It seems tempers are starting to flare in Ireland ahead of their referendum on the treaty. It seems I should look westwards for a change – especially as I’ve got a book review to do on the thing for the TLS by the end of the month…

“Let’s set up camps for jobless foreigners. You know, to concentrate them in one place so we can keep tabs on them. What would be a snappy name for such camps for concentration, I wonder?”

Yep – Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, former Italian Foreign Minister during Berlusconi’s last government, looks set to head home as the Commission enters its final 18 months and they all start giving up on the thing.

I neither know nor care much about this, but it does strike me as silly to be burning food and encouraging deforestation in an effort to save the environment.

You know why? Because it’s the single most God-awful, indefensible part of the European Union, with so few redeeming features as to make it worthy of little beyond wholesale abolition.

“Unified Russia is more than just a ruling party. It is the single reservoir of the country’s political, business, and bureaucratic elite.”

“Putin, 55, is set to become Russia’s most powerful prime minister ever, undercutting the presidency three weeks before he hands over”

Ah – now this is a promising first step. Even if it does mean having to rely on Turkmenistan. And even if we don’t yet have the pipelines to get the gas to us…