London hoodies

Josh and I went to lunch yesterday, he's staying at the YMCA down the street from my office while he looks for a flat. We were sitting outside at a café at about the time schools let out, and of course, the madness began. Before long there was a deafening chorus of screaming adolescents, making noises reminiscent of something from Apocalypse Now. I turned to him and remarked, "welcome to London."

We both agreed that one of the first things you notice when moving to London is how obnoxious the kids are. I mean no joke, they're awful! Josh should know, he lived here for a year for school before moving back to New York in November, and now he's moved back.

There's a housing estate next to my office, and every day around 3 pm this cacophony of noise begins from the courtyard, bouncing off the prefabricated walls and pouring through our closed office windows. It honestly sounds like a village of women are getting raped and killed. For some reason, the teenage girls here enjoy screaming at the top of their lungs as if they're getting a red hot poker shoved into them. It's so bizarre.

The first time it happened at the office I jumped up and ran to the window, thinking someone was being attacked. I was so confused when the rest of my office just kept calmly sitting at their desks doing their work. They then explained to me that these were just the mating noises of the "hoodies," teenage hoodlums. Apparently everyone here is just used to it by now.

A relief for Europe - but will gridlock persist?

Anxious Europeans have been able to breathe easier the past two days, after Tuesday’s reelection of US president Barack Obama. But the relief has much more to do with the defeat of Mitt Romney than with Obama himself.

Europe isn’t the only place feeling relieved because of a dislike for Romney. Outside Israel, there probably wasn’t one country on the globe that was excited about the prospect of a Romney presidency.

The Republican candidate's dangerous rhetoric seemed almost guaranteed to launch a war with Iran which no US allies would have been keen to sign up to. He had described Russia as America’s “greatest geopolitical foe” and had spoken of China as if it was the evil empire, promising to “get tough” with them in a way Obama hadn’t (although he never provided details about what that would mean). Latin America recoiled at his extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, and Africa was less than excited about his promises to cut US overseas aid.

In Brussels, there is a sense that long-stalled bilateral issues that were waiting until the resolution of the election can finally be taken off the back burner. There is (perhaps naïve) hope that a second-term Obama can show up to the UN climate summit in Doha next month with a reverse-course on the US intransigence in taking action to combat global warming. Negotiations on a US-EU free trade deal can now begin. Most importantly – fears that Europe was about to see a return to the trans-Atlantic tensions that marked the George W. Bush era have now been allayed.

David Cameron's 'Katrina moment'

Members of the British parliament were called back from their vacations for an emergency session yesterday to deal with the country's riots earlier this week. The past two nights have been quiet - a combination of bad weather and a surge in police forces seems to have done the trick. But now the political storm begins, with the public demanding to know how the situation could have gotten so out of control.

The focus of much of the public's ire has been prime minister David Cameron. He was seen to be back-footed during the crisis, spending the first few days of the rioting insisting he would not cut short his vacation in Italy, and only returning to the country after the riots got very serious Monday night. The media has been referring to it as his "Katrina moment", referencing the back-footed response of US president George W. Bush to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The incident is being seen as a defining moment of his premiership, and he has been much maligned for it. The above gag photo of his speech on Tuesday from photoshoplooter illustrates the public's perception of his response.

Cameron has been working overtime to dispel that image over the past few days. In yesterday's emergency session he aggressively denounced the riots, saying the behavior of this bad element of society could not be excused by social factors or circumstances. And though his party often criticised the opposition Labour party for introducing "knee-jerk legislation" after crises during their time in government, he floated no fewer than six new policies. These include a ban on face masks in public, increased curfew powers, allowing courts to ban children from gathering in certain places and, most controversially, he said he is considering allowing temporary bans on social media during times of social unrest.