Back in 2013, José Manuel Barroso in his State of the European Union speech stated that the “EU needs to be big on big things and smaller on smaller things” (speech text here – phrase 3/4 of the way through). Since then this phrase has become some sort of mantra […]
A tweet by Gergely Polner, sometime comms guy for the European Parliament in London, and now working in the private sector, tweeted this earlier today that caught my eye: "One has to acknowledge that EU has been a source of frustration even for those most favourably disposed towards it" http://t.co/7OwqPCbPdw […]
Back in October 2011, when I still lived in London, I bought two pieces of software for my Macs in the Mac App Store – BBEdit, then priced at £34.99, and Pixelmator, then priced at £20.99*. Those apps have been upgrading happily enough through the App Store system until today. […]
This morning I am a speaker at European Disputes, part of the Internationales Literaturfestival. My panel, with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Ulrike Guérot, György Dalos, Hubert Védrine and moderated by Wolfgang Herles will be live streamed below, 1015-1145. The full programme is here. Pose questions on Twitter using the tag #EUdisputes. Your browser […]
On Friday 7th November I am a panellist at a conference entitled “European Disputes” that is part of the Internationales Literaturfestival in Berlin. I’m on a panel with both Dany Cohn-Bendit and Ulrike Guérot – that’s quite a privilege! Ulrike is one of Germany’s sharpest minds on EU matters, and […]
I gave a presentation at Digitale Gesellschaft’s Netzpolitischer Abend on 7th October, entitled Online Campaigning in Brussels: the next five years
This tweet by @BenC42, at 2110 this evening, alerted me to a potentially interesting development in the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP): @europeangreens @SkaKeller @jonworth Commissioner-designate Malmstrom says she is ready to remove #ISDS from #TTIP http://t.co/gm95qbhhGU — Ben C42 (@BenC42) September 26, 2014 This pointed […]
“Scotland has been part of the United Kingdom since 1707 and the old cultural ties to the rest of the British Isles are one of the main arguments made against independence in tomorrow’s referendum vote. Yet if the Yes to independence side is to succeed – the polls narrowed in […]
Fast forward to 2017, and somehow David Cameron is still Prime Minister, and the UK (or rUK?) is facing its referendum on remaining in the EU. The polls show a clear lead for keeping the UK in the EU (the NO side), led by Cameron, until Nigel Farage calls upon […]
When Blair was rumoured to want the job, the President of the European Council position was branded President of the EU by the British Press. Now Donald Tusk has been appointed to the position The Guardian went the other way, running a story on Saturday entitled “EU leaders pick new […]
Today I’m speaking at Europa-Nævnet in Copenhagen at their conference entitled “Is it any different?” (programme here) that looks at what happened in the 2014 EP elections in Denmark and more widely. The slides I am using are below, and can be downloaded here. If the wifi holds I will […]
So the British tabloids, and plenty of folks on Twitter, have been having a rant about vacuum cleaners, and the EU EcoDesign rules that came into force this week banning the sale of vacuum cleaners rated at more than 1600W. A further round of changes will come into force in […]
