Montengrans and other ans

If Serbia is RS, then the inhabitants of Montenegro are "Montenegrans". Well, at least this is to whom Rumsfeld talked to: Rumsfeld holds talks with Montenegrans after that trip, he is going to talk to Serbans, Croatans and Bosans. Luckily, he is not visiting the Republic of Sata.

It's RS after all

ISO has reconsidered and accepted the initial proposal of the Serbian government, which is a lot better than the earlier compromise solution of SS.

Kandidat za Oskar

This year's entry from Serbia into the Oscars competition will be Sutra ujutru, directed by Oleg Novković from a screenplay by Milena Marković. The original songs for the film were written and composed by Miroslav Mitrašinović, the optimistic miner from the documentary Rudarska opera, produced by the same couple. The film tells the story of a returnee from Canada who comes home, and meets his old friends and problems in a big way. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the more distinguished pieces of contemporary dramatic film from the area (Full disclosure: I had a very tiny role in the production of the film -- revising the translation -- and Ivana and I have translated a couple of other projects for Milena and Oleg, who are our pals. But we do not have any influence over film juries.).

A ko vas traži?

Is EU accession going to lead to a huge migration of labor from Romania and Bulgaria to the UK? The UK Home Office seems to be planning for the eventuality, and probably has plans to try to limit what they (may) anticipate to be an inflow of 60K to 140K workers. Gallup's survey in Bulgaria suggest otherwise: they find about 46K people saying that they intend to seek employment abroad, and Britain is not their first choice. Most would prefer to go to Spain, Germany, Italy or Greece. Alan Travis is listing for The Guardian a number of research studies showing that, for a variety of reasons, the UK is not all that attractive a destination for employment migration from SEE. A government that is declaring its hostility in advance is probably not enhancing the attraction. If there is unfounded anticipation in Britain, it may be because people are expecting the influx of workers from Poland to be repeated. If so, there is a crucial difference being overlooked: there was already an established Polish community and network in the UK, and there is nothing approaching that level of ready-to-use connections from Romania or Bulgaria.

In a similar pattern, there are some signs that the direction of the India-UK "brain drain" might be starting to move in reverse, as people become attracted to an environment that is dynamic and where they are less likely to encounter growing forms of "profiling." These are probably not the same reasons why a large number of people already in Britain express a desire to leave.