News Roundup

Of course the main news is Paris Is Burning (and Toulouse, and Nice, and Strasbourg, and by now probably Chipping Sodbury). Unlike most commentators, I find the current riots fairly unalarming (there again, I described Hurricane Katrina as "just bad weather on the other side of the world," so I shouldn't be trusted in such matters). What many people seem to have forgotten is that the French don't feel happy unless they have a war or a revolution every generation. If the children of North African immigrants are setting cars on fire and throwing molotov cocktails at riot police, that is actually a sign of their integration into French society.

Meanwhile here in Turkey, the prime minister has blamed the riots on the French ban on headscarves in schools. This did not go down well at home, where headscarves have been banned for students and government employees for ages. With uncanny timing, the European parliament ruled that the ban on headscarves cannot be classed as "restriction of freedom" in the progress report on Turkey's EU membership application (due tomorrow). Meanwhile, we've had some riots of our own, but just the usual left-wing protests against the higher education system. So we have Muslim rioters in France and Communist rioters in Turkey - ain't globalisation fun!

In other European news, the French are resisting cutting EU agricultural subsidies - oh hang on, that's not news, is it? While Gallic intransigence on this issue is hardly surprising at any time, at this time in particular the last thing the government would want is a load of angry farmers driving into Paris in their tractors to meet up with the young suburban rioters.