James Kirkup on the Telegraph Blog has raised the interesting idea that David Miliband, pipped to the Labour leadership by his brother, might leave UK politics for the IMF. Kirkup says the info on this comes from Bagehot in The Economist, and as Bagehot used to be Charlemagne for that […]
I heard a short speech in Berlin yesterday evening by Ulrike Guérot from the European Council on Foreign Relations at an event organised by Europa Union. The essential gist of her presentation was that, now, 20 years on since the fall of the Berlin Wall (and indeed that’s half as […]
At Bloggingportal we came up with the idea of having a laugh at the expense of our esteemed President, Jose Manuel Barroso with his “State of the European Union” speech by playing bullshit bingo. The entire speech is now available here, and the Wordle for it looks like this: Barroso […]
Aahmed ElAmin, one of the developers of Citzalia (whose words were followed hook, line and sinker by The Guardian) has penned his own side of the story at a website entitled The Royal Gazette. Odd location, and his approach to the whole thing is even odder. You can read the […]
Budget Commissioner, Janusz Lewandowski, has said he will present some options next month for how direct EU taxes could work. The story is covered by the BBC. Cue a load of instant complains, howls of derision etc., particularly from Brits. Wait a moment. Think of what the EU does and […]
What should the Party of European Socialists do in 2014 to avoid a repeat of 2009’s disastrous European Parliament election results, and the mess over the dithering prior to 2009 that resulted in the PES not selecting a candidate to be Commission President? While Martin Schulz and the Socialist Group […]
My previous post about Citzalia has been creating waves in the small pond of EU debate throughout the day. The blog entry was first linked from Tim Worstall, then appeared in the Open Europe press review, and has then subsequently been linked by England Expects, Politics.ie, The Endless Track and […]
Yesterday – thanks to this tweet – I had the dubious honour to be one of the first people to have a look at a draft website for Citzalia, a project that promises some sort of virtual European Parliament role playing game. The official blurb is as follows: Citzalia is […]
It seems it’s the season for high level German politicians of yesteryear to have a go at the EU. Former Bundeskanzler Schmidt is quoted by Euractiv.de (Google translation here) as saying: Es ist im Augenblick keine Führungsperson da. Das ist eine schlimmere Situation, als wir sie jemals in 60 Jahren […]
I’m in Sweden at the moment, one of the most gender-conscious countries in the world, and motivated by this I’ve been thinking about the impact of election systems on gender representation, inspired in part by this from Talking about the EU. The general rule is that list-based election systems tend […]
I spent a few hours today at a seminar about left wing blogging in Sweden in Eskilstuna, a medium sized town 90 minutes south west of Stockholm. I was invited there by Fredrik Pettersson, one of my web clients. My presentation from the seminar is here, but this blog entry […]
Oh the irony! A Member of the European Parliament – Inge Grässle (whose name sounds rather like graisse, the French word for fat) – has had a go at the European Commission for creating its hundredth Director General post. Parliament Magazine has the story: Gräßle likened the commission to a […]
