So the City of Culture thing every year would be pretty boring then ?

If you've ever studied Arabian, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese decorative culture in fabrics, weaponary, wall hangings or artwork you'll quickly realise that all of those cultures were at least 1000 years ahead of the Europeans - they are a hard act to follow and we've been following them ever since.

I'm now looking out for a conspiracy theory which ties in Dally's secret service theory and the Bull St mosque to the other one.

In fact, I may spend the rest of the night working on it, just to see if I can get some circulation out of it.

To be fair, the Greeks were pretty nifty too, as were the Minoans before them. We are still discovering surprising things about the Beaker People and the Celts and Europe still hasn't shaken off the term "Barbarian" as coined by the Romans. Who incidentally said the same about the Persians and called their men effeminate and perfumed even though they couldn't conclusively beat them in battle.

Well indeed, if you look at anything east of, say, Italy you'll find a far more sophisticated ancient "culture", or even to the North African Muslim "Moors" who populated the northern coasts of the Med in the Middle Ages - far more advanced by means of design and decoration - a trip around the Far East section of the Royal Armouries to see the steel lined quilted silk armour and laquered weaponary that dates back long before we Anglo Saxons had been invaded by Normans (who in turn taught us about architecture) will show that.

More widely, a couple of interesting comment piecesIndy[/i on censoring 'hate preachers'.rl

And rlthis from the [iHuff Post Canada[/irl on the nature of jihad.

The Baroness really is a full on tit!

An interesting couple of articles. It would be good for a Paxman type to have a go at the "hate preachers" but equally it would go a long way to defusing the issue if the points made in the huff post article were put to the mainstream Muslim religious leaders in the UK.

Completely agree.

If that's correct about the idea of jihad being so mainstream, then it's not difficult to see that that lessens the distance, if you will, that needs to be bridged for radicalisation/brainwashing.

On the other piece, I rather liked the idea, posited (not by me) via Twitter, that David Mitchell would be able to do that sort of an interview rather well.

It comes and goes, moves around I suppose.

Quite so, Southern Spain has also absorbed and is enriched by much of the Moorish culture in terms of architecture, decor and cuisine.

The Celts are a bit of an enigma: they had a culture that is often overlooked mainly because they were, as far as we know, illiterate but also because of the "barbarian" tag used by the Romans. It is thought that they had a sophisticated level of maths, astronomy and an appreciation of nature.

Their "knot" artwork of sinuous form is every bit as complex as Islamic tile patterns and is studied by modern mathematicians.

They mined and worked precious metals (and were very good at it) had sophisticated trade links and a road system that stetched from Ireland into Europe.

I'm not claiming they were better than "anyone" just that there was more to their culture than they are given credit for.

... and underlines the richness of overlaid layers of cultural influences.

I wonder what Baha Mousa's family makes of it all

NO!!!!

THERE SHOULD ONLY BE ONE CULTURE!

So spaketh the word of Dally, and I think we all know what that one culture should be, problem is, and Dally doesn't know this yet, but the perceived "English" culture is a isation of everything else that has been mentioned on these last two pages, including Celtic & Nordic design and French architecture.

As are most cultures.