In the comment piece “Loaded language drowns out the facts” (The Budapest Times, 12-18 April 2013), Fidesz MEP György Schöpflin writes that “no evidence is presented” to sustain Guy Verhofstadt’s (the group leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament) charge that “some highly controversial laws have restricted media… Continue »

At a two-day conference in Brussels last month, I learned that “two-thirds of employed high-skilled recent immigrants are in jobs for which they are over-qualified – versus some 19 per cent of EU-born who have a tertiary-level education and are over-qualified for their employment”. The problem was described as massive and structural, affecting the entire… Continue »

Dear Editor, A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Hungary.  Real wages fell nearly 3 per cent last year. Two in five Hungarians are now living in poverty, of which 1.5 million are living in dire poverty, that is, persistently below the subsistence level. According to the Central Statistical Office (KSH) the subsistence level in the… Continue »

The problem with parliamentary democracy in Hungary is the political parties themselves tend to be run from the top down with considerable power concentrated in the person of the party chairman à la Viktor Orbán and Fidesz. By contrast, LMP has no chairman, being “run” instead by a kind of steering committee whose members are… Continue »

I read the page-one article “US worried over democracy here” (The Budapest Times, 1-7 February 2013) and I feel that concerns by US officials about the lack of democracy in Hungary today are nothing short of suspicious and disingenuous. It is more likely that their concerns are a fear the Hungarian people are finally rid… Continue »

Usually when any country’s economy struggles with budget deficits, one of the first areas to suffer is taxpayer-assisted higher education. Thus the fact that Hungary’s government has cut the budget of many of its major universities should not come as a surprise. What is surprising and disheartening is the size by which next year’s university… Continue »

The article “Holocaust remembered” (The Budapest Times, 1-7 February 2013) incorrectly states that 550,000-600,000 Hungarian Jews perished in the final year of the Second World War “the vast majority after Nazi Germany invaded its ally and installed a quisling Hungarian fascist party in power”. The 16 October 1944 abdication of Miklós Horthy appointing Arrow Cross… Continue »

I have read all Reverend Bradley S. Belcher’s many columns in this newspaper and must say that he seems to live a charmed life, in that so far only one reader has taken up the weekly invitation to comment on his sermonising (“Now, who is the sinner?”, The Budapest Times, 25-31 January 2013). Well, I… Continue »

In your last issue, one of your dear readers made a critique of Bradley Belcher’s column under the title “Now, who is the sinner?”(The Budapest Times, 25-31 January 2013). Those comments not only deny what is obvious to the casual observer, they defy logic. Let me explain. It should be clear that children are born… Continue »

Hungarians have never recognised their culpability in the Holocaust. Now they are unable, or unwilling, to see that incitement to hatred is not the sudden raving of the mob. It is the public statements – the Numerus Clausus laws – that over time deny the humanity of a targeted people. It is the acquiescence of… Continue »