Beards for Belgium

It’s not the first time a celebrity has got involved with politics – we’ve had Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and Wyclef Jean in Haiti. But this time, there’s a bit of a twist involved. Belgian actor Benoit Poelvoorde is urging his fellow countrymen to grow beards until Belgium forms a government. A caretaker government has [...]

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Longer hours in France?

How long is your working day? As the song goes, a lot of people work 9-5, although here in the UK it’s not unusual for people to be in the office until 6pm or 7pm. However our neighbours in France are renowned for their 35 hour week. Could this be set to change? A potential [...]

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GCSE shake up

Seven years after the Labour government removed the compulsory requirement for students to study a foreign language at age fourteen, the Government of today looks set to change things. A recent article in the Guardian reports that in a shake-up of the league tables, the number of pupils taking a language should increase. New plans [...]

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Lobby for Latin?

We’ve blogged before about Ed Balls’ announcement that all school children should be given the chance to learn Mandarin at school. But now it appears that the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson also has his own ideas on what the state school curriculum in the UK should be offering kids – the chance to learn [...]

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Is Mandarin the future of language learning?

There has been a lot of controversy lately over Ed Balls’ announcement that all children should be given the opportunity to learn Mandarin, the world’s most popular language. Critics called it a gimmick, saying that there wouldn’t be enough teachers and that the government should instead concentrate on addressing the lack of mainstream language learning.

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German politics turns to employment

With Germany feeling the effects of the credit crunch like much of the rest of Europe, political talk has been addressing the issue of unemployment. The SDP, or social democrats, have promised to create four million jobs if they win the election in September, by transforming Germany into its own version of California’s Silicon Valley [...]

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