BOGEYMAN
Silvio Berlusconi's clumsy jibe at a German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) - 'you could play a good Kapo in a concentration camp film' - drew ostentatious outrage in Brussels and Berlin. Set a deadline to apologise, the right wing Italian prime minister was supposed to have said 'sorry' to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a phone call - though Berlusconi denied apologising. According to the centre-left MEPs, the affair shows that Berlusconi is not trustworthy to assume the rotating European presidency - an institution which in any event is a hangover from Europe's inter-governmental organisation and should be replaced by a Europe-elected president.
The Italian left dedicated many decades trying to make itself respectable enough to share power, debasing themselves before the ailing Christian Democrat government. But it all came to nothing when the arriviste media mogul Berlusconi's Forza Italia! bandwagon swept the Christian Democrats aside and scuppered the former Communists' long march to acceptability. The left never forgave the upstart, but nor could they match his populist appeal. Instead of winning the argument at the polls, the left used its institutional power base within the judiciary and in the European Union to carry on the battle against Berlusconi.
Successive bogus corruption cases brought against right wing politicians have failed to win over the voters, though, and Berlusconi's was returned to office in 2001. Well-ensconced in the European Commission, where Romano Prodi is head, the Italian centre-left is incensed that Berlusconi is now EU President, and ambushed him at the Parliament. Since Europe's centre-left are always - and wrongly - accusing Berlusconi of being a fascist, their outrage that he should return the charge is particularly hypocritical.
BOGEYWOMAN
The London Evening Standard launched a campaign against the new Minister for Children Margaret Hodge on the grounds that when head of Islington Council she failed to prevent a rise in child abuse in Children's homes. In particular, argues the Standard, Hodge's 'loony left' policies meant that she turned a blind eye to sexual abuse.
As loathsome as Hodge is, the charges against her just do not stand up. Though many enquiries purported to show abuse in Islington children's homes, there was a general level of hysteria over the issue at the time, which allowed unsubstantiated allegations to be retailed as fact. In the eighties the Standard constantly pilloried left-wing councils, including Islington for wasting public money. Now they retail allegations that Hodge blocked investigations of abuse to save money.
There is one valuable piece of evidence in Justice Elizabeth Lawson's enquiry into Islington Social Workers' failure to prevent the death of Liam Johnson's death. But that is not about child abuse. It is that the council's policy of 'decentralisation', creating neighbourhood offices to bring services closer to users, was fantastically inefficient. Today, neighbourhood offices stand empty in Islington, a failed experiment.
Under pressure, Hodge has wrongly conceded the argument that child abuse was rife in Islington, claiming only that she has learned the lessons. But they are the wrong lessons. The best solution would be to abolish the post of Children's Minister, which is a permanent invitation to whip up panics over child abuse.
-- James Heartfield