parliament building in Brussels yesterday I noticed this sign to the visitor's centre (said to be Belgium's leading tourist site). Spot the deliberate mistake.

EU Referendum helpfully brings despatches from our great capital which, for six months only, is a little place called Ljubljana (population 276,000) in the mountain Republic of Slovenia. From here the affairs of the EU presidency will be run for the next six months. Actually, that is not entirely true.

The Financial Times reports that China is to introduce taxes on grain exports.

Exporters of 57 types of grain, including wheat, rice, corn and soya beans, will have to pay temporary taxes of between 5 and 25 per cent, the country’s Ministry of Finance said on Sunday.

We in the European Union are currently subsidizing the Common Agricultural Policy to the tune of dozens of billions a year, meanwhile China is introducing export taxes on grain... of up to 25%. Now the Chinese don’t do things by accident.

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown".

As I write, in solsitio brumali, I am much in need of a light to see clearly into 2008. For bookmakers, clairvoyants and bloggers, prediction is a risky business and always likely to lead to copious amounts of egg on the face. But no one could say other than that 2008 will be another fascinating year.

I bought this book, mainly due to seeing it too often referenced by authors I admire (James Bennett being a case in point). And despite its relative antiquity (it was written in 1978) it is still a draft of intellectual cold, still water. Essentially in this book Professor MacFarlane attempted to swim against 150 years of received opinion about the development of the distinctive political and social milieu of England (and yes it is about England rather than the United Kingdom or Britain that he writes).

He had been drawn to this by his previous work on witchcraft in which he noted that in England witches were remarkably different to their continental cousins (In England covens and cannibalism were virtual absent, as was intense sexuality and a hatred of the newly wealthy, instead English witches were individualistic, decorous and essentially targeted their wrath against those who were a drag on society). If witches were so different then it surely suggests that society itself was different?