The first round of the 2012 French Presidential election is in and it would appear to prove what has become an accepted piece of political wisdom amongst European pundits: that, at a time when trust in politicians is at an all-time low, Nicholas Sarkozy is the European leader most reviled by his own people. The results of the first round see Sarkozy trailing his Socialist rivalFrancois Hollande. This makes him the first incumbent president since the beginning of the Fifth Republic in 1958 to lose in the first round and there is little to indicate that it will get any easier in the second. Hollande, who has never held a public office before, has won support with his calls for unity and community in an increasingly divided nation.

So what is it that has made Nicholas Sarkozy, who came to power in 2007 on a tidal wave of international press attention, such an unpopular figure? Well the obvious answer would be the economy – Sarkozy had the misfortune to take charge just as the world's largest recession for 70 years was about to turn the global economy on its head. Few countries in Europe have hung onto their existing leaders in that time, with greater calls for change and economic rearrangement being voiced.

Yet with Sarkozy there is something else which seems to rankle people. When vox pops and polls were being taken in the run up to the Presidential race, what was most noticeable was just how much personal animosity people had towards the man, as opposed to his leadership qualities. A dyed in the wool Conservative with a tough anti-immigration stance, he was always likely to upset those on the left of France's political divide. But, it would seem, the right have grown to feel an equal level of disdain for their president.

Many conservatives feel his reputation as a playboy (stoked by the global media interest in his relationship with and subsequent marriage to ex-super model and wife #3 Carla Bruni) is damaging to their traditional sense of family values. Not only did Sarkozy attract this attention, many feel he flamboyantly encouraged it, by opening up in interviews about his personal life.

When George Galloway won the Bradford West by election earlier in the month, thus pulling off one of the most unexpected political comebacks in recent history, there was an immediate and forceful attempt by commentators on all sides of the spectrum to downplay his significance in the UK political landscape. For Conservatives his win was a sign of how Labour had sold out its traditional core voters and they gleefully revelled in this huge blow for Milliband's party. For those on the left it was an embarrassing anomaly but something they would get over quickly and make sure never happened again. Where both sides did seem to agree was that Galloway and his Respect party were, in and of themselves, not a significant part of the UK political process.

You can understand this reaction. Anyone who ever wants to play down the seriousness of George Galloway need only direct their audience to the Scotsman's toe curling appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006. Yet this ignores the fact that, amongst a considerably large part of the population George Galloway is very, very popular and this has little to do with his celebrity status.

Throughout his career and throughout this campaign Galloway has consistently stood up for the rights of the UK's large and increasing Muslim community. In particular he has aligned himself with perhaps the most ignored section of the electorate – Muslim women. In Bradford he campaigned to this part of the community, a group who feel they are being treated with indifference by one party and outright hostility by another. Not only that, he openly appealed for greater understanding from Muslim men towards the rights of the women in their community, a stance unthinkable to either of the main political parties.

Earlier in the month London Mayor Boris Johnson stepped in to prevent a Christian group known as the Core Issues Trust from placing an advertisement on the side of London buses claiming that people could be converted from homosexuality. The slogan, which read “Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud!” was slammed as “clearly offensive” by Johnson who is currently locked in a bitter battle for the Mayoral seat with Labour candidate Ken Livingstone. Core Issues Trust who offer a service they call “reparative therapy” to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals, have responded to the action by claiming that it is an “attack on free speech”.

On their website Core Issues state that Johnson's reaction was typical of the “scientism” that has “foreclosed on the study of the genetic and environmental interface in human sexuality and its expression.” This raises a potentially uncomfortable question: while most people living in London would likely disagree and, in many cases, very strongly disagree with the Core Issues Trust, does that mean they should not be allowed to spread their point of view?

It is likely a significant number of Britons were offended by the British Humanist Associations “There's Probably No God” bus campaign back in 2008. It is also likely that members of the Core Issues Trust were offended by gay rights activists Stonewall's “Some People are Gay. Get Over It” campaign which they so clearly referenced in their own, banned adverts. Does this offense, however more or less righteous in its intention (which is, of course, an objective view), deserve less censoring than that practiced by Core Issues?

This is an issue on which even the ad's most virulent critics express concern. Ben Summerskill of Stonewall dismissed the ad in the Guardian as “clearly homophobic”, “irresponsible” and the “promotion of voodoo therapy” yet went on to say he did not wish it to be taken down as he believed it represented the Core Issues Group's right to free speech.

A real life spy story has been unfolding in the papers lately. James Bond is alive and well and still working at MI6, it seems. A recent documentary has at last confirmed Russia's accusations that MI6 were operating on their turf. Jonathan Powell, previous chief-of-staff to Tony Blair told the press how Russian spies located a false rock, used by British diplomats to receive and transmit information. ‘Clearly they had known about it for some time,' he added. He went on to describe the incident as an embarrassment, saying that ‘they had us bang to rights.' This is the first time that anyone in Britain has confirmed the allegations. 

The Russian secret service, the FSB, were then able to link the false rock to suggestions that MI6 were funding pro-democracy and human rights organisations within Russia. Jonathan Powell theorises that they had been saving the information to use for political purposes. He pointed out that then-President Putin then went on to introduce a law preventing all non-government organisations (including pro-democracy and human rights groups) from receiving funding from abroad. Putin explicitly stated that this was due to foreign security services exploiting non-government groups. He added: ‘This law has been introduced to stop foreign powers interfering in the internal affairs of the Russian federation.'

Time is running out for UK airports to get themselves ready for the unprecedented increase in traffic they will be hit with during this summer's Olympic Games, according to four major airlines. In a joint statement bmi, Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and easyJet announced their fears that, while current measures will just about suffice should all go to plan, a flurry of bad weather, air traffic delays or a security alert of any type could cause immediate and irreconcilable chaos to passengers coming in and out of London. 

Over half a million people are expected to converge on London between July 27 and August 12 of this year and the airlines think more will need to be done to make sure their passage is made smoother. Heathrow has responded to the statement by unveiling a specifically built, temporary terminal dedicated to catering for officials and athletes who will be working at the Games. The gate will only be used for the three days after August 12 in order to handle the departures of over 10,000 of what the organizing committee call “The Games Family”. Heathrow will be the UK's most affected airport during the Games with passenger numbers estimated to reach record numbers throughout the period. While the new terminal will certainly make travel easier for competitors, it still does not allay fears of the influence huge numbers of spectators and other travelers coming in and out of the UK during the period may have.

Officials at Heathrow, however, are downplaying the threat posed by The Games. A spokesperson told the BBC that they do not believe there is a significant security risk related to the Olympic Games but that they are taking on 250 extra security staff to “give us more resilience during this summer”.

Reports last week indicating a 25% drop in the sales of paperback books in the UK would seem to confirm what many pundits have been predicting for years – the future of the paperback novel is not looking good, if indeed it has a future at all. Year on year book sales have been declining for over a decade but these latest figures represent the sharpest drop yet. In the first three months of 2011 around 15 million paperbacks were sold in UK shops, whereas the first three months of this year has seen sales figures reduced to 11.3 million. For many years television, computer games and the internet have been blamed for declining readership figures, with various studies claiming successive generations are exhibiting lesser attention spans which make it difficult for them to concentrate on the written word. Yet this latest, most startling drop in figures can be directly attributed to the rise of another medium, one demanding the exact same level of attention as the paperback novel: the e-reader. 

e-reader devices such as the Kindle, the tablet and the Sony Reader allow users to download and store novels directly to their hard-drives. Though systems vary, generally a good e-reader can hold up to 14,000 separate books at any one time and, as they are generally lighter and thinner than a novel, they are far more convenient to carry around.

Any questions as to the popularity of these devices can be answered by the estimated figure of 1 in 8 of all books sold in the UK being sold by download. So is downloading the future of the written word and, if so, is the death of the paperback actually anything to get twisted up about?

By making books more convenient and accessible, e-readers could actually be seen as a positive thing for publishing as they will modernize the form for a new audience without the need to make any changes to the content. Also e-books are far more environmentally friendly than paperbacks and, if (as is being widely predicted) we do get to a stage where the majority of books are sold by download, it will save untold numbers of trees and reduce the global carbon footprint.

The British Home Office has become the latest target of hacktivist group Anonymous after the internet meme took down its website late last week. The group claim the denial of service attack, which makes it impossible for users to access a site, was a protest against extradition and surveillance policies in the UK. This action follows the announcement earlier in the week of plans to expand the powers of the Government to monitor the use of email and websites across the country. The announcement was met with strong opposition from various sides of the political spectrum, including members of the Coalition government, the opposing Labour Party and various civil rights groups.

Given the nature of the proposals it should come as little surprise that it attracted the ire of Anonymous, a group who have established themselves as the anarchic bane of anti-piracy legislators and other groups interested in curbing the use of online freedoms. Anonymous have proven themselves a frustrating opponent for the powers that be, as, rather than a well drilled, well organised cell of protestors with a single common cause, they appear more to be a loosely, if at all, connected group of computer whizzes who have a greater practical knowledge of web technology than those looking to control it.

The group began on the image sharing website 4chan as one of many online communities blanketed under one collective title. Soon, however, the group involved itself in both on and off line protests. What marked these protests out was their prank-ish quality – the aim seemed not only to disrupt their target but also to embarrass them publicly. Using the Guy Fawkes mask popularised by Alan Moore's anarchic comic book V for Vendetta as their symbol, they have also been represented at many of the Occupy protests of the last year.

What the group have become most commonly associated with, however, is their denial of service attacks and the Home Office joins a list of organisations including the US Department of Justice, The FBI, Mastercard and Scotland Yard who have had their sites shut down by Anonymous.

A halt in the Egyptian economy has sparked fresh worries about the future of the pro-democratic movement in the post revolution nation. The popular uprising which began in the spring of last year, prompted by police brutality, political corruption, mass unemployment and electoral fraud, lead to the removal from power of President Hosni Murbarak. Since then the path to freedom has been rocky with further demonstrations against the Egyptian military cabinet's drafting of a new constitution and the slowness with which members of the old regime were being punished.

Now a new roadblock to development in Egypt has appeared with a dramatic freeze in the country's economic progress. While the Arab spring delivered the people of the Arab world from oppression, the violence it prompted caused tourism in the region to plummet. As one of the area's main tourist destinations, this has lead to a drain on the Egyptian economy and the ensuing slump may well distract people from the cause of freedom and political emancipation to which they have dedicated the last year.

Growth in the economy is at just 1% this year, instead of the predicted 5%, and one of the revolution's leading voices, Google executive Wael Ghonim, has expressed his strong concerns about the future. “As an Egyptian I am really concerned that a counter-revolution could happen if people are not able to fulfil their basic needs," said Ghonim speaking to Reuters, though he also warned “Sometimes more money means more corruption.” Ghonim now finds himself in the position of petitioning the International Monetary Fund for greater assistance, an odd one considering he blames the IMF for much of the hardship his country suffered under Murbarak. Says Ghonim “Egypt had cancer and the international community was giving us Panadol...Why is it so easy to secure budgets to bomb nations while it is extremely hard to raise budgets to build a nation, when the end result supposedly is the same, which is freedom and democracy?”

Childcare merchandise giants Mothercare have become the latest in a long line of high street retailers to announce widespread closures of stores in the UK. The company had already announced planned store closures over the next 12 months to bring their total number of shops in the UK down from 373 to 266. Last week another 66 closures were announced for between now and 2015, a move which will see the eradication of nearly 760 jobs. Executive Chairman Alan Parker says the move is part of a three year plan for Mothercare which will see the chain establish a greater online presence. 

It is yet another blow for the UK high street, which has suffered a 9.5% drop in like sales in the first three months of 2012. With consumers now looking to cut costs everywhere they can and large chains downsizing to avoid high rent and operational costs, it is little wonder that more and more stores see their future online. For the consumer, shopping online means no money paid for public transport or parking and petrol, no temptation to add expense to the shopping trip by going for lunch or a snack while in town and, usually, a much cheaper price for the same product than they would get in store. For the retailer it means no rent payments, less administrative costs and far less hassle in terms of staffing issues.

Yet what about the job losses? While online shopping creates its own economy, with new jobs for web administrators, IT personnel, call centre operatives and delivery drivers, it is highly unlikely that it can replace the thousands upon thousands of jobs which have been made redundant by high street closures. Plus is there a danger that the sense of community which the town centre encourages will simply disappear if nobody has any reason to visit town?

The next chapter in the News International phone hacking scandal, which rocked the U.K. last year, looks set to unfold in the U.S. British lawyer Mark Lewis has announced his plans to represent three clients whose phones he asserts were hacked on the other side of the Atlantic. Lewis, claiming to represent one well known sport's star, one lesser known sport's star and one U.S. citizen, told the B.B.C. last Friday, "The News of the World had thousands of people they hacked. Some of them were in America at the time, either travelling or residents there." As of this time, News International has made no comment.

These allegations are only the latest in a long line of revelations and claims against Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Since N.I.'s admission of liability for breach of privacy last April, the scandal has caused the closure of its flagship Sunday paper The News of the World, lead to the arrest of a number of people associated with the company and raised serious questions related to the influence Murdoch wields over the British government. There is, however, some debate over what the lasting effect on the British media, News International and journalism in general will actually be.

While some sections of the press long opposed to Murdoch's influence celebrated this most unexpected and damaging dent to his supremacy and wider calls were made to clean up the clearly questionable ethics which many journalists are working by, the issue remains a deeply complicated one. Putting greater constraints on the manner in which newspapers research their stories raises questions about government interference in the media. After all, phone hacking has been responsible for uncovering many instances of unethical government and corporate behavior which would otherwise have passed without notice.

Yet the sheer scale of this scandal, in particular the revelations regarding the hacking of the phones of victims of violent crime and their family members, has undoubtedly knocked the credibility of the British print press. In years to come it may well be considered the final nail in the coffin of a medium which was already suffering from reduced sales figures in the face of competition from the quick moving reportage of internet and television.

Then there is the other, perhaps most uncomfortable consideration of all – the level of public culpability in all of this. The News of the World became the most popular paper in the most overcrowded media market on the planet by invading the privacy of anyone thought to be in the public eye, by all means necessary. Does such a fact perhaps indicate a degree of unhealthiness in the interest we take in the lives of others?