Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced on Friday that the MEPs from his party, Fianna Fáil, will join the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE) group in the EP after June’s elections. Graham Watson, currently leader of ALDE, has welcomed the idea, as reported by EUObserver. But let’s look […]
The picture on the right is a machine that applies the durable, thick paint to roads. I show it here because employing one of those is Belgium would really help me avoid having a nasty accident in the near future. The chances of it happening – unless I mount a […]
A post at Tom Harris MP’s blog caught my eye this morning in which he cites comments by Graham Watson MEP that it’s actually his wife writing his Twitter feed on his behalf, and that he has asked staff to hoover up Facebook friends for him. Quite frankly I don’t […]
When I’m in Belgium I am a happy resident of St Josse-ten-Noode. It’s on the doorstep of the EU institutions and it’s Belgium’s poorest commune with an average income of only €7079 per year per inhabitant. Lathem-St-Martin is the richest commune in Belgium with an average income of €19820. Both […]
Today’s EUObserver has an article about how the European Commission is struggling to find enough English language mother tongue interpreters. As everyone in Brussels works in English, so the need for Brits and Irish to speak other European languages declines – or at least that’s the gist of the article. […]
I am completely and totally sick of politicians who whine that the reason the EU will not work is because there is no European demos. Vaclav Klaus was at it again today in the EP, and Bruno Waterfield is practically jumping up and down with glee about the speech. Well […]
European Elections are now very much on the horizon and I’m happy to have been able to work with one MEP to create a campaign page – Swedish Social Democrat Åsa Westlund’s site went online this week, of course powered by WordPress. The site brings together all of the different […]
I met Dave Keating, author of the excellent Gulf Stream Blues blog, for a coffee yesterday and we started to chat about UK politics. What, he asked me, were my thoughts about Gordon Brown’s prospects? It seems that as the government’s opinion poll ratings have taken hit after hit so […]
6000 working groups during the Swedish Presidency!? What do all those meetings do? That’s the question posed by Open Europe. Undoubtedly there is a cost, and a financial burden, posed by this number of meetings but – frankly – what is the alternative? Let’s take the Working Party on Olive […]
There’s nothing that manages to get my annoyed quite the way that border guards do. Especially when they are fat, pompous Austrians with a gun in a holster at their hip that greet you with ‘Grüß Gott’ and control your passport a few minutes after your train has left Brenner […]
Oh, what a day. I’ve been teaching Italian civil servants about the principles of UK government written and oral briefing – the fourth day of five days of training that has taken me from Bologna to Roma and now to Caserta. The training venue is in the heart of the […]
Having been shocked by the horrible living conditions of the Roma in the Italian capital while jogging earlier this week I today returned to the area, camera in hand. There were no police or military present this time. It’s far from easy to take photos when people are looking at […]
