The Bewilderness

Tunisia must conjure its blogosphere

Is this an indication of the new Tunisia as a moderate Islamist is sworn into power? At the Douz Sahara festival, Tunisian bloggers and social networks were able to set up a workshop for discussing the protest movement and their role within it. Something must have changed, as bringing all these troublemakers together would have been a godsend for secret policemen in the old days. 

This was a clear landmark in promoting the expansion of a Tunisian blogosphere; alternative media are necessary to keep a check on their new politicians. The compliant media of the previous dictatorship will take a long time to unlearn the internal harpies of censorship and deference towards authority. 

The Tunisian government is dominated by the Islamist movement, Ennahda, and faces strong economic headwinds in the next few years. It is the worst time to seek growth when your neighbours across the sea are plummeting down a sinkhole of debt. 

But I can legitimately ask: is this the first time that an Arab country has more democratically elected members in government than a country in the European Union, that paragon of democratic values? Fingers to lips, ssshhhh, don't tell anyone.....

Rowan Williams seeks an ersatz emmanuel

The Military Wives Choir is Christmas Number One. Not such an achievement as in the years before digital downloads but a signal of army and charity working together downgrading the victor of reality tv, Little Mix, to its deserved grade. The record outsold the next 12 contenders combined: with proceeds to the Royal British Legion and the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association.

Contrast this with the archbishop of our established church. According to Rowan Williams, we are an atomised society, divided by riots and financial speculation. This dark picture, perhaps not intended in his sermon, but nevertheless painted by journalists from his statements, also tenders solutions: not spiritual solutions, but temporal solutions. The government must do more. We should institute a Tobin tax.

The very state that has stepped in to smother mutual trust is lauded as some ersatz Emmanual in substitution for a saviour that the established church has placed far far away. 

Again, the actions of thousands of buyers this Christmas prove that yet again, the spiritual and ethical instincts of the clergy are wholly wrong. 

Choose your mas

After a certain age, the attractions wane: of buying tickets for a raucous, crowded night in a local pub, surrounded by younger generations and bored waiting for some lesser skilled DJ to miscount the time till Christmas. Why does the festival continue to renew itself? Religious observance has declined ever more rapidly since the Second World War. Churches are filled by the old, the reborn and fervent converts from the South of our world.

Part of its celebration has linked days off work to family and copious consumerism. The festival is the premier day for gift-giving and parties; no other time of year comes close in importance or observance. 

When the early Church aligned the birth of Christ with the holiday of Saturnalia, they hoped to build upon older traditions to cement faith (and show their celebrants they could have a good time too). Now the revolution has come full circle. The Christian trappings have been stripped away or watered down: what is left but a wish to forget work, drink a little, gorge on food and remember family. As I shall remember mine tomorrow!

But with fewer and fewer Christians, Christ will dissolve into an anodyne holiday....

Merry Newtonmas, one and all! 

No IMF for €

George Osborne, today, refused to contribute to an IMF rescue fund for the €, alongside other non-euro members. As the contribution would have been thirty billion pounds, the government should be supported in its defence of the British taxpayer. It is a mark of how desperate the Europeans are that they are willing to suck the lifeblood of the poor to save their skins.

The bleatings of the pygmy party

Will the Liberal Democrats derive any erstwhile advantage from their association with Cameron's veto. Waking up to the potential enormity of his decision, they have gone on the attack, warning or prophesying that Britain will become a pygmy nation. Again, the pygmy party wishes to have it both ways: the trappings of power and the calls of carping criticism. We know what their approach to foreign policy is: attach a mat to your back stencilled with "Walk on Me" and lie down before Sarkozy, the pound shop Napoleon.

Hopefully, we will have earned the undying emnity of the European commissariat as they attempt to strut and puff at this undiluted wielding of national interest (necessary as Sarkozy ignored the Luxembourg convention). Already, we hear non-entities cry with synthetic outrage at this 'nationalism'. 

Yet, the whole convention of straitjackets and instability fudge may well unwind in short order (like all of the other summits). There is no more money; there is no solution to the debt; there is an unending debt deflation in the periphery. The result of this summit will founder on the rocks of default and political reality.

Given that attachment to the Eurozone is now like being chained to a corpse, does this make Labour and teh Liberal democrats political necrophiliacs?

Abandon shi-: it is an instability union

The make or break summit is tonight. Fiscal union is not on the cards: Merkozy has shot her bolt from a very small crossbow. 

Time to convert all my euros back to sterling.