Perhaps because I lived in Iran for three years and have a respect for the Iranian people but I've long felt that the West's approach to the country is misguided and counterproductive. So it's no surprise that I agree with an article that asks why Britain is ramping up sanctions against Iran and claims that "Sabre-rattling at Washington's behest is an idiocy, and likely to do little other than escalate the steps to open conflict." As this article says, "The only question for the west over the last three decades has been how to respond to Iran's fundamentalist leadership and, more recently, its craving for nuclear status. The answer has been of startling ineptitude."

Back here in Europe, inflation is rising in the better-performing economies of Germany and France but falling in the poorer-performing economies of Italy and Spain, where unemployment is the highest its been for fifteen years. So, not much convergence there.

A de facto two-speed Europe.

A large group of people in the UK have just been given some excellent news. In the lottery for Olympics tickets last year, they were allotted tickets for the synchronised swimming; but they've now been told that, thanks to a computer error, they won't be able to see this event but will have to watch some serious athletics. They ust be distraught.

A couple of fotos:-

Here's St James The Moorkiller, before he was given the barricade of irises in front of his horse.

My apologies to any Muslims who are offended; this is not my intention at all.

And here's a foto of the coin thought to be a brothel token. (Hat tip to Azra)

There've been some interesting and helpful comments today to yesterday's blog on the issue of racism in Spain and on the Suárez-Evra case in the UK. Suárez, by the way, has now made what's described as a qualified apology, though not to Evra himself. The latter, it seems, has got away with calling Suárez a sudaca. Possibly because no one in England really understood the full significance of it as there's no equivalent in English.

Finally . . . A plea for some help. I have a MacBook Pro. Yesterday I decided to click on All Images on the Desktop and discovered I had hundreds of fotos I'd never taken and whose provenance I had no idea of. One or two of them were rather rude. I also found I had up to twelve copies of pictures I had taken. So I set about deleting everything surplus to requirement. Only to find I had 72 new fotos this morning. My experience with All Movies was very similar, so I just deleted everything. Only to find this morning that I had a "German Advertisement" centring on a naked blond lady rolling a cigar between her breasts. Can anyone tell me how this happens?