Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Friday, 9 November 2012
Eurovision 1956-2012 Recapitulated
Just because - well it's interesting to see the changes over the years in the winning songs in the Eurovision Song Contest from its inception in 1956 to the latest competition earlier this year:
Monday, 9 May 2011
Europe Day - 9 May 2011
For better or for worse today is celebrated as 'Europe Day':
- read about it here. You can read the 'Schumann Declaration' here.
For as long as I've been able to think about politics I have been broadly in favour of European unity as a concept, even if I would have voted 'no' to the EU Constitutional Treaty had a referendum on the matter been held in the UK and I would certainly also have voted a resounding 'no' to the hotchpotch that is the Lisbon Treaty had we been given a referendum on that topic. Similarly, whilst I was in theory in favour of having a single currency for the EU, I realised at the time that its introduction was being planned that it could never work long-term without complete fiscal (and probably political) integration, too - something that was deeply unpopular not just in the UK, but also in practice in other countries usually considered to be more pro-European, for example Germany and France - specially the latter, where what I will euphemistically call 'national self-interest' is a very highly-deleveloped part of the national psyche. And so, sadly, it has proved - as we have seen in the last couple of years with the shambles in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, perhaps to be followed by Spain or Italy in due course. Even now, however, I remain broadly in favour of the EU, but I do believe that certain powers need to be wrested back from the unelected European Commission, the civil service bureaucracy that runs the EU.
Anyway, folks, that's what we are marking today.
- read about it here. You can read the 'Schumann Declaration' here.
For as long as I've been able to think about politics I have been broadly in favour of European unity as a concept, even if I would have voted 'no' to the EU Constitutional Treaty had a referendum on the matter been held in the UK and I would certainly also have voted a resounding 'no' to the hotchpotch that is the Lisbon Treaty had we been given a referendum on that topic. Similarly, whilst I was in theory in favour of having a single currency for the EU, I realised at the time that its introduction was being planned that it could never work long-term without complete fiscal (and probably political) integration, too - something that was deeply unpopular not just in the UK, but also in practice in other countries usually considered to be more pro-European, for example Germany and France - specially the latter, where what I will euphemistically call 'national self-interest' is a very highly-deleveloped part of the national psyche. And so, sadly, it has proved - as we have seen in the last couple of years with the shambles in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, perhaps to be followed by Spain or Italy in due course. Even now, however, I remain broadly in favour of the EU, but I do believe that certain powers need to be wrested back from the unelected European Commission, the civil service bureaucracy that runs the EU.
Anyway, folks, that's what we are marking today.
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Spring forward, Fall back - 2010
During tonight clocks will go forward by one hour throughout the EU and we shall all 'lose' one hour of sleep.
In the UK this will mean a shift from GMT [Greenwich Mean Time] to GMT+1, otherwise known as BST [British Summer Time].
In Spain, where I am now and for the next few months, clocks are already on GMT+1, otherwise known as RST [Romance Standard Time] or CET [Central European Time] and will go forward tonight to GMT+2, known here as RST+1 or CET+1.
Clocks will go back in the Autumn, in the UK and Spain and elsewhere in the European Union, on the night of 30/31 October 2010.
Information for the UK for this and the next few years is available here - see near the bottom of the page under British Summer Time.
Information for Spain for this and the next several years is available here - see near the bottom of the page under the section Cambio Horario España 1940-2010, although the years 2011 to 2015 are covered too provisionally.
There's a nice map here covering the whole of Europe in the Telefonica website I used above for the time-change in Spain. There's also a page of useful information in this same website giving details of time-changes for 2010 throughout the world.
Have a great Summer!
In the UK this will mean a shift from GMT [Greenwich Mean Time] to GMT+1, otherwise known as BST [British Summer Time].
In Spain, where I am now and for the next few months, clocks are already on GMT+1, otherwise known as RST [Romance Standard Time] or CET [Central European Time] and will go forward tonight to GMT+2, known here as RST+1 or CET+1.
Clocks will go back in the Autumn, in the UK and Spain and elsewhere in the European Union, on the night of 30/31 October 2010.
Information for the UK for this and the next few years is available here - see near the bottom of the page under British Summer Time.
Information for Spain for this and the next several years is available here - see near the bottom of the page under the section Cambio Horario España 1940-2010, although the years 2011 to 2015 are covered too provisionally.
There's a nice map here covering the whole of Europe in the Telefonica website I used above for the time-change in Spain. There's also a page of useful information in this same website giving details of time-changes for 2010 throughout the world.
Have a great Summer!
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Age-old anti-semitism rears its ugly head in Europe
According to a recent survey, reported on here, a startling near one third of Europeans blame Jews for the economic slowdown and geater numbers think Jews have too much power in the business world.
In Spain, 74 per cent of respondents feel it is 'probably true' that Jews hold too much sway over the global financial markets, the highest in the survey. The survey used a sample size of 3,500, with 500 drawn from each of Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Spain.
(thru Barcepundit (English Edition) )
Worryingly like the 1930s; whilst I think there are undoubtedly self-serving party political motives (*) for Ed Balls having made remarks about the risk of the rise of 'far-right'(*) politics in the next few years, with the recession/depression probably impacting [negatively] on politics for at least the next 10 or 15 years, it is probable that he quite simply has a point that this is what could well happen. I've thought so for quite a while myself, too.
(*) - The spectre of the rise of 'far right' politics is always raised by left-wing socialist/labour politicians when cooking-up scare stories about threats to their own voter base by parties such as the BNP; however, such fascist parties are more accurately described as 'authoritarian-left' in my view and this is why their policies tend to appeal to renegades from left-wing parties such as the Labour Party - just as with the 'black shirts' in Britain in the 1930s and of course with the 'National Socialists' of the time in Germany. This fact bears repeating every time some jackanapes socialist tries to equate extremism exclusively with 'right wing' politics.
In Spain, 74 per cent of respondents feel it is 'probably true' that Jews hold too much sway over the global financial markets, the highest in the survey. The survey used a sample size of 3,500, with 500 drawn from each of Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Spain.
(thru Barcepundit (English Edition) )
Worryingly like the 1930s; whilst I think there are undoubtedly self-serving party political motives (*) for Ed Balls having made remarks about the risk of the rise of 'far-right'(*) politics in the next few years, with the recession/depression probably impacting [negatively] on politics for at least the next 10 or 15 years, it is probable that he quite simply has a point that this is what could well happen. I've thought so for quite a while myself, too.
(*) - The spectre of the rise of 'far right' politics is always raised by left-wing socialist/labour politicians when cooking-up scare stories about threats to their own voter base by parties such as the BNP; however, such fascist parties are more accurately described as 'authoritarian-left' in my view and this is why their policies tend to appeal to renegades from left-wing parties such as the Labour Party - just as with the 'black shirts' in Britain in the 1930s and of course with the 'National Socialists' of the time in Germany. This fact bears repeating every time some jackanapes socialist tries to equate extremism exclusively with 'right wing' politics.
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