This morning as I was musing over tea and boiled eggs, soldiers buttered and cut, I happened to glance down. And there was my 8 month old daughter busily scrabbling behind the fridge with a huge smile on her face. Worse still she then proceeded to pull out all the dust and bits of dried pasta that had collected there. Maybe the forthcoming generation will be more Conservative than we?
I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about the Descartes prize, the shortlist fort this year is below. I do, of course applaud all those on the list below, but have deep misgivings. The prize, a sort of EU Nobel prize for science is a noble thing indeed. And I note that out of 8 shortlisted 3 are Brits at British Universities and one is a Brit (with a Mohican) at a Finnish University. My problem is that the prize is not given purely on the work done, there is of course another criteria that is essentially unacademic and deeply political. No project can apply for the award, or have its name submitted unless the comply with this “Research teams who have obtained exceptional results from European collaborative research. The prize is open to all fields of scientific endeavour”. My emphasis. So what could and in my eyes should be applauded, as always with this shower in Brussels is tainted by its political overtones. So three cheers to them all and a loud raspberry to the organisers.
Prof Vincenzo BALZANI Università di Bologna A project based on Chemistry and nano science.
Prof Peter WEINBERGER, Center for Computational Materials Science Austria This one is about “not only the electronic and magnetic structure of novel materials but also their physical properties such as electric and magneto-optical transport”.
Prof Anders KARLSSON Kungl Tekniska Högskolan Sweden And how about “quantum cryptography for fundamentally secure communications”?
Prof Peter TOWNSEND University of Sussex Maybe you might prefer “the development of efficient photon detectors to measure low intensity luminescence”.
Dr Robert STROUD University of Newcastle upon Tyne Seems to have done some invaluable work when he “investigated the use of fault tolerance techniques to build dependable systems that are intrusion tolerant, i.e. able to continue providing a secure service, despite the presence of malicious faults (deliberate attacks on the security system)”.
Prof Howard Trevor (Howy) JACOBS University of Tampere Finland Working to “to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying mitochondrial disease”.
Prof John Francis MARTIN University College of London Studying the “pathophysiology of the cardiovascular system”.
Prof Francesco BLASI Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele All sorts of clever stuff about “extracelullar proteolysis, cell migration and cancer”.
All countries have those cheap weekly throw away TV magazines. In Belgium, the cheap weekly throw away TV magazine is called TéléMoustique. Over on Fistful of Euros there was a comment a while back a bout some German magazine/newspaper giving away books. Here the same happens. But what books do you give away in Belgium, the land of Dutroux and the Ballets Rose? Yup you give away Justine by De Sade.
I know that I am late with this, but it is truely awe inspiring.
Sellotape, those purveyors of sticky stuff have suffered an enormnous and absurd sense of humour failure.
This website belongs to The Sellotape® Company ("Sellotape").
The copyright in the contents of this site is owned by Sellotape® and users may download materials from this site for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Any other copying, re-distribution or publishing of any part of this site in any manner is not permitted. Hyperlinking to this site, is not permitted without the express prior permission of Sellotape®.
Well I suppose that I should expect the laywers to call almost immediately. (and I am deeply worried by Sellotape Rug Gripper®) .
So it has now happened. Before the ratification ofthe Constitution, we have proof that the Common Foriegn Policy is complete.
The European Union has unanimously backed a resolution at the Untied Nations general assembly condemning Israel’s West Bank barrier
It says, and the EU (which has no vote at trhe UN, but comprises of a block of 25 votes) cast its block vote against Isreal.
What is more, according to the UN's own press release, the Block votes was represented by "The representative of the Netherlands, speaking on behalf of the European Union (EU), registered opposition to the route of the barrier. But the EU disagreed with elements of the advisory opinion and supported Israel's right to act in self-defence. The most important step was for all sides to desist from further violence".
Please note here that the Union is spoken of as a singular entity. Well it seems it is goodnight from the proud nations of the European landmass.
Follow up According to Haaretz, the negotiations amongst the EU member states went on until somebody blinked. It seems that that somebody was the Brits and Italians. And which country was driving support for the Palestinian position? C'mon just take a guess now... Yup
According to Expatica Holland wants to make its Presidencuy of the EU memorable fror interferring into areas that the EU has not yet dared to go before, its "basic values and morals".
"Christian Democrat CDA party leader Balkenende hopes an exchange of ideas at the conference will stimulate moves to create a European policy in this area".
This will of course take place at what must be the most worthless of all policy boondoggles ever yet proposed by the tax and subsidise monstrosity that is the EU.
The culmination of the programme will be a European intellectual summit entitled "A citizen for Europe", involving "prominent thinkers and influential political and societal figures."
Of course, my problem with this is that I have not been invited to attend.
However the very idea of the EU starting to build up a programme of legislation based on common morals is rightly terrifying. Lord save us
Now this is interesting, and may provoke the new chap on the blog over at God Save the Queen.
The UNDP’s Human Development index for 2004 has just been published. Glancing through the figures it is no surprise to find that deep down at the bottom of the table like Sierra Leone (ranked at 177), Niger, Burkino Faso and other West African republics. The bottom 20 countries are all of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
But lets not concentrate on the bottom of the pile but instead look at the top. Now here the Index really is interesting. What is it that unites seven in the top ten, all the first six? Then 12 in the first twenty?
That guarantor of freedom and prosperity, that unimproved upon system. Ladies and gentlemen may I introduce… Constitutional Monarchy.
Though I lack some of the rigour of other more qualified writers I will have a go at why this is so.
Well I suppose that one can look at the broad brush of Constitutional history as a little like dilemma of the Red Queen in Alice through the Looking Glass. As Matt Ridley so eloquently put it in his book on environmental-biology with the same title, every organism needs to run just to keep up, and advantage will always be swallowed up by competitors. The classic example of competitive advantage is the relatively late entry into widespread telephony in Finland. Laying the land line was a nightmare what with few people masses of lakes and swamps – not to mention the midges of course. However with the invention of mobile telephony they were off. Rubber boot manufacturers started producing mobiles and bob’s your uncle, they made the evolutionary leap frog.
So back to constitutional matters. If we follow a basic historicist approach to these matters, and follow human societal development through the ages the one constant (though of course there have been setbacks at times and in places) has been the expansion of individual personal liberty. Ok, so the current government of Constitutional wreckers and cultural nihilists have taken us backward for a while, but you get my point. So into the written age and we have the example of feudalism, theocracy, absolute monarchy, this in turn is altered through oligarchy and the growth of democracy, which in turn leads to, at least in the European land mass to revolution and the republic through, in most cases murder, ideology and rapine. However the more fleet of foot monarchs could see the smoke and dust arising from their neighbours and altered themselves. Thus came the Constitutional Monarchical system that has so far shown its resilience and effectiveness. Few if any constitutional monarchies have been closed down by their peoples. I suppose that one could describe the CIA inspired referendum that did for the Savoy’s as one example and the defeat of Constantine in Greece. However both these examples come at the end of a brutal war, in which they were seen as complicit or useless. Whereas there is the shining example of Spain, in which the country has blossomed under its constitutional monarch. Look around a bit and their are other countries that would be helped by the re-introduction of their royal houses, Romania for example. Or even Afghanistan, if the Americans would allow it. Now of course there are some monarchies down at the bottom of the pile, Lesotho at 145, Nepal at 140, Swaziland at 137, Bhutan at 134. However they fit into my general theory, they are absolute autocratic monarchies who are yet to suffer revolution. In the case of Nepal there is the growing sense that the revolution will be as vile and bloody as that which replaced Sihanouk in Cambodia in the early 70’s. However rather than taking anything away from my contention that the system of Constitutional Monarchy is the most advanced form of government currently known to man, it merely confirms it.
We all know about the laywers Sue, Grabit and Runne, and no doubt all have out favourite has he got the right job for his name game. We while following up a Laban Tall piece on the absurduity of dealing with the MRSA virus (which killed one of my best friends a month agao) bu employing, a Director Of Infection Control at each hospital. Doubtless to be followed by an Assistant Director and a project team, monitors, facilitators and co-ordinators. And some secretarial support. And a PA or two. But there may be problems. Are there enough reserved car parking spaces ? And are there enough good quality hotels for all those away days, conferences and team-building exercises ?
On the British Medical association's occupational health committee, a docotor said, "Many doctors and other health professionals are apparently complacent about infection control. We need to change this perception and adopt a back to basics approach so not washing your hands becomes unacceptable."
Richard Carter over at EUObs has pulled out a fascinating story that I haven’t seen reported elsewhere. It appears that the Commission would like us to know how much of our money is going to central tax collection at an EU level. To this end Michele Schreyer, the Budgets Commissioner (who should have resigned over Eurostat) has made the proposal that "EU and national VAT should appear as separate taxes on the invoices or receipts". Currently nearly three quarters of EU funds come directly from national treasuries Hiding just under this rather good idea however is the proposal for a “corporate income tax. This alternative would take longest to implement, both from a political and from an administrative perspective, since a political agreement would be needed on the principle of achieving harmonization of the tax base, before setting a minimum rate”.
But have a look here, according to the plans we will have tax harmonisation by 2014, so in ten years, and the process will be long and slow and designed to not upset the horses. “A fully tax-based system is not realistic at this stage of EU integration and therefore not proposed. The fiscal resource would be introduced progressively as a replacement to the current VAT resource, alongside a more limited GNI resource. For any of the three options, the pace of progress towards harmonisation and for the technical preparatory work related to the introduction of a new fiscal resource will depend on the underlying political will. The Council is asked to discuss these options before the Commission draws up a roadmap with a view to the introduction, by 2014, of a genuine fiscal own resource”.
If anybody ever again tells you that there are no plans to harmonise European taxes – do direct them to this site.
