The original blog: commentary about everything except transport
It’s so easy for non-EU-phobic politicians in the UK to slip into it: a discourse that membership of the European Union is ‘in Britain’s national interest’. Wayne David’s recent piece for Labour List uses the term three times. Ben Fox,
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Brussels Bubble dominates EU blogosphere – Public Service Europe.
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Here we go again. The next stage of the UK government’s effort to get more Brits into the EU institutions… is to try to skew the application system to assist Brits. Today’s FT has more on the story here. There’s
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A pedestrian bumps into another pedestrian who is blocking the pavement. The pedestrian gets a wet foot from a loose paving stone and clambers over bags of rubbish on the way to the Métro. The same person takes the Métro,
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A piece in the European Parliament magazine entitled “Plans for big shake-up in European elections branded ‘absurd’” caught my eye. It concerns ideas that have been rumbling around in Brussels about how to improve European elections, and the idea to
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What should Labour’s EU policy be in opposition? What can at the same time be positive about the future, realistic, deliverable, and also decisively different from the coalition’s approach to the EU? Vital questions. The starting point seems to be a few
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The diagramme above comes from an excellent report entitled “The Nordic Way” [PDF], produced by Swedish think tank Global Utmaning, and linked from this Bagehot piece about the Nordic countries. The paper itself is worth a read, although take it
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It has not been an easy week for the government (and indeed UK politics as a whole) when it comes to sovereignty, rights and responsibilities. A non-binding motion in the House of Commons yesterday was passed 234-22 in favour of
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NOTE: if you’re arrived here thanks to the seven59.dk post about this programme, this is NOT a blog that is in ANY WAY associated with the programme. These are my own thoughts as a listener to the programme, no more.
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Loads of organisations and companies make their press photos available on Flickr – good. But other than look at the pictures, what is anyone supposed to actually do with them? This was the issue raised this morning when I pointed
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Foreign Ministers of EU countries are meeting today in Brussels, while at the same time protests against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt enter their 7th day. On his way to the Brussels meeting Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted this: [blackbirdpie
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Essentially journalists, politicians, bloggers and the general public have two frames of reference when talking about the European Union. Either it’s talked about in terms similar to the descriptions used for international organisations (the UN, NATO) or in terms similar
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