Crime : opération vérité à Londres

Hier nous avons évoqué cet accès inattendu d'honnêteté du New York Times qui accepte de publier une tribune libre démontrant que la majorité des crimes commis dans la grande métropole américaine le sont par des criminels Noirs ou Hispaniques.

Le fait que les personnes de couleur soient davantage interpelées puis condamnées ne constitue donc pas une preuve du racisme de la police et de la judicature mais bien la conséquence d'un comportement plus crimonogène de ces populations.

Aujourd'hui, Andrew Alderson dans le Daily Telegraph publie les statistiques officielles révélant ce que les bien-pensants de gauche veulent céler, que les Noirs commettent la majorité des crimes violents à Londres. Dans le même temps, toutefois, des Noirs constituent également une fraction importante des victimes.

Aucun des papiers ne s'interroge sur les causes de cette plus grande criminalité des personnes de couleur. Pour le moment, le lien entre un QI (quotient intellectuel) inférieur à celui, par exemple, des Chinois, ou d'un niveau moyen de testostérone supérieur à celui, par exemple, des Japonais, n'est abordé que par des universitaires dont les travaux sont victimes d'un ostracisme absolu.

Les révélations anglaises ont été accueillies d'une manière positive par un homme politique noir conservateur et travailleur social, Shaun Bailey, qui en appelle à la communauté noire à un travail d'introspection pour tenter de trouver des solutions à ce drame social.

Sans suprise, la gauche bien-pensante représentée par Richard Garside a renvoyé toute la responsabilité sur le « racisme et l'impérialisme anglais ».

Qu'en est-il de la France ?

Violent inner-city crime, the figures, and a question of race


The reality of violent inner-city crime is indicated today by statistics obtained by The Sunday Telegraph. The official figures, which examine the ethnicity of those accused of violent offences in London, suggest the majority of men held responsible by police for gun crimes, robberies and street crimes are black. Black men are also disproportionately the victims of violent crime in the capital.



One prominent black politician said that the black community needed to face up to major challenges.
Shaun Bailey, a Tory election candidate in London and a charity worker, said: “The black community has to look at itself and say that, at the end of the day, these figures suggest we are heavily – not casually – involved in violent crime. We are also involved in crime against ourselves – and we regularly attack each other.”
The data provide a breakdown of the ethnicity of the 18,091 men and boys who police took action against for a range of violent and sexual offences in London in 2009-10.
They show that among those proceeded against for street crimes, 54 per cent were black; for robbery, 59 per cent; and for gun crimes, 67 per cent. Street crimes include muggings, assault with intent to rob and snatching property.
Just over 12 per cent of London’s 7.5 million population is black, including those of mixed black and white parentage, while 69 per cent is white, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The police figures also show that black men are twice as likely to be victims. They made up 29 per cent of the male victims of gun crime and 24 per cent of the male victims of knife crime.
The Met declined to comment on the statistics. However, some officers will see them as a justification for Operation Trident, a unit targeting black-on-black murder and violent crime.
Others will see it as justification for targeting a disproportionate number of black men under stop and search powers. Figures released annually have shown black people are at least six times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts.
On sex offences, black men made up 32 per cent of male suspects proceeded against, and white men 49 per cent. The statistics also suggest that black women are responsible for a disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by females.
Richard Garside, of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, said: “Given Britain’s long history of racism and imperialism it should not greatly surprise us that black and minority ethnic groups are disproportionately members of social classes that have tended to experience greater victimisation and to be the subject of police attention.
“Just because the police treat black men as more criminal than white men, it does not mean that they are.” Simon Woolley, speaking as the director of the Operation Black Vote pressure group, but who is also a commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “Although the charge rates for some criminal acts amongst black men are high, black people are more than twice as likely to have their cases dismissed, suggesting unfairness in the system.”
The Sunday Telegraph obtained the figures via a Freedom of Information request after Rod Liddle, the writer, caused controversy last year when he claimed in an online blog published on The Spectator website that “the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”.
The comments led to claims that Mr Liddle was racist, However, Mr Liddle said: “I cannot think of anything more vile than racism. The issue here is not racism, it is one of multiculturalism.”
The statistics suggest that Mr Liddle was largely right on some of his claims – notably those on gun crimes, robberies and street crimes.
The figures suggest, however, that he was probably wrong on his claims about knife crimes and violent sex crimes.
The figures relate to those “proceeded against”.
This includes those prosecuted in court, whether convicted or acquitted; those issued with a caution, warning or penalty notice; those the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge; and those whose crimes were “taken into consideration” after a further offence.
Unsolved crimes are not included.
The figures do not take into account that any one perpetrator may have committed numerous offences .

Euro : ce que les marchés ne veulent voir

C'est avec beaucoup de tranquillité que je suis les tribulations de l'euro sur le marché des changes. Sa baisse rapide comme sa montée tout aussi vertigineuse ne m'émeuvent pas.

Voici plus de trente ans, lors d'une conférence publique, j'avais prédit la fin prochaine du dollar comme monnaie de réserve.

Lers faits m'ont donné tort et, depuis ce triste constat de mes limitations intellectuelles, j'ai fort opportunément appris à la fois la modestie et que les marchés ont souvent tort dans leurs mouvements à court terme.

Une des raisons qui justifient selon les marchés la baisse de l'euro et la difficulté de certains Etats à financer leur emprunts est l'endettement excessif de pays comme la Grèce ou l'Espagne, pour ne rien dire de la France, de la Belgique ou de l'Italie.

L'Europe s'est tiré une balle dans le pied en interdisant à la Banque centrale européenne d'agir comme un banque centrtale normale et de financer la dette souveraine des Etats. Par un subterfuge, elle le fait désormais indirectement mais le mal est fait.

L'euro est juste en dessous de 1,20 dollars et tout porte à croire que sa chute va se poursuivre.

On est encore loin de son minimum, à près de 0,80 dollar.

Je ne suis donc pas inquiet du tout.

Les finances des Etats menacés sont-elles en danger ?

Non car le fonds d'intervention est prêt à agir et la BCE intervient à tour de bras pour racheter de la dette chaque jour que le bon Dieu fait.

Si les banques américaines retiraient en bloc leurs fonds d'Europe, notre continent aurait-il assez de dollars ?

Oui, car les accords entre la BCE et la Réserve fédérale fonctionnent admirablement et ont déjà opéré voici peu.

Alors pourquoi ce vent de panique sur les marchés ?

Il n'y plus de panique. Nous sommes entrés dans une toute autre situation. Nous avons des agents qui parient à la baisse de l'euro et qui font fonctionner à plein régime la machine à rumeurs comme, par exemple, le Financial Times ou le Times ou encore le Daily Telegraph. Il est intéressant de noter que leurs confrères d'outre-Atlantique sont bien plus mesurés.

Dans un climat de crainte nourrie par la presse anglaise qui déteste le projet de construction européenne en général et l'euro en particulier, tout est bon pour tenter de noircir le tableau.

Ces rapports alarmistes sont parfois si ridicules qu'on a peine à croire qu'ils peuvent être publiés par un quotidien responsable. Le courrier des lecteurs n'est pas en reste et celui des blogs du Daily Telegraph en offre un des meilleurs exemples.

Voici quelques jours, j'ai eu la surprise de lire un correspondant disant vivre « sur le Continent » expliquant que ces connaissances liquident leurs avoirs en euros et vident leurs comptes en banque pour acheter de l'or.

Quand on sait que le marchand moyen intervenant sur le marché des changes n'est pas une culture générale très développée et que sa technicité monétaire ne compense pas un manque de sens commun élémentaire (il suffit d'observer Jérôme Kerviel), l'impact de ces bobards est considérable.

Mais comme l'observait le sinistre Abraham Lincoln, on ne peut pas mentir tout le temps à tout le monde.

Les marchés, les opérateurs et ceux qui les manipulent vont finir par se rendre compte que l'euro ne va pas s'effondrer, que l'Union européenne ne va pas disparaître et que le marc, lma peseta ou le franc ne vont pas réapparaître au détour de la prochaîne crise européenne.

Déjà, les analystes américains commencent par se rendre compte que les grandes netreprises européennes sont soldées et que les fondamentaux ne sont pas forcément ceux que l'on dit.

Robert Barone a les yeux ne face des trous et sait compter. Voici la comparaison qu'il établit entre la dette de certains pays européens et celle de certains Etat américains. Eclairant.

Forget PIIGS, US Debt Is Out of Control


Editor's Note: This article was written by Robert Barone, head of Ancora West. Barone currently serves on AAA’s Finance and Investment Committee, which oversees $5 billion of investable assets. This column was originally posted on AncoraWest's Market Insights.

The markets are in turmoil because of worry about the so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) debts. In Fiscal Crises: The Next Shoe, I opined that Greece is just the canary in the coal mine and that when we look homeward, we have our own huge debt issues, which aren't significantly different from those of the PIIGS countries. I believe that the only reason the European contagion hasn't yet spread to America is because of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. That era is coming to an end, and it would behoove America to get its house in order.

A May 14, 2010 Barron’s piece entitled We’re Not Greece -- Yet (D. Henniger) referred to a Royal Bank of Canada (RY) study that concluded that “Although the states of California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois are comparable in terms of economic output and population to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, RBC finds that states’ debt burden are nowhere near that of the PIIGS.” This, “even after including unfunded liabilities for states’ employees’ pension and other benefits.” As you'll see below, I take issue with the above conclusion, and the first half of this piece will deal with why. Basically, citizens of each US state are responsible not only for the debt burdens of their states and localities, but they're also responsible for their proportionate share of the federal debt. As you'll see, the combination of the two produces debt ratios far in excess of those of the PIIGS.

Table 1 shows the PIIGS data that the markets are concerned with.

Table 1

Table 2 shows estimates (for fiscal year 2010) of the Population (1), State GDP (2), State Debt/State GDP (3), Local Debt/State GDP (4), Unfunded Pension/State GDP (5), Other Unfunded Benefits/State GDP (6), Total Debt/State GDP (7), and Per Capita Debt (8) for the states mentioned in the Barron’s piece plus Michigan.

Table 2

Using California as an example, the population is rapidly approaching 40 million, the state’s GDP is estimated at $1.87 trillion, the State Government Debt/State GDP is 7.4%, Local Government Debt/State GDP is 17.2%, Unfunded State Worker Pension Liability/State GDP is 27.8%, Unfunded Other Health and Benefit Liabilities/State GDP is 3.3% for a Total Debt/State GDP of 55.7%. Translating this into Debt Per Capita reveals that every California citizen owes $26,000 for debt or liabilities contracted by their elected officials. Looking back at Table 1, this isn’t too different than the Debt/GDP ratio of Spain. And looking down the Total Debt/State GDP column of Table 2, it becomes apparent that both New Jersey and Illinois have Debt/GDP ratios equivalent to that of Spain.

But wait! Citizens of the states in the US are also responsible for the debt piled up in Washington, DC. So, to the debt of the states and localities, one must add the national debt. The first three rows of Table 3 show an average of all State (row 1), Local (row 2), and Federal (row 3) Debt/GDP and the Per Capita dollars owed by each US citizen.

Table 3

Using the table, look at the intersection of the "Cumulative (%)" column and "+Agency" row, which represents the recognized public debt of the federal government and its agencies and an average state and local burden. One can see that at 134.6% of GDP, debt burdens are higher than those of all of the PIIGS countries that have given the markets so much heartburn. Table 4 substitutes the debts of the states shown in Table 2 for the "Average State" and "Average Local" and shows the indebtedness of the citizens of these states per capita and as percentages of both State and US GDPs. All of the states shown have Debt/GDP ratios significantly higher than that of Greece.

Table 4

Now, I'm not an expert on debt levels in European countries. And, it could well be that citizens of those countries have taken on public debt that would be similar to US State and Local debt that isn't in the figures shown in Table 1. But, because the absolute levels of the Debt/GDP shown for the PIIGS have been a cause for concern, then the debts of the citizens of the US, and, specifically those states shown in Table 4, should also be cause for grave concern. For the most part, the European states are at least considering austerity measures. And while some US states are being forced into austerity because of their inability to print money, the major contributor to the indebtedness, the US Congress, doesn't seem all that concerned. This is a major difference from what's occurring in Europe.

So far in this piece I've only talked about public debt. Usdebtclock.org estimates total personal debt at $16.6 trillion, mortgage debt at $14.1 trillion, consumer debt at $2.5 trillion, and credit card debt at $848 billion. (Amazingly, of the four types of private debt, only consumer debt is shown at usdebtclock.org as expanding; the other three categories of consumer debt are contracting. I wish I could say the same about public debt!) So, on top of all of the public debt, each US citizen, on average, owes privately $53,525. Adding the public and private debt together totals $117,181 per capita, or a total Debt/GDP ratio of 248% (see Table 3). Wow! Now that's a lot of debt!

Finally, the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare are nearly $109 trillion, or about $352,000 per US citizen (see usdebtclock.org). That number alone is a Debt/GDP ratio of 745% and is so outside the realm of rationality that I didn't bother to put it in the table. Clearly, the recipients of these promises can't possibly hope to receive such benefits in current dollars. Depreciation of the currency or significant cutbacks in the promises (or both) is inevitable. The recognition of the real magnitude of these irresponsible promises should be enough to cause a loss of confidence in the dollar. In my view, unless the US moves to at least begin to address these issues, that day is closer than anyone might think.

All of the public debt was originated by governments and most of the private debt by banks or other financial institutions. In feudal times, serfs owed a significant portion of their toil to their lords. Have times really changed? The lords are now the politicians and "Too Big to Fail" bankers. Many ordinary people are serfs, highly indebted either voluntarily (private debt) or involuntarily (public debt). Looking at debt in this way helps to explain the unholy alliance between Washington and Wall Street (see The Unholy Washington-Wall Street Alliance) and why the "Too Big to Fail" and Washington politicians get richer and richer at the public's expense.

While US citizens are drowning in debt, the political system appears incapable of reducing it. In fact, the politicians continue to expand it in the erroneous belief that more debt will help. There are only two ways out: years of austerity or currency devaluation/inflation. The political system won't allow the former. Buy Gold!

Ils sont incroyables ces historiens anglais

L'Angleterre est une île et cela n'est pas prêt de s'arranger.

La récente éruption du volcan islandais au nom imprononçable a rappelé à des millions d'insulaires des îles britanniques que parfois la nature et la géographie imposent leur volonté.

Dans un blog paru ce matin dans The Telegraph, le journaliste Harry Mount recense l'ouvrage Sugar – A Bittersweet History, d'Elizabeth Abbott (Le sucre : une histoire douce-amère, Fides 2008).

Journaliste et écrivain, Elizabeth Abbott écrit de l'histoire marketing. Prenons ces autres titres les plus récents : Histoire universelle de la chasteté et du célibat (2003) et Une histoire des maîtresses (2004).

I’ve just been reading a review of an intriguing book, Sugar – A Bittersweet History, by Elizabeth Abbott. Among its findings are how the Caribbean slave plantations boomed in the late 18th century to feed the rising appetite of the British working classes for sugary tea.

Annual per capita sugar consumption in Britain in 1700-09 was four pounds per head; in 1720-29, it was eight pounds; in 1780-89, 12 pounds; and, by 1800-09, 18 pounds. This soaring demand continued despite the admirable middle-class abolitionist campaign to abstain from sugar in the 1790s, in order to cut the slavers’ income.

A James Gillray cartoon of 1792 showed George III and Queen Charlotte trying to convince their children of the dubious charms of sugarless tea. “O, my dear creatures, do but taste it!” says the Queen, “You can’t think how nice it is without sugar.” The children grimace, and leave their cups in their saucers.

I wonder if that’s when the inverse connection between wealth and sugar-consumption began. Certainly, by 1937, when Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier, the average unemployed miner’s family was eating eight pounds of sugar a week, as opposed to per annum.

Orwell explained the popularity of bad food well:

The basis of the unemployed miners’ diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes – an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the Public Assistance Committee level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man’s opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.

The inverse relationship between wealth and sugar consumption continues today. The patronising term, “Builder’s Tea”, is defined by Wikipedia as “(usually strong) English Breakfast tea, usually served with milk and, often, one or more sugars”. “Barrister’s Tea”, if there were such an expression, would be sugarless.

Une chose frappe le lecteur : l'anglocentrisme de l'auteur qui centre son travail non sur le sucre et son marché mais sur la documentation accessible en anglais sur la question. C'est sans doute pourquoi elle fait de la consommation anglaise le moteur du commerce du sucre en minorant le rôle des consommateurs continentaux.

A quelques exceptions près, les historiens anglophones sont murés dans une insularité qui ne doit rien à un volcan islandais.

La clef de leur prison est dans leur tête et ils ne sont pas disposés à ouvrir la porte.

Barack Obama, le doute persiste

Le certificat de naissance publié par Barack Hussein Obama.

Dans un article médiocre d'Alex Spillius, le journaliste du Daily Telegraph fait un point orienté et partial sur les différentes procédures judiciaires qui concernent le statut juridique du nouveau président des Etats-Unis.

Le journaliste se garde bien de préciser à ses lecteurs que le principal responsable de cette situation est le président lui-même (BHO) en refusant de rendre public l'original de son extrait de naissance. Il a seulement publié un certificat de l'Etat de Hawaï lequel n'est pas en mesure de clore le débat car il ne précise pas son lieu précis de naissance.

Exemple d'un extrait de naissance complet.

Nous ignorons, par exemple, dans quel hôpital il est né, quel a été son médecin, etc. Qu'a-t-il donc à cacher ?

Barack Obama fights presidential eligibility claims

Barack Obama is being forced to repel a series of writs challenging his presidential eligibility, as conspiracy theories claiming he is not an American citizen refuse to go away.

Officials in Hawaii have confirmed Mr Obama was born in Honolulu Photo: Reuters
The most common allegation lawyers are having to refute is that a certificate of Mr Obama's birth in Hawaii is false, leading accusers to conclude that he was born outside the country and is therefore disqualified to fill the highest office in the land.
Other challengers have contended that his Kenyan father was British, even though that would not exclude him from occupying the White House.
Both claims are untrue. Officials in Hawaii said they had viewed Mr Obama's original certificate and confirmed it stated he was born in Honolulu on Aug 4, 1961. A certified version of the certificate released by his campaign last summer when the theory began circulating showed the same. Birth notices in Hawaii papers record a birth to his mother and father on the same day.
But that has not stopped the theorists, who have been dubbed "the Birthers" and who see Mr Obama as a fifth columnist. Their accusations are often tinged with racism and antipathy to Islam, the religion of his father. During his campaigns Mr Obama faced an online rumour mill that he was a Muslim, though he has worshipped at a Christian church for 20 years.
The conservative website WorldNet Daily claims to have received 300,000 signatures for an online petition challenging Mr Obama's legitimacy.
Orly Taitz, a California dentist and lawyer, who was herself born overseas, is representing soldiers challenging Mr Obama's right to be president, including retired Maj Gen Carroll Childers, who compared the Democrat to "Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Mao, and Kim Jong Il".
"He is an interloper, a usurper, a fake, a scam artist, a Chicago crook, a recipient of bribes and gratuitous income for which he paid no tax, a socialist (perhaps only a communist or Marxist), and a grave danger to the future of the America that I love and have protected since I was 17 years old," Maj Gen Childers wrote in a statement on the website for Ms Taitz's Defend Our Freedoms Foundation. The rumour got closest to the mainstream when Richard Shelby, an Alabama senator, gave it credibility during a recent meeting with constituents.
Asked for his views on the notion, the Cullman Times, an Alabama paper, quoted Mr Shelby as saying: "Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven't seen any birth certificate. You have to be born in America to be president."
The White House regards the claims as an irritant and is not responding to questions about them, but lawyers for the Democratic National Committee and Mr Obama himself have spent considerable time and money combating a steady supply of lawsuits at every court level up to the Supreme Court. The exact cost to Mr Obama himself is not known.
The hubbub over the president's place of birth, which is aided and abetted by the internet, seems likely to last for some time, if not his entire presidency.
Other presidents have been victims of wild conspiracy theories.
Bill and Hillary Clinton were submitted to accusations that they were involved in the "murder" of White House counsel and old friend Vince Foster. Three investigations by different arms of authority ruled he had committed suicide.
President George W Bush still faces conspiracy theorists who claim that he and Dick Cheney were responsible for the September 11 attacks, as a way of drumming support for future wars. His botched response to Hurricane Katrina was supposedly designed to take the city out of the control of the poor and the black community, some theorists allege.
In the recent past there have been theories that Bill Clinton was the anti-Christ and Al Gore was a vampire.
Evan Harrington, a professor of social psychology who has studied conspiracy theories at the University of Chicago, Mr Obama's home town, said that they were essentially rumours writ large by people with a thirst for publicity.
"Thinking that you are on to information that no one else has got really makes you feel important," said Prof Harrington, who has himself been accused by conspiracy theorists of being part of a campaign to hide information about mind control of the public.
"For a conspiracy theory to exist you have to have a willingness to suspend belief or ignore evidence that doesn't fit. It's a rare individual who believes them but they are the ones who get the attention."

Coups de crosse

Damian Thompson, très impopulaire
auprès des évêques anglais et gallois.

Voici peu, nous avons publié un post sur le bimensuel l’Homme nouveau en rappelant que la presse proche des positions du pape Benoît XVI risque quelques coups de crosse épiscopaux.

Quelques correspondants m’ont fait remarquer que c’était très improbable. Je pense qu’ils ont tort. Pour ne pas soulever des polémiques parmi mes visiteurs français en citant quelques exemples locaux, j’ai choisi de mentionner un cas insulaire de coups de crosse.

Damian Thompson est un des bloggeurs catholiques les plus influents. Il officie sur le site du Daily Telegraph et ses posts sont non seulement très suivis, mais ils reflètent les sensibilités de l’aile ultramontaine du catholicisme anglais.

Sur sa page personnelle, nous apprenons qu’il est en plus le rédacteur en chef du Catholic Herald un vigoureux magazine catholique.

Plus en vogue à Rome que The Tablet.

Il a écrit de nombreux livres très bien reçus. Le prochain, Counterknowledge : How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science and Fake History sera publié dans quelques jours.

Or nous apprenons que la hiérarchie catholique en Angleterre, excédée des volées de bois vert qu’elle reçoit chaque jour de Damian Thompson, cherche à le réduire au silence.

Le cardinal archevêque de Westminster soi même aurait tenté de convaincre le propriétaire du Catholic Herald et la rédaction du Daily Telegraph de se passer des services du chroniqueur.

Alors que les journalistes les plus hostiles à Benoît XVI qui travaillent dans des magazines catholiques comme The Tablet ne font l’objet d’aucune démarche épiscopale, c’est celui qui défend les idées du pape en Angleterre qui la cible des coups de crosse.

Il est vrai que Damian Thompson a mis en lumière le peu d’empressement des évêques anglais et gallois à diffuser les textes venus du Vatican. Ce manque d’enthousiasme est si abyssal en comparaison aux autres pays anglophones que l’on peut même avancer le terme de « sabotage ».

Damian Thompson va-t-il résister ? Les blogs bruissent de spéculations. Mais il semble qu'il dispose d'un solide appui.

Celui du pape ?

Encore plus solide, celui des lecteurs du Catholic Herald et des visiteurs de son blog.