Off on the tourist trail, to the Atomium at the Expo 58 site. The structure is a model of an atom with an atomic weight of 9 (does that make it lithium or boron? I never got that far in chemistry) that's scaled to 92m high. The top proton contains a 360 degree viewing platform. Descend to the next one and there's a small but fascinating exhibit describing the Expo 58 event, when all the countries in the world gathered in north-west Brussels to show themselves off and celebrate International Geophysical Year. It's a marvellous blast from the past, and includes a couple of films from the Expo.
Suggestion for anyone planning to visit: take tram 81 from the city centre, rather than the metro. It takes 20 minutes, rather than 10, but you get to see a hell of a lot more.

Took lunch at the Gare du Midi (South station) where there's a reasonable supermarket selling reasonable pre-packed sandwiches at reasonable prices. There's also a branch of Godiva chocolates, one of the more recommended varieties, and a welcome shopping opportunity. Then went back to the Palais du Justice - just north of the Louise shops - to look properly at the view I'd had rained out on Friday.

Unfortunately, my attempts to push westwards were thwarted by a heavy police presence. It eventually emerged that there was a scheduled Palestinian protest going on in the area, but from the way the police were acting, it felt like World War III was about to happen, or the England team was playing on the ring road.

Still got to wander around the city a little, taking in a few more cafes, before a short-lived pizza and hotel.

Saturday was the pre-assigned shopping day. Spent most of the morning browsing the used bookstores down Anspach / Lemonnier. Avoid Pêle-Mêle like the plague - it is hugely overcrowded, hugely popular, and not good value. Most of the others represented pretty decent value - I picked up a couple of thin volumes of French poetry for ECU 1 each, and there were copies of fairly obscure English-language paperbacks available at ridiculously cheap prices. Most of the stores are French, there are a few Dutch, and very few have extensive collections in both languages.

I'd spent so long in old book stores that my head was beginning to spin, so after lunch, head back to the Grand-Place to look round some of the more touristy shops. Including one selling Euro collector's packs - one coin from each member country (including Luxembourg, which made money only for these packs) for about 25% above par.

The main shopping street is the Rue Neuve, from Bourse north. This gets *very* crowded on a Saturday afternoon, and even more so when there are heavy showers about. Like today. I tried to get some CDs from everyone's favourite FNAC store, but the crowds were just too oppressive. Instead, retreated to the Free Record Store (formerly the Virgin store) at the Anspach Center. New Tori box set, new U2 double disk, new Santana, and a double live album from the Afrekening collection, and what I'd expect to pay for the first three. Very bad news for British record companies.

Worse news for British clothes shops: C&A may have closed their operation in Britain, but there's still a market for quality clothes that aren't the cutting edge of fashion. I got two shirts and a sweatshirt and a silk tie for what I'd expect to pay for any three of the above here.

Met up with the EU crowd in a bar near St Catherine's - handy for my hotel and for them - and sampled the local beers. I would tell you which was best, only my memory is a little hazy.

Call me strange, call me obsessed, but first port of call on Friday morning is to the EU quarter. The place where the eurocrats and commissioners and such like hang out. I stopped off for lunch in one of the cafes in the area, and found myself talking to some very friendly EC staff from Finland. As one does, we discussed all sorts of things to do with integration in the union, or lack thereof. Apparently, and take this with as much salt as you want, the UK's entry into the single European currency may make or break the European project. Failure by the UK to enter will almost certainly result in a two-tier Europe - one centred around the Eurozone and driving towards an effective federalised system broadly along the German model; the other consisting of the other EU / CTA members and acting as little more than a glorified free trade bloc. The rules for the trade will, effectively, be made by the Eurozone. My pet project is persuading the UK to adopt the Schengen protocol to allow completely free access; the EU team reckoned this would be most likely after adoption of the Euro, and quite unlikely before.

After a most aggreeable lunch, and a promise to meet up for a Saturday night out, headed back to the city centre to look at the sights. Unfortunately, it began to rain shortly after I began, and the rain became quite heavy and persistant, so it was a case of finding somewhere dry to while away the time. "Somewhere dry" turned out to be the expensive shops down the Avenue Louise. They're far too expensive to go shopping in, but just the right sort to window shop.

One problem getting back: what happens when chelle's rubric (every journey will contain a problem) meets Giles' Law (it has to be better than this)? Situation: wet Friday rush hour, metro train is packed (rubric here), Weaver is in no hurry. Solution? Invoke Law, wait for next train, iterate until quiet train comes along. Works every time, if you have the patience.

Back to the hotel for a night watching the telly. Two words: STAR ACADEMY. UKGS.com readers will find out why on Saturday.

So, off to the airport for a trip to Brussels. Thanks to a nice early start, racing up the street to catch the train, and careful use of the lifts at New St and International, I'm at the airport 47 minutes after leaving home. This is a useful proof of concept, not least because the redeye from Ewark arrives about now, and check-in for the return flight is in full queue at the Continental desk. Thankfully, the queue at Sabina is exactly 0 persons long, and I've plenty of time to explore the airport's facilities before boarding. And the line for security at main terminal this time? Trivial.

The flight is good, about a third full, and mostly clear skies. This allows me to see most of London from just south of the Thames: spot the Boat Race course, then Big Ben, the Doom and the tidal control thingie and the QEII bridge. Then we're over the Thames estuary, then over the channel, then making a surprisingly bumpy descent into Luchthaven. It turns out that the person sitting just behind me was on the same teacher training course as myself, but we've both gone into computers since. Small world. Literally.

A trip on the train took me to my hotel, the Queen Anne. Small room on the 7th (top) floor, they've not heard of non-smoking rooms, and I seemed to be able to smell when people in the adjoining rooms lit up. Television has 39 channels, of which 34 gave some sort of sensible programme. Included BBC1 and 2, channels from Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, and a couple of German networks. Plus the main ones from France, French and Dutch-speaking Belgium, and the Netherlands. CNBC, but no CNN.

I'm pretty tired from the flight and the travel, so confine myself to a walk round the area. It turns out that Brussels is a lot smaller than I expected: the central district (inside the petit ring) is no more than 2km square, with metro stops every 400m along the lines. In spite of my drowsiness, I can make it to the Grand Place within ten minutes.

The Thurthday Thearch:

• lisa lopez favorite dessert
• "worst week of the week award awarded weekly on a week by week basis"
• Schlotzky's europe This would be the Best Idea Of The Year
• a to z email address of vending machines You can't make it up.
• forcing link of non html
• vanessa carlton mother ethnicity Human.
• 72 raisins
• gunge girls
• sheryl crow fillings Cream, but only if it's whipped and with raspberry syrup on top. Allegedly.
• places to buy chesney hawkes single "one and only"
• i want to buy dvd rom drive for my lap top That's nice. I want a lap top in the first place. Care to help?
• pictures of jonathan dimbleby That's nice. No it's not, that's bloody creepy.
• "Pete Cashmore"
• cheap canoe sales uk You get what you pay for...

Chris reports how Norman Tebbit has referred to elements within the Conservative party as "right wing trotskyites." What the blue blazes was the Prince of Darkness jibbering on about this time?

A quick look at The History Of Communism (1917 - 1990) shows how Mr Trotsky worked closely with Mr Lenin during the Russian Revolution. He then became second in command to Mr Stalin after Lenin's death. Stalin and Trotsky had something of an intellectual dispute, and Trotsky was invited to leave the USSR for Turkey, and eventually settled in Mexico, where he was famously killed by Mr Issepick in 1940.

The unique selling point of Trotskyism: permanent revolution. Everything must change. Revolution in one country (say, Russia) must be followed by revolutions in other countries (say, Germany) and spread throughout the world. After Lenin's death, there was a schism between Stalin's view - develop the communist order in Russia - and Trotsky's idea - to spread the revolution. After being chucked out of the nascent USSR, Trotsky campaigned against Stalin's dictatorship, as it acted only in its own interests, unlike the "benign dictatorship in the interests of the proletariat" he and Lenin had had.

Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution wormed its way into US foreign policy during the cold war. If the US did not oppose communism in Vietnam, so the theory went, then the rest of southeast Asia and beyond would fall to communist power and topple like a stack of dominoes. It also wormed its way into the decline and fall of the Russian Satellite States in 1989 - once the Iron Curtain had been breached, the Communist regimes fell at astonishing speed.

Now, where does an arch right-winger like Norm come into this? Off to last Sunday's BREAKFAST WITH FROST programme.

DAVID FROST: And there's this story today in the Telegraph - you probably saw Norman - I refuse to quit, IDS tells shadow cabinet - and that some of the shadow cabinet are going to rebel against the three line whip and vote with Labour MPs to allow unmarried and homosexual couples to adopt children. That's including three or four cabinet ministers, allegedly. Is that sending the wrong signals?

LORD TEBBIT: I think it is, it's sending two signals which are wrong in my judgement. One is that the cabinet, the shadow cabinet, is, is not as united as it should be, and the other, that those members have got the issue wrong as far as the great mass of people out there are concerned. If you go down to the pub and you say to people, do you think that homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children - oh boy, I can tell you the answer now. So they're out of tune with the public in that sense. The other problem which Iain has is that this peculiar group who've infiltrated the party - and some of them in quite influential positions, not just elected positions but in central office - who are what I call, if you can imagine such a thing, right wing Trotsky-ites - they behave like Trots.

DAVID FROST: Right.

LORD TEBBIT: And the Trots nearly wrecked the Labour Party, and these people are doing the same thing. That was the attack on me -

DAVID FROST: By the movement?

LORD TEBBIT: Yes, the attack on me was not because I matter - I'm a semi-retired, elderly backbench peer. The attack was to try and get Iain seen as being remote from the people that elected him and the people who support him.

[full transcript]

How do we square this with the central Trotskyite tenet: perpetual revolution? Well, let's try. There has been a push towards a more inclusive society over the past number of decades, and allowing unmarried (including homosexual) couples to adopt children is a small step down that road. For whatever reason, some people seem to have a problem with this idea. They could, I suppose, see it as a spreading of a foolish and destructive pattern in society, and certainly one to challenge their place in society.

We also have to remember that the right in Britain has used "Trotskyite" ("Trot") as a perjorative term for thirty years or so.

Putting these facts together, it seems that Old Norm sees the march of equality as A Bad Thing, and wishes to insult the conservativity of his enemies within the party. It's a decent enough soundbite, and there is a vague sort of peculiar logic in there somewhere. Not that the basic idea is anything short of crass and odious.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a decent maths blog. I've still not found one, but I have come across Science News.

Olympics 2012 hits the tickers. Toronto has made a lot of noise about a bid, concentrated in the Exhibition Park area. Geographically, it would be a lot like Sydney's games, with most activities in a two mile square. Extrapolating from the facilities that were there when I was there in 99, it's a very promising bid. The main problems are going to be garnering local support, and improving the transport infrastructure. Nothing that *finally* building the rail link to the airport, and extending the subway through the Exhibition area wouldn't solve.

There's no official rotation between continents, but the Summer Olympics seems to be North America and Europe every 12-16 years, Asia and Australia (and presumably Africa in the near future) filling the extra slots. It's FIFA that is implementing a formal rotation system for its football world cup - Europe (Germany 06), Africa (probably South Africa 10), Americas (14 - probably Brazil, by buggin's turn), then back to Asia / Oceania (18 - Australia or Red China looks favoured).

Anyway. Assuming NYC / YYZ gets the Summers in 2012 (and on the surface, those look the two most impressive bids) that makes Europe the top pick for 16. Expect the usual suspects to bid - London, Paris, Rome / Turin. Madrid would be scuppered because it's too soon since Barca, and Munich probably wouldn't get two games inside fifty years. If it does go to Germany, look to Berlin.

Outsiders? Budapest has a strong sporting tradition, and did a very good job of the European Athletics in 98. By the time the votes are cast in 2009, five years of EU membership should have helped to wipe away the residual memories of communism.

Useless: GamesBids.com shows London hasn't won an election to host the games. 1908 was originally scheduled to go to Rome, while 48 was arranged at the last minute following the war.

Former MI5 agent David Shayler gets six months in jail for selling his story to the Hell On Sunday. That sleazepaper's 24 August 97 edition told how MI5 had plotted to kill leading public figures, including Libya's Colonel Qadaffi, and kept files on British royalty. Further revalations were promised for the following week's edition, and were splashed all over the front pages for the following three weeks. Allegedly.

Anyway, six months is enough to show the official displeasure, but not so much that Shayler's defence - that he was exposing other illegal activities - was rejected.

Zeitgeist Record of the Week from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.