Reino Unido (Continuación)

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

The English could be forgiven for thinking the Scots an ungrateful bunch. For 300 years they have been joined with England, enjoying the fruits that marriage brings, asking for and receiving generous gifts (home rule, for instance) while not losing their sense of identity.

Yet instead of marking their approaching anniversary with an affirmation of love or a renewal of vows, the Scots seem to be toying with divorce.

The Act of Union of January 16, 1707, brought prosperity to Scotland and pre-empted the intellectual flowering of the Enlightenment. (The English didn’t do too badly, either.) But the celebrations will be muted because the Scots can’t make up their minds whether they want to celebrate the union or whether they even want to remain a part of it.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturalezaEuropaUnión Europea, , , ,

For once, I agree and sympathise with Tony Blair. Like the Prime Minister, I do a great deal of flying, for business and pleasure, and I haven’t the slightest intention of altering my travel plans in any way. Mr Blair’s one mistake in flying to Florida for a family holiday was to offer a half-baked apology. He would have much done more good, for the global environment and for the quality of public debate in Britain, by sticking to his original position, pithily summarised by The Guardian’s front-page headline on Tuesday: “Carry on flying, says Blair — science will save the planet”.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

The religious are rallying by torchlight outside parliament this evening. In the Lords they are trying to strike out regulations in the new equality act that outlaw discrimination and harassment of gays, making it illegal to discriminate in providing any goods and services to anyone, from healthcare to hotel rooms. This is a mighty test of strength between the religious and the secular. Any peers against discrimination, get on down the Lords: the vote is at 7.30pm. Will the Tories prove to be gay-friendly?

Christians, Muslims and Jews are all fighting against the sexual orientation regulations with a wrecking clause that would render them meaningless: "Nothing in these regulations shall force an individual to act against their conscience or strongly held religious beliefs."…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

Like eruptions from an overstrained water main, revelations about the problems of Britain's armed forces burst forth daily. The word "crisis" is often abused, but it is justified here. Programmes are being slashed, training curtailed and capabilities cut as the Ministry of Defence struggles to control runaway spending.Treasury officials would say: quite right, too. The MoD's profligacy is a scandal. Why should defence be immune from pressures afflicting public spending across the board ? If we axe some warships, what does it matter? No frigates are fighting al-Qaida, or are ever likely to be.

Shis view is understandable, but misses the point.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Listen to any of Gordon Brown’s speeches and you might think that the economic wellbeing of our country is a picture of unparalleled success and prosperity.

The truth is that this rhetoric hides a darker reality. Scratch beneath the surface of the economy and you will find that the cost of living makes it harder and harder for working people to make ends meet.

The cost of living is not some abstract economic barometer that is difficult to identify with, but a reality that hits when you open your wallet. Of course there are items today which are available relatively cheaply, from clothing ranges to some electronic goods.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.

In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain's innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

In 2006 the gloves came off in the fight to define what it means to be British. Whereas the dominant response to the London bombings was confusion over how anyone raised in this country could commit such atrocities, the veil debate detonated by Jack Straw and the teaching assistant Aisha Azmi was notable for its muscularity. Sentiments that might once have been considered too insensitive were openly expressed. "The right to be in a multicultural society," argued the prime minister in a speech last month, "was always implicitly balanced by a duty to integrate, to be part of Britain." Behind these remarks was an assumption that integration is a one-way street.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

The former mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek, who died this week, was the quintessential municipal leader. He cleared slums, built houses and made the city greener. So far as I know, he never gave unsolicited advice to the British Government on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. But if he had done something so presumptuous and futile, he would have been anticipating his present-day London counterpart, Ken Livingstone.

Mr Livingstone is the host of a conference this month entitled “A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations”. His website states: “The view has been put forward that the world is going into an era of conflict and war driven by a clash of civilisations.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

Where do we get moral leadership from today? As we pick up the pieces of another swiped out festive season it's a fitting question. Is there something more to life than the endless cycle of overconsumption? How can the Iraq war or exorbitant city bonuses be justified? Increasingly it is our religious rather than political leaders who attempt to answer these difficult and pressing questions.The head of the Catholic church in England, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said in his Christmas mass: "Our nation is in great need because it is deprived of some of the greatest values of life." He spoke of the emergence of a culture that espoused "individual freedom as the fundamental value to which all others must be subject".…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión Europea,

Forty years ago, on Dec. 30, 1966, at the U.S. Embassy in London, representatives of the U.S. and British governments met, as one participant later put it, "under the cover of darkness" to sign an "exchange of notes" giving the United States the right to create what was to become a major military base on Diego Garcia, an obscure British island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In doing so they made provision for "those administrative measures" necessary to forcibly deport the entire native population of the island and the surrounding Chagos Archipelago.

While Diego Garcia has gained some attention as a key launch pad for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, few know about the expulsion of nearly 2,000 people, called Chagossians, that was eventually carried out between 1968 and 1973 to create the base.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

Catalonia, from where I write, occupies the top-right-hand part of Spain. Abutting France, it includes the Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees and the Costa Brava. Its capital is Barcelona and the country (for it feels itself to be a country) is modern, industrialised and populous — but its heart and soul are still in its wild, empty scenery, rural hinterland, and long and intermittently abused national history.

Catalonia has a lesson for the Tories in their attitude to Scottish nationalism in the year ahead. You will be hearing a lot about Scotland as the March elections to the Edinburgh Parliament loom.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

New year resolutions may be wildly unrealistic, trying to be nicer, thinner, kinder, fitter, more generous, more patient and every other good thing. But even if experience knows that resolutions are bound to be broken within days, if not hours, that's no reason not to contemplate doing better. So the same is true of politics. Next year will bring regime change at the top. In this low season for an administration that sometimes seems lost in a fog of government, drained of purpose by daily drudgery, here are some optimistic but not wildly unrealistic resolutions it might at least consider:

· Start with acts of contrition for past political sins committed by all parties.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

The union between Scotland and England has a good claim to be the most enduring and successful international partnership in history, yet the atmosphere on the eve of its 300th anniversary is anything but celebratory. If opinion polls are to be believed, a mood of sourness appears to have taken hold, with a majority of voters on both sides of the border willing to entertain the idea that it might be better for Scotland and England to go their separate ways. With the SNP going into the Scottish parliamentary elections next May ahead of the field, it is not inconceivable that divorce proceedings could begin as early as next year.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea,

Iraq - which for years has been an unmitigated tragedy - has turned into Grand Guignol, and, true to the traditions of that genre, horror and farce combine in equal measure. No doubt we should rejoice that al-Jamiat police station in Basra has been destroyed and its prisoners taken to the relative security of a compound in which detainees are hopefully not routinely tortured. But if a sick satire on an obscure television channel included a sketch about British troops attacking a unit of the police that they established and with whom they had been theoretically working for nearly four years, the outcry would not have been limited to complaints about undermining the morale of our troops under fire.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

You have, if you are an Anglican, probably just attended your first church service of the year. You go to the dentist as often. But that’s all right: this is the Church of England. You don’t have to wear God on your sleeve in this country. We enjoy a subtle, restrained, understated form of religiosity that is compatible with staying at home on Sunday mornings and quietly cringing at dinner parties when cruder souls raise the subject of God.

Does this sketch still ring true? Only partly. The English way of religion is on the way out. Our traditional religious culture is being radically reshaped, and it’s happening surprisingly fast.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, , , ,

George Monbiot asserts that the EU emissions trading scheme is a red herring (Ministers know emissions trading is a red herring and won't work, December 19). The truth is the argument that he puts - that Britain should, or could, tackle aviation emissions on its own - is the diversion.There is no question that combating climate change is the most serious challenge we as a society face, and that aviation has a key role to play. Monbiot's position on aviation, as he explained two months ago (Drastic action on climate change is needed now - and here's the plan, October 31), is to cut the UK's aviation capacity by 90%.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea,

It has been another awful week for Tony Blair, perhaps even worse than the mid-summer meltdown triggered by his fatally misjudged support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. First there was the craven surrender to Saudi Arabia’s demand for the suspension of Britain’s anti-corruption laws if they impinge on the personal finances of Saudi princes. Next came the derisive rejection of Mr Blair’s latest effort to “kick-start the Middle East peace process” by every leader in the region. This was followed by the devastating report from Britain’s leading foreign policy institute, explaining how the Prime Minister had subordinated national interests to his unrequited love affair with President Bush.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea,

Tony Blair claimed yesterday that Iran poses a "strategic challenge" to moderate Middle East governments and the west as a whole, in a message that will gratify the ruling hardliners in Tehran. They believe the US and Britain have conspired to undermine the Islamic republic created after the 1979 revolution - and have failed to recognise its legitimate interests and aspirations. The prime minister's onslaught will be seen in those quarters as an acknowledgement that post-Khomeini Iran is finally emerging as a powerful regional player.

Mr Blair certainly did not mean to be complimentary. Little more than a month after floating a civil "partnership" with Tehran in his annual Guildhall speech, he filed a petition for divorce in Dubai.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

Gordon Brown's first hundred days as prime minister have already prompted more speculation than Santa Claus. We assume that there will be showy initiatives and sweeteners for all, not least because he will be tempted to call an early election, in 2008.Today, no issue can be exercising Brown's imagination more than Iraq. The most dramatic achievement the nation's new leader could offer the electorate ahead of a poll is to get us out. Brown knows nothing of foreign policy, and always seems uncomfortable with it. Yet how he must crave a coup.

Most people believe that horrible things will happen after American and British troops leave Iraq, whenever that may be.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

The global culture we live in is a double-faced creature, part angel, part devil. It induces two sets of behaviour in world citizens: a greater openness and a new curiosity towards others, or the illusory and self-satisfied conviction that the world has come to them. The first group, embracing multilingualism, have learned that a better understanding of other cultures, based on mutual knowledge of each other's languages, can foster stronger business partnerships, richer cultural exchanges and lasting peace. The second, often found in the English-speaking world, are proud of their monolingualism, and have retreated into a fantasy world in which it seems everyone speaks their language.…  Seguir leyendo »