It had to happen at some point – delays to Ryanair flights. Considering how often I fly with them, it’s a miracle I am not delayed more often. Anyway, Saturday morning most of northern Europe was covered with fog and the incoming aircraft that would then take me to Altenburg […]
The blog has been a bit quiet over the last couple of weeks – I have started a new job and it takes a bit of time to settle. It feels like a breath of fresh air with a new start though – I am now at the National School […]
EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has put her foot in it by writing in a newspaper that the Germans electing Merkel would be a good idea. This has led to a chorus of howls from Social Democrat MEPs that she has no right to say such things about national politics […]
I have not always been the biggest fan of Commission Vice-President Margot Wallström in the past. OK, she has a horrible brief – trying to communicate the EU with very little cash and resources. Despite this, I have wondered whether she has approached the job of selling the EU with […]
In a column in today’s Guardian by Polly Toynbee, on what would happen if a natural disaster hit the UK: Poor London victims would also have nothing more than the clothes they stood in. Nationally 27% of people have no savings, not one penny; 25% of the poorest have at […]
Gordon Brown has today launched a very thinly veiled attack on the European Commission’s trade deal with China on textiles in an article in the FT – summary here. His basic stance is towards those that have appealed for quotas is tough – protectionism is not going to save inefficient […]
A really ingenious suggestion at bowblog has made me think once more about cost-offsetting and climate change. The idea would be to put a small levy on purchases made using eBay to account for the distance that goods would have to be shipped. Read the post here. It has made […]
There’s a very lucid and internally coherent column in today’s Guardian from Larry Elliott entitled Edwardian Summer, drawing parallels between today’s economic stuggles (oil prices, flexiblility, worker backlash etc.) and the period pre-1914, the first era of globalisation. You have to take what Elliott says with a pinch of salt […]
Apparently we should not use the term couch potato [Wikipedia definition] any more as this is giving the humble potato a bad image, according to the British Potato Council. Read more here. They are apparently mounting protests outside the offices of Oxford University Press – printers of the Oxford English […]
So is this the price we have to pay to keep the European Constitution alive: to slow down the pace of enlargement, as suggested by Austrian Prime Minister Wolfgang Schüssel in today’s FAZ, reported by EUObserver? I suppose that such comments from a centre-right leader of a country in which […]
Every country has its bizarre political traditions. The UK has more in the House of Commons than most countries have in total. But Sweden must have one of the sweetest and very old-fashioned political traditions – Goran Persson’s annual speeches at the Folkets Park in Björkvik, in the countryside somewhere […]
My previous experience of football outside the UK has been quite grand. While on my travels I have watched Inter vs. Helsingborg FF at the San Siro in 2000, and FC Barcelona vs. Club Brugge at the Nou Camp in 2003 (both Champions League). In the last fortnight, I have […]
