Nosemonkey's EUtopia

Right, logo’s been re-done to look smoother and nicer, as has the europhobit logo thing, not that anyone really cares. My only major issue now is the border in the comments section – anyone know how I can either get rid of the lines that stick up at the top or scrap the thing altogether? I can’t work it out…

So, Austria’s screwing Turkey good and proper. Why? Well, Ostracised from �sterreich’s got some interesting theories about that:

“Despite appearances, I am pretty sure that Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Sch�ssel, who personally defines the foreign policy of the country, is actually in favour of full Turkish EU membership…”

Meanwhile Tony Blair and Jack Straw are trying to look like they’re making an effort (even though the UK presidency of the EU so far has been characterised by brief spurts of activity followed by complete backtracks and stalemate, so few reckon they actually care any more), Straw moaning that

“It�s a frustrating situation, but I hope and pray we may be able to reach agreement. We have a situation where 24 have decided to move forward and one has not. It is not the first time that has happened, and I am sure it will not be the last.”

Diddums – perhaps you shouldn’t have waited until the day before the talks were due to start before trying to sort it out, Jackie? It’s bad enough students handing essays in right on the deadline – but this is the future of an entire continent we’re talking about. A little bit of planning’s not too much to ask, surely?

And so the Empire of Priam – and as such the legendary origins of Rome and most of western European civilisation (not to mention the kingdom of Croesus, the origin of coinage and thus modern trade) – waits on the sidelines like the ugly girl in the turquoise crimpline dress, while 73% of Austrians and 53% of Europeans as a whole demonstrate their historical and cultural ignorance by declaring that “cultural differences” between Turkey and “Europe” are too big.

Update: Well would you look at that? A last minute deal…

This weekend has mostly been spent fiddling with HTML and CSS, and watching The West Wing. The results were mostly satisfying all round (Season 6 is a decided return to form).

Although I’m happy enough with it to roll it out, there are a few niggling problems with the code for this place – any help would be much appreciated. In Internet Explorer on PC the sidebars aren’t quite in the right place, and the title bar drops down a few pixels too low. In Firefox on the PC, the BlogAds box keeps shifting around the shop for no apparent reason. In both, the drop-down menu things in the sidebars don’t look right. There are doubtless more, and all are entirely due to my own lack of any kind of programming knowledge – this has been a case of trial and error.

Thanks once again to Chris for working out the initial template, and now – as I’ve had no chance to actually write anything this weekend (at least nothing that hasn’t involved vast numbers of triangular brackets), go check out the latest Britblog Roundup – good as ever, and in particular the Curious Hamster on Sir Ian Blair – the post I would have written this weekend had I not been overwhelmed with code stuff… The only addition I would make is that there is now a strong case to be made that Blair not only broke the law by not allowing the IPCC to check the scene of the Stockwell shooting, but also that he misled parliament – and either way the man is not fit to hold office any more. Then again, we knew that anyway…

Thanks, Gordon! Now I’m even less likely ever to be able to afford my own place! Cheers!

*Nosemonkey wanders off to ponder a future full of unstable and over-priced rental accommodation and slow starvation in old age due to inability to afford a proper private pension – assuming, of course, that terrorists, MRSA or the Metropolitan Police don’t kill him first*

A Labour minister only acting after something’s appeared in the press? Surely not! Charles Clarke (slightly paraphrased):

“The article which appeared in today�s Sun newspaper about something about which before now I couldn’t care less has highlighted a number of important issues, most notably that this has now got media attention and so I need to look as if I give a shit and am doing something, or else our ratings will drop even further than they did yesterday after our goons were caught on camera manhandling a pensioner.

“I have today asked my department to look at the details of this particular case and some of the broader issues that it raises – most notably how our PR department didn’t pick up on this sooner and thus save us from having to scrabble around like morons while we desperately try and cover our arses.”

Europhobia’s new look preview excitement! – initial template courtesy of the lovely Chris, of qwghlm fame, with a few fiddles by me – so any HTML/CSS cock-ups are entirely my fault.

It’s still a work in progress (need to twig how to re-do these “Europhobit” things, get trackback up and running again, make sure that comments work properly, plus probably re-install the fancy drop-down menu things I’ve got, re-think the blogroll and archives and whack up a few other bits and bobs once I’ve integrated it to this URL etc. etc.), but what do you reckon so far? Any problems in specific browsers/operating systems (as I’ve only been able to check it in Safari on Mac OSX since fiddling this morning)? Any design issues? Anything else missing?

Suggestions/comments much appreciated – I’m hoping to have this up and running over here next week.

Following Uzbekistan blog day at the start of the month (my contribution here), trying to raise awareness of the decidedly unpleasant regime of Islam Karimov and calling for sanctions, someone has decided at last to act – and that someone is, as I had hoped, the EU.

The proposed sanctions won’t do much, being easily avoided – they appear simply to be “an embargo on exports … of arms, military and other equipment that might be used for internal repression”, but there is also to be another formal condemnation of the “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Uzbek security forces” (unlike the Met police, eh? Well, Britain did train the Uzbeks as well…)

There’s also some mention of cutting aid programmes and imposing Robert Mugabe-style visa limitations on members of Karimov’s regime. Even the people proposing them know that these are all largely symbolic actions – but at least they are actions and not merely words, which is all we’ve seen from our highly principled, anti-dictator leaders to date.

Even if all these particular sanctions mean is that Karimov will just buy all his arms from Russia instead and carry on with his show trials to excuse his massacres as before, it’s still a step in the right direction. There will doubtless be more on this over at the weblog of former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, later, as well as at the always top-notch Registan, Publius Pundit and Disillusioned Kid.

To make up for sweariness (which oddly prevents me, thanks to my office’s new web filters, from commenting on my own post in reply to the surprisingly classist anonymous Labour supporter who accused me of being a “chavista”), some genuinely good news – a truly superb Presidential candidate for 2008, one of single purpose, straight-talking, and who you can trust not to break any of his election promises. (via I forget, I’m afraid…)

For shame!

BBC Europe Editor Mark Mardell launches his weekly Europe roundup – coming to you every Thursday as from today. A bit short (both in length and on insight), but a moderately entertaining brief overview which could, in conjunction with Auntie’s daily European Press Review prove fairly useful.

German elections: Yesterday’s coalition talks between Sch�der’s Social Democrats and Merkel’s Christian Union apparently went well, even if there’s still no obvious end in sight and no decision as yet over who will end up Chancellor. The closest British comparison – from what I can make out – would probably be if in 1974, rather than going to the polls again Labour and the Tories decided to team up, with Heath and Wilson trying to agree between them who would end up Prime Minister. All very odd, in ther words.

And if Schr�der and Merkel can’t come to an agreement? According to Der Spiegel, keep your eye on Edmund Stoiber, currently Governor of Bavaria and head of the Christian Social Union, Merkel’s major coalition partner. But if they’re honest, it’s still the case that no one knows what the hell’s going on.

This blog is fucked. Its template is crammed full of shit. It doesn’t work consistently across all browsers for no apparent reason, and it has now got to the stage where I am utterly pissed off with it. As of today it also appears to be refusing to show new posts in Safari, meaning I can’t actually see what I’ve written this morning without entering the URL for the post manually. Which is hardly helpful.

I understand nothing of HTML or CSS beyond how to put in links and pictures, so am incapable of sorting it out.

So, who wants to help me redesign this bugger? I pretty much know what I want (basically the same with some tweaks and not fucked would be a good place to start) but have no idea how to achieve it. I’m also going to throw this open to suggestions – is there anything you, dear readers, would like to see done? Anything you want got rid of? Let me know.

I can offer little in the way of payment because I’m pretty much completely broke (vast amounts of entirely necessary yet extortionate expenditure recently, involving jewellery, hotels and intercontinental flights). You would, however, gain my eternal gratitude. And possibly a pint or two.