If anything can be taken to define the "European" experience, it is this amazing confrontation over the rubbish of Naples. Over this one issue, we have Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi vowing to put a stop to an ongoing dispute over whether to build another dump in a national park near Naples, after violent clashes between police and protesters.

View full article here

The Italian government may not be able to keep the streets clean, but they found the time to threaten a historic weather observatory with closure:

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/rare-h ... s-closure/

Smells rather fishy to me...

Here are some examples of the love that Sarkozy and his government have for the people of France:
A quote from Minister for immigration, Integration and National Identity Eric Besson,

“France is neither a people, nor a language, nor a territory, nor a religion, it’s a conglomerate of peoples who want to live together. There are no indigenous French, there is only a France made out of miscegenation.”

And Sarkozy himself intends to use the power of the state to force inter-breeding:

http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2008/12 ... ation.html

This is f*cking madness, yet this is the policy whether overt or covert across the entire EU, and I can think of no exception noting that Merkel did not state that immigration into Germany would be curtailed. Even European countries outside of the EU such as Norway are allowing in thousands of the most useless people in the world

Allan,

There are strong echoes of Jack Straw's comments on immigration in what you have reported. It is hard to know what their true opinion and goals are. Merkel in particular has spoken in recent months both for and against immigrants in Germany but has done so to different audiences. Our own politicians commit this offence regularly too but it is never held against them by the media. A group of people who stand for nothing and represent no one are a dangerous enemy. They do not appear to be driven in any particular direction (eg being ardent authoritarians or libertarians, capitalists or socialists) yet all happen to coalesce under the EU standard.

Unless I start seeing honest radical thoughts and policies coming from the Government (whose component parts both electioneered on reducing the interference of the state) about getting Government out of my life and pocket I will assume they have attained office and become vehicles for some other entity - the civil service and the EU civil service I would guess.

Other crackpot practices and behaviour seem to be replicated across Europe too - Money Down the Drain: Germany's Misguided Approach to Fighting Child Poverty and also the increased funding of foreign aid, which is counter-productive.