China Mountain Xiang seemed a little far-fetched to me when I first read it, but rather less so now.
Andrew:
Your point, then, is that politicians need to be in tune with the voters. So... work to persuade the voters that the "special relationship" isn't a good idea, and let the politicians know they're losing popularity. Even if it doesn't work, it's better than sitting around wringing your hands.
Apparently not. All I can come up with is that rather silly attempt by the Tories to suggest that he wasn't Man Enough to use our "independant" nuclear deterrant. What have I missed?
Make it clear to our rulers that it's not in their political interests to be Imperial client-states?
Actually, the context (or at least the source) is quite entertaining in its own right - there's a link in the article for when you get tired of imagining.
My main memory of John Lennon's death is listening to the 5,271,009th repetition of "Imagine" (then playing around the clock on every radio and TV channel) and realizing that, although I had nothing against the man, I never wanted to be reminded of That Bloody Song ever again. Which was a shame because I think that under other circumstances I might have come to like his music.
I don't know about Italy, but a significant amount of casual agricultural labour (agricultural casual labour?) here in the UK is done by recent immigrants with little English, good reasons not to talk to the authorities, or both. These days they're more likely to be East European than Indian or Pakistani, but plus qui change...
My take (although it's unlikely to be popular) is that it's just another case of badly-thought-out lawmaking rather than an assault on freedom of speech. It's not about banning certain types of speech - it's just a law with a nasty loophole that could be used to do that.
We see a lot of this sort of reporting from the anti-EU press in Britain: take a stupid piece of legislation, put the worst possible spin on it, and hold it up as evidence of malice on the part of the nasty EU Bureaucrats who want to Steal! Our! Sovernity! In this case, I think it's just another attempt to reinforce the "Technocratic European Superstate" meme.
Can anyone with a better knowledge of EU law comment on what would happen if a free-speech based challenge to this made it to the European Court of Human Rights? They've dealt pretty well with local instances of this kind of thing in the past.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 4 |
| 2003 | 5 |
Total: 10 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Sam Dodsworth:
Show all comments by Sam Dodsworth.