[meme-tags] one thing you'd never see me do

Sweet photo of Iain Dale shamelessly stolen in a raid on Paul Linford

Simple piece by Iain Dale who must be chuckling over the mayhem: Power of the Meme: Prague Tory needs to get out more. Click HERE to see why.

When you do click on it, Praguetory makes his feelings known about his disdain for the meme and yet he's produced the most amazing analysis of the latest one on 10 Things I'd Never Do.

[chatham house] freedom of information

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[the cross] b.a. backdown not necessarily correct

So BA boss Willie Walsh has finally backed down following an avalanche of criticism. The airline had faced four days of angry condemnation from an overwhelming alliance of Cabinet ministers, 100 MPs, 20 Church of England bishops and, finally, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr Rowan Williams called its stance 'deeply offensive' and threatened to sell the Church of England's £6.6million holding of BA shares. Just five hours later, the airline capitulated.

The atheistic and humanistic among the readers of this blog would have expected me, a known serial-Christian, to be crowing. Not a bit of it. Actually, I don’t believe what she did was right and the photo of her in a light blue outfit, with matching cross, had me shifting uneasily in the chair.

This strikes me as being as bad as the burkah issue where the woman was clearly doing it to provoke and to make some money. I see where this Nadia is coming from [very Eastern European name, where icons are central to the faith] and it’s not a cynical exercise, rather one of defiant outrage.

And yet … it’s not right. It’s not what the cross is for. Certainly it shouldn’t be hidden away but neither should it be flaunted. This is not in keeping with the nature of Christianity, which should go about its business quietly. It’s not about taking up arms and burning heretics. It’s about personal belief and trying to spread goodwill.

[iraq] shake your head, weep, pray, do something

People, are we so inured against feeling that we can pass over this lightly: Six burnt alive in fresh Iraqi brutality?

Am I in company in feeling the way the media reports it is almost as nauseating as the acts themselves?

Shi’ite militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left prayers yesterday and burnt them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking Baghdad. The attack in the Iraqi capital came after suspected Sunni insurgents killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's main Shiite district.

Contrast this to the face of the Iraqi girl in the photo and the peaceful river scene in the previous post on Iraq. Will she ever smile like this again? Has law and order so completely broken down? Where the hell are the Yanks? What are they doing? Who’s ordering the troops to stand back? Where are the new Iraqi authorities? Has America met its match in the sheer demonic frenzy of these crazies? Do you doubt that tht’s what we’re witnessing here – demonic insanity?

How to stop the slaughter?

[les étrangers] how the americans and french really see one another

Another gem from the pre-blogging days, this is entitled: The Problem with the French is that they have No Word for Rapprochement. It’s by Gene Weingarten who writes the Washington Post column Under the Beltway on Sunday afternoons and can be forum e-mailed on Tuesdays. Click on the Post link in the left sidebar to find him. Hope this brings a smile to the face:

The French Minister of Agriculture politely awaited my question. We were seated in the study of his ministry in the heart of Paris, overlooking a garden with ancient statuary.

At 43, Herve Gaymard [post coming up tomorrow morning on his political scandal] is already a member of the national cabinet, custodian of nothing less formidable than the French wine industry. Sandy-haired, lithe, urbanely handsome like Paul Henreid in "Casablanca," the minister was in shirtsleeves, slacks and -- as became apparent when he crossed his legs -- loafers sans socks. He looked effortlessly fabulous, of course. He is French.

This interview almost didn't happen. I had requested an audience with the highest French official available, on the subject of the strained relations between our two nations over the war in Iraq. The French Embassy initially seemed reluctant, at which point I observed that it would be a pity if, to secure an official audience with a French dignitary, I had to seek out Jean-Marie Le Pen.

That would be the race-baiting crypto-fascist whose stunning showing in the last presidential elections threatened to create an international embarrassment for the French of a magnitude unseen since a swastika flapped beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

Soon afterward, Monsieur Gaymard was made available.

Continues here …

[les étrangers] how the british and french really see one another

From the pre-blogging days comes this BBC gem and I’m not being ironic. The comments from readers which follow it are also revealing:

Two-hundred years to the day after France's defeat at Trafalgar many Brits still view their cross-channel neighbours with suspicion and antipathy. The French however, think we should just get over it.

France is the UK's top tourist destination, with 12 million British visitors each year, while the UK is the second most popular spot for French tourists with over three million visits a year. The air route from Paris to London is the busiest in the world, carrying some 3.3 million passengers a year... then there's the Channel Tunnel.

Such statistics might fool a person into thinking the British and the French actually like each other. But even though it is over 100 years since the Entente Cordiale was signed, pledging Britain and France to a lasting political friendship, relations on many fronts are decidedly frosty.

But the main problem seems to lie here. Stereotyped by the Brits as garlic-loving, snail-eating, skirt-chasing, shoulder-shrugging "Frogs", the French don't really care what the British think.

"Les Rosbifs" are not important to the average French person. Nobody is pretending that this is full blown racism, rather the inheritance of 'acceptable' attitudes of suspicion and isolationism," says Richard Kaye, organiser, Entente Cordiale exhibition

"Most of the French feel neither burning animosity nor deep affection towards the British," says Christian Roudaut, author of a book on Anglo-French relations, L'Entente Glaciale. "I'm sure the British would say this represents precisely the sort of arrogance for which the French are notorious in the UK.

And the age-old French stereotypes appear to show no signs of disappearing in the UK. 72 % of Britons questioned in a recent survey believed the French warranted their negative stereotype, while only 19% of French believe the Brits deserved their "Rosbifs" tag.

While Franco-British enmity stretches back centuries, many of the xenophobic stereotypes of the French in today's society stem from the post-war period, according to Professor David Walker, from the University of Sheffield.

"The French are a kind of sibling, cast in the same mould as us, but showing how the same genes can express themselves in alternative ways," says Dr Wendy Michallat, an expert in popular French culture.

Read more here …