Have your Say: Cherie Blair: 'I fear for my children'

Cherie Blair admitted yesterday that she fears for the safety of her children when they go out on the streets. She also claimed that government figures drastically underestimate the scale of knife crime among children in Britain. Is Mrs Blair right about the scale of knife crime – or is she exaggerating the dangers? Let us know what you think.

Pick of the Blogs

England Deserves Better - Iain Dale

Obama talks white - racialicious

Tory NHS tales - Andrew Grice

Iraq today - Harry's Place

Pick of Overseas Comment

Tell it to the birds, sir, this deal is as shady as they come - MACHARIA GAITHO , Daily Nation (Kenya)

Unconventional wisdom about Russia - Henry Kissinger, IHT

Football and nationalism the Balkan way - Hajrudin Somun, Zaman (Turkey)

AU in the crosshairs - Mukanya Makwira, Herald (Zimbabwe)

Some required measures to move beyond the Gaza cease-fire - Abraham Yehoshua, Lebanon Daily Star

Prince Charles - an advert for the green lobby

By Michael Savage

There's more than a little outrage floating about over the revelation that Prince Charles' income has gone up by £1m while his tax burden has gone down. How can that be? Because he earned tax breaks on income tax when he spent money on green measures.

I'm a little baffled by the outrage. In managing to achieve this, Charles should be used by the green lobby as an example that green living need to cost the earth and can save money, while the government could use him to demonstrate that its policies to modify behaviour and encourage people to go green can work.

Spanish vistas: after the victory, the economic boom?

By guest author, Vicente Ferrer

Walking down the busy, sweltering streets of Madrid today, one would never guess that last Sunday Spain’s national team won the second European Cup of its history. But while the match was being battled out in Vienna, Madrid was a ghost town. A few disoriented pedestrians and football haters (a very rare species here) wandered about, but that was all.  Everyone else was glued to their telly.

Once Spain had locked up the victory and the referee’s final whistle sounded, the spectacle began.  People poured onto the street to celebrate Spain’s first European Cup in 44 years, and the city centre was inundated with fans, patriots and “fiesta” lovers.  Parties, drinking, cheering and a general euphoria ensued. 

It can be right to discriminate against the religious

By Johann Hari

There is a surprising – and encouraging – gap in the government’s new Equality Bill, which I columnized on yesterday. Discrimination on the basis of age, race, gender and sexuality will be outlawed – but not discrimination on the basis of religion. When I saw this, I gave a loud atheist cheer. A religion is a set of man-made superstitions, and I reserve my right to discriminate against anybody silly enough to choose to believe them.

You don’t choose your race, sexuality, or gender, and they don’t affect how well you do your job. But you do choose your religion – and there are instances in which it will make it impossible for you to do a job properly. If you are a burqua-wearing Muslim, you can’t enter Miss Great Britain. If you are an Orthodox Jew who refuses to look women in the eye or make physical contact with them, you can’t be a beautician. If you are an evangelical Christian, you can’t work in a gay club. Go work somewhere else, or change your silly beliefs.

Have Your Say: Fuel tax revolt

Today in The Independent, we report on the calls from senior members of the cabinet for Alistair Darling to make an immediate pledge to freeze fuel duty, so as to respond to public concern about spiralling petrol prices. But should the Chancellor act more swiftly to scrap the 2p-a-litre fuel duty rise in the face of rising oil prices? Tell us what you think.

Pick of the Blogs

Can the NHS last another 60 years? - Centre Right

Can it really go on like this for two years? - Political Betting

Choice - Nick Robinson

Are Newspapers Doomed? - Becker-Posner blog

Pick of Overseas Comment

Justices made right call on habeas corpus - HIROAKI SATO, Japan Times

Markets for the Poor in Mexico - Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal

How Pakistan and India lost it - Rahul Singh, Dawn

The Government Is Hiding Behind Riot Police - editorial, Chosun Ilbo (South Korea)

Greenwash masquerading as an Eco-town

By guest author, Marina Pacheco

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) seems to have stirred up a great deal of emotion in government with our critical comments on Eco-towns. A spokesperson from Caroline Flint’s office was quick to accuse us of reverting to type, and by that I presume they mean we are being NIMBYs. The Government also issued the results of a You Gov survey stating that 46% of people in England support the development of Eco-towns.

CPRE supports Eco development too.

What we don’t support is something with a veneer of greenwash masquerading as an Eco-town. From the very beginning we have had concerns about the process for shortlisting towns. Communities usually participate in consultations to determine how many houses their region needs and where they should be built. The Eco-towns competition with its secretive shortlisting procedure is leapfrogging the statutory planning process and landing Local Authorities with towns they hadn’t planned or budgeted for and which have not been assessed to determine whether they are in the best possible place for the region.

Hey, Gormley! Leave that plinth alone…

By Chris Schuler

Walking through Trafalgar Square the other day, I was struck by the tower of red and yellow glass slabs that currently stands atop the fourth plinth. Thomas Schütte’s sculpture glories in the title Model for a Hotel 2007, and would sit well enough in the lobby of a Ramada Jarvis off the North Circular; against the cool, classical elegance of the National Gallery, however, it looks cheap and gimcrack.

Why is it here? For decades, Londoners went about their business in the square quite untroubled by the emptiness of the fourth plinth. Then, towards the end of the 1990s, its emptiness was suddenly perceived as a problem, and the RSA began commissioning sculptures to be exhibited on the plinth. The works, including Mark Wallinger’s Ecce Homo and Rachel Whiteread’s Monument, were not necessarily bad, and they were followed by Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant, which certainly became a national talking-point. The latest wheeze comes from Antony Gormley of Angel of the North fame, who plans to have the plinth occupied 24 hours a day, for a whole year, by volunteers from the public, each of whom will each stand on it for an hour at a time.

I have my own, radical suggestion for what to do with the plinth: leave it empty.

Spanish vistas: it was the old what won it

By guest author, Juan Pedro Aparicio

Until now the Spanish had won very little and some people had a mentality of failure, they said that we weren't united or that our confidence failed at the moment of truth etc.

But we shouldn't exaggerate.  Spain is an old nation, maybe the oldest in Europe and the old, when they aren't tired, they are sceptical. Normally they don't stand a chance against the youngsters who moreover, believe they are fighting for their fatherland. Young nations for example like Italy and Germany who seem to have always been there but as nations, are a product of the 19th century; that's why they have such stamina, tenacity and ability to fight. I'm referring to football of course.