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Anthony Zacharzewski

Anthony Zacharzewski

Working to make European democracy work. "Refreshingly free of the usual platitudes". Belge par choix, Brits door opvoeding. President of Demsoc.org but posts here are personal.

📍 Brussels

Rise above it, Nigel

Just left St James’ Park after watching Exeter get thumped 4-1 by Burton Albion. Albion looked a pretty good side, to be fair, but their manager, Nigel Clough, was on the edge of his technical area for most of the game, roaring extraordinarily complex instructions at his players like he

Swampy (part 94)

So now it’s apparently not OK to deny immigrants their rights. I get so confused.

Bad news from Spain

They were not amused, so they damaged freedom of speech. Here’s the original, which the BBC didn’t want to republish.

Rotten timber

The Daily Mail:. Democracy knows you as the poisoner of the streams of human intercourse, the fomenter of war, the preacher of hate, the unscrupulous enemy of a peaceful human society

LOLIZLINGWORDSTREET

I think the LOLinator (link leads to LOLCATS version of this blog) may be a sign of the end times.

spEak You’re bRanes

Some wonderful person has taken the risk to their sanity that is reading the Jerk Your Knee forums on the BBC and compiled the stupidest and most offensive into a blog called spEak You’re bRanes. Just great.

European anthem

It’s fairly well known that Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (the 4th movement of the 9th symphony) is the European anthem, but less well known that the European version has no words, to avoid the need to translate it two dozen times. Billy Bragg has recently retranslated the passages

Boom-bang-a-bust

As the pound and euro hit new dollar highs, New York magazine has an interesting article on the potential risks to the US economy.

English Parliament

The slightly odd proposal not to have an English Parliament, but to have a sort of English pseudo-Parliament made up of existing MPs, is “debated” on the BBC’s Jerk Your Knee message board, where a lot of angry loners passionately agree that they want English independence (even if they

National sovereignty

On the regular occasions when I get annoyed by the paranoid rantings of Eurosceptics, I like to read articles on what American politicians think about international law (for instance). Summary: they’re against it, because it might stop them doing whatever the hell they want, and damn what anyone else