Press Review 27 July

Here's the latest installment of my press review for European Voice newspaper. Enjoy...

HOLIDAY time is upon us, bringing with it a kind of hazy, sangria-fuelled news siesta. So once again this column revisits what that street bard Will Smith, aka The Fresh Prince, called “a new definition of summer madness”.
Le Monde looks at a military action waged by France’s most lethal fighting force: anti-GM food campaigners. Protesters invaded yet another field of genetically modified maize on a test site in southern France, uprooting the plants and causing general mayhem – at least until the lunch break. Anti-globalization leader José Bové is warning that more GMO crops will be destroyed in the coming weeks.
Le Figaro points to a report by the French Health and Food Safety Board made public on Friday. According to the paper, “It highlights, albeit cautiously, the fact that certain GMOs could be beneficial to health, reducing the use of pesticides... and possessing improved nutritional qualities.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, José.
Actually, Bové might have to turn his Luddite sights onto a new bakery in Paris that offers bread to customers in a hurry. It’s a drive-through boulangerie.
Several wire services describe the courageous venture, which is set in a former service station on a busy road west of the French capital. “’Drive-in Joly’ boulangerie is the first in France and caters to about 200 customers per day,” Reuters reports, quoting the owner as saying customers are increasingly rushed and need convenient service. This kind of thinking just reeks of efficiency.
Meanwhile, Madrid’s El Pais reports that former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar paid a lobbyist $2 million in public money to secure a medal from the US Congress.
“This episode shows that Aznar has confused himself, his post and the state,” the paper says.
A current prime minister who takes it on the chin from his national press is The Netherlands’ Jan Peter Balkenende. De Volkskrant describes some bizarre comments he made during a visit to Germany to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Balkenende told an audience of Bundeswehr recruits that the incident “was an important link in the creation and development of European cooperation and integration”.
Radio Netherlands’ press critic sums it up this way: “One of the great advantages of being a prime minister is that you can travel abroad and say things there that you could never say at home without being dismissed as a bit off the wall at best and, at worst, a blithering idiot.”
Not as long as What the Papers Say is in business you can’t!
But even sun-addled leaders can’t compete with ordinary Europeans when it comes to downright weirdness. Consider this grab-bag:
* Reuters reports that Irish airline Ryanair has sacked two of its workers who sat in an overcrowded plane’s toilets for a flight from Spain because there were no other seats. The captain of the packed flight from Girona, near Barcelona, to Dublin airport resigned after he gave the two cabin crew permission.
* Norway’s NRK radio tells of a four-year-old boy who caused chaos at a Norwegian airport this week when he hopped aboard a luggage conveyor belt as if it were a merry-go-round.
“Ole Tobias crawled onto the belt next to an unmanned check-in desk Monday, continued unnoticed through a trapdoor along with bags and suitcases about his size, then passed through an X-ray scanner and into the luggage hall,” according to wire reports.
* The Italian town of Monza has banned pet owners from keeping goldfish in bowls, according to Agence France Presse. Explains a town official, “A fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality...and suffers because of this.”
That’s all from the Brussels goldfish bowl. Have a great summer!