“Citizen Dave,” headlines the Independent. In an ironic reference to the popular British 70’s sitcom Citizen Smith, whose hero is a deluded Communist revolutionary, the London daily sizes up David Cameron’s first speech as PM at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, 6 October. On the eve on some of the biggest budget cuts in living memory, including a controversial one billion slash in child allowances, Cameron set out his revolutionary plan to scrap the big state for the Big Society. “He hailed a radical shift in power in which nurses formed co-operatives, parents set up schools and GPs ran the NHS,” the London daily writes. Declaring his government the “new radicals… breaking apart the old system,” Cameron also echoed first world war general Lord Kitchener saying: "Your country needs you."
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku. 