So that’s it. Today is the last day my Young Persons Railcard is valid (yes, they don’t know how to use apostrophes). Purchased the day before my 26th birthday last year, today marks the final day of more than 8 years of buying these cards giving me 1/3 off rail […]
Europe Day is past, so now it’s time to focus on that other great European (but non-EU) event – the Eurovision Song Contest. Iain Dale started to get me thinking about this. The contest is essentially unfair. A few thousand people favouring one song in Andorra give that act as […]
It’s Europe Day today! So pause for a moment and reflect on what has been achieve since Robert Schuman’s appeal for the creation of a Coal and Steel community – the Schuman Declaration – 57 years ago today. We’ve come a long way since then and it’s even been considered […]
Labour has launched an excellent website called Better With Labour, looking first at all the changes that have been made to the NHS under Labour and how matters have improved. Life expectancy for males in Southwark is up by 3.2 years! But hang on. This is all very well. The […]
JEF-Europe yesterday published a spoof newspaper – The Daily European – that speculated about future scenarios for the European Union and how it will be in 2057, 100 years after the Treaty of Rome. I’m quite happy that JEF has done this newspaper once more – when I was in […]
Jeremy has pointed me towards an appeal that has just been launched, calling for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. The campaign has plenty of high-level backers but any individual is also welcome to sign. If you care about reform of the UN and global governance it’s well worth having a look. […]
As has been widely reported, Turkey has a bit of a problem on its hands with the selection of its new President. Opposition CHP members of Parliament boycotted the vote, so the election of the ruling AK Party’s candidate – Abdullah Gul – has been called into question. Gul was […]
I thought it was about time to do something about the energy consumption from lighting in the flat I live in with Helena, so hence I have invested in 20 7W compact energy-efficient bulbs, bought online from LightingWorld. These are really wee bulbs – they are small enough to fit […]
The UK Green MEPs in the European Parliament have commissioned a report showing how much CO2 the monthly travelling circus to Strasbourg produces – 20000 tonnes to be precise, as much as flying 13000 people across the Atlantic and back. See The Independent, and Jonathan Newton’s blog. I’m actually quite […]
Just a short note to highlight this post made a couple of days ago by Labour MEP Richard Corbett. Richard is the best of the UK Labour MEPs in my opinion, he was once President of JEF, is also giving LME a kick-start, and is a very pleasant chap. But […]
The focus of most of Europe’s press this week has rightly been on the French elections. I’ve had an eye on that too, but there’s nothing I can write about it that has not been adequately covered elsewhere. I would instead like to reflect a little on the other major […]
I’ve always had a degree of respect for Louis Michel, sometime foreign minister during Belgium’s 2001 EU Presidency. He seems a jovial and reasonably intelligent chap and, since 2004 as European Commissioner responsible for the development portfolio, has done a decent job – better than his predecessor Poul Nielson at […]
