With the unreality of Firefly’s Freedonia, the British pop media is now entering its third continuous week of multi-page coverage for the fact that the Prime Minister’s wife was made to look stupid (I mean really, really stupid) by not one but two scumbags – a ‘lifestyle guru’ whose CV includes a period spent as an enforcer for the terrifying Exegesis cult and a con-man of such comicbook extravagance that Esther Rantzen says he’s one of the worst she encountered in a long career exposing such pond life.
Meanwhile – in case you missed it – on Friday, the EU nations agreed to admit ten new member states on May 1st 2004 – bringing the Union’s population to 370 Million and its GDP to $9 Trillion. As a story it couldn’t really be any bigger – but you’d struggle to find it in most of the UK media this weekend. Presumably some time this week somebody will notice that we just had a hand in creating what could become the greatest economic power in history. Google News, as ever, is a great instant poll on the relative importance of stories like this. Trawling the results, two really good articles stand out: Michael Myer’s The Death of Europe and Will Hutton’s Observer leader East is East and West is rich.