I am totally against putting animals on equal footing with human beings. This muddles the debate, which was something that sprung to mind this week when I read that a Swiss advocate had defended a pike in court. The defendant, an angler, was accused of having spent ten minutes landing the pike and the pike didn’t survive his ordeal.

The new Equality Bill has caused quite a lot of commotion. The Pope made it known that he thinks the bill threatens religious freedom. The gay movement is at the forefront of the protests. They maintain that the Roman Catholic Church cannot refuse to open lay positions to gay people. These reactions made me think: the Pope, who wears the most adorable little red shoes, can’t really be that vehemently opposed to gays. I put this opinion down to my Catholic upbringing.

My little War by Louis Paul Boon, translated by Paul Vincent, Original Dutch title: Mijn kleine oorlog. This is the first in a series of articles looking at examples of Dutch & Flemish authors in translation.

‘Excessive internet use is linked to depression,’ according to a report produced by British scientists this week, ‘but it is not clear whether the internet causes depression or whether depressed people are more prone to be to drawn to it.’

People from the UK have one big advantage: they speak rather good English, although we can make an exception for people from remote Yorkshire valleys. English, the language, is the most important product exported from the UK. Looking at it from a different angle, if only they spoke English in Germany, it would be the leading industrial nation. At present the United States fulfils this role, so actually you could argue that Americans are really just Germans who speak English.