It’s not often that something makes me angry enough to resort to language befitting of Devil’s Kitchen, but Googling for news of the recent European Court of Human Rights case about crucifixes in Italian schools brought me to this article in the Daily Mail with the headline shown above (they might subsequently edit the headline).

No, you lazy, ignorant f**kwit of a journalist Nick Pisa, THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS NOT PART OF THE EU. It is the Human Rights Court of the Council of Europe. It’s not the EU. Get it? Thicko. You could have found that out in, oh, all of 10 seconds by checking with Google and coming across the court’s page on Wikipedia.

And people always whine that blogs are inaccurate and disreputable… I maintain that this blog is a lot more accurate than the UK press on European political matters.

[UPDATE - 22h00 CET]
The Daily Mail have now changed the headline, and @Phelim on Twitter has informed me that the journalist in question is blaming the London sub-editors.

Zoll - CC / Flickr

Enough is enough. Why, oh why, are we re-establishing border controls in Europe, at least as far as night train passengers are concerned?

On the Amsterdam-München CityNightLine service last weekend Netherlands Police boarded the train at Venlo and shone a flashlight in everyone’s faces at the border.

Last night it was even more ludicrous – police controls (by French and Italian police) at the railway station at Paris Bercy before boarding the overnight train to Firenze SMN. I asked one of the police why the checks were happening and he looked at me as if I was from a strange planet and said “c’est la police étrangère”, meaning what exactly? Then on the train the cabin attendant demanded we hand in identity cards and tickets to him for the border checks, and the train did not pass via Switzerland as far as I am aware…

Sorry, but what is going on here? This is also not the first time I’ve faced similar checks either. And why rail passengers? Are similar checks being re-introduced on the roads as well? For – at least as far as trains are concerned – Schengen is a myth.