"One in three kids will be without text books this year"

...according to the Federation of Associations of Parents of Pupils (CEAPA). 

 After the Rajoy government’s VAT increase and a further reduction in financial help for low income families, returning to school this year works out at an average of 640 Euros for each child, and the largest expense is the purchase of the text books. 

An online petition at Change.org has been created, asking the Secretary of Education to regulate the prices of text books and for a widening of the policy of recycling books.

Free e-book for downloading: "Europe in Crisis"

After further disturbing news today that the government of Catalunya is asking for €5 billion from the Spanish central government (which may well prompt a full bailout) in a very timely moment Global Voices online has released its first e-book titled “Europe in Crisis.” 

It is promoted as “a collection of best material from the wealth of social conversation, participation and mobilization boosted by going through the tough of austerity in the Old Continent and beyond."

We may need more than books to get through the coming years but understanding this mess is a good start.

Europe's leading anti-Muslim party now also becoming anti-Jewish

Last week, the normally cautious Jewish community of Amsterdam took the unusual step of describing a member of the Dutch parliament as a "serious danger to Jews in the Netherlands and consequently Europe as a whole..."


Read more here.

"The Pain in Spain"

[Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images]

Back from a month-long visit to a former homeland [Australia] it seems to me that Spain has only just survived further economic bailouts...

A simple and unflinching account of exactly why this country got into so much financial trouble can be found at a new, impressive non-profit website called The Global Mail, which is employing some of down-under’s most experienced journalists.

Their European correspondent Eric Ellis, has also examined the “potentially explosive conditions in south-eastern Spain, where illegal African immigrants slave for a pittance in Europe’s salad bowl.