A quote from The Financial Times, 22 September 2006

[David] Cameron [the leader of the British Conservative Party] and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor [...] lay much of the blame for the party’s last three general election defeats on voters’ fears that the Tories would slash public services to fund tax cuts. Since becoming leader last year, Mr Cameron has pledged repeatedly that a Conservative government would prioritise economic stability over tax cuts. Mr Osborne has reinforced this message, warning in June that the next Tory manifesto might not offer any up-front tax cuts at all.

[...] An official told the Financial Times: “[...] [A]s George Osborne and David Cameron have repeatedly made clear, the Conservative party will always put stability before upfront promises of tax cuts.”

Belgium is currently getting a lot of attention in tech circles because Google Inc. lost two court cases in Belgium in barely three weeks. On Friday the American internet search company lost an appeal against a Brussels court’s requirement that Google.be publish on its home page the verdict ordering Google News on 5 September to stop publishing news excerpts and small photos from Belgium’s French-speaking (Walloon) newspapers without paying them.

A quote from Didier Reynders, the Belgian Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Finances, in a letter to a Belgian voter, 24 July 2006

Here is another example [of a peaceful multicultural society]: the city of Dearborne [sic] in the American state of Michigan. This is a town with a majority of Muslims, who declare that they are also proud Americans. The local McDonald’s serves hallal meat and the local mall is called Al Jeezera, but the inhabitants speak Arabic and English and are attached to the democratic American culture. Hence, it is perfectly possible to combine these two apparently contradictory identities. It is true, however, that in societies such as ours much remains to be done in this regard.

This week the Bertelsmann Foundation produced an opinion poll [pdf] that will be regarded as a rather large curate’s egg by those in power here in Brussels. Whilst more accurate than their own Eurobarometre polls it shows significant divergence between different nationalities and their beliefs about the future of the European Union.

Titled “EU 2020 – the View of the Europeans” it makes pretty interesting reading

Its introduction starts thus, “Opinion poll researchers tend to think of fatigue, incomprehension and displeasure in connection with the electorates of the European Union when it comes to the future of the integration project.” Well quite.

Latest in an occasional series:

As ever the European Parliament press shop springs its surprises. The first is that at last, The Spectator has finally arrived, I have only been waiting for 6 years, and here it is. Next I hope for The Business to turn up, but I am not holding my breath.

A quote from the Berlaymonster blog, 22 September 2006

Proposals to cut 2000 jobs at the European Commission have prompted the institution’s trade unions to issue warning of a strike. With the exception of the fat beggar on Schuman roundabout [where the Berlaymont building, the Commission’s headquarters, is located] who voiced concerns over a day’s lost earnings, nobody who could be contacted this afternoon gave a shit.

Assume you were a graduate student trying to make as much money as possible during the summer. You obtain a job at a resort, and you ask the manager the maximum number of hours he will allow you to work. He says you can work seven hour shifts without a break other than for necessities, with 10 hours between shifts, for an average workday of 10-1/2 hours. You agree, with appreciation. In America, you would be praised for your work ethic; but in Europe, you would be engaging in an illegal act.

The novelist Evelyn Waugh, in his 1939 political travelogue Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson, lamented domestic economic policies in Mexico and elsewhere that were contributing to the “drying up of civilization” wherein “cracks appear and widen” and “the parched nations shrink away from one another.” The most effective desiccant in this regard is surely economic protectionism, and the European Union’s trade policy, with its “Fortress Europe” approach, often bears this hallmark. For this reason, it was initially heartening to hear that the European Commission’s college of commissioners, after an informal meeting on September 19, announced a commitment to a “robust competition policy” and a desire to combat “economic patriotism” (with the standard caveat that a certain amount of “social reality stock-taking” would be necessary).

Dr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists and an occasional contributor to this website (if I had time I would translate more of his Dutch-language contributions into English), told me last week that he thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last
upheaval.” He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the majority religion in Europe before collapsing.

At the Swedish elections of last week-end, the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD, Sverigedemokraterne) got their highest score ever: 2.9% on a national basis. The party is mostly concentrated in the South of Sweden, in Skåne, and that's probably due to the influence of the nearby Danish People's Party (DF, Dansk Folkeparti). However, the party was the victim of some attempts by the antifascists to sabotage the election process.