It seems my earlier blog posts (1, 2, 3) about Citzalia, the virtual European Parliament game costing €275000, managed to put some thoughts into UKIP’s head, and specifically led to some questions to the EP’s administration asked by Godfrey Bloom MEP as reported by Gawain at England Expects. The official […]
Bit of a surprise – I’ve been nominated as one of the most influential European centre left blogs by Social Europe Journal. They are running an online poll about the issue, and you can vote here. Firstly, I find the notion that my blog is influential broadly on the centre […]
As you can see I’ve had a bit of a clean up around here… The blog design is now much whiter and simpler, with a clearer emphasis on the content of the blog posts. Because I needed a swift solution I’ve based the design on the excellent Wu Wei theme […]
At the time of writing the EU’s European External Action Service (@EU_EEAS) was following just 4 others on Twitter – all other parts of the institutions, and not even any Commissioners or MEPs. I tweeted this, and it drew sharp reactions from @dicknieuwenhuis who works for the Commission on web […]
The idea is simple, the map is stylish and easy to read, and the code is open source – welcome to skoleporten, the interactive map of Norwegian school results for junior schools (5th grade) and secondary schools (8th grade), produced by Evan Westvang, one of the programmers at Origo.no. More […]
There seems to be a fundamental misconception at the heart of the ‘debate’ about Cameron’s Big Society ideas. This misconception is fed both by the discourse used by the Tories themselves, and the media reaction. Take this piece in today’s Guardian for example – councils are wondering whether some sort […]
I’m in Brussels for 36 hours and have just been on the panel at Edelman | The Centre’s event about whether social media can help bridge the gap between the EU and its citizens. I’m not sure any of the panellists (@MarietjeD66, @lauradagg, @ryangheath, @cybersoc or I) managed to fully […]
“Newspapers / the media / leafletting / canvassing [delete as applicable] are surely the least of his problems!” Can you really imagine a UK political activist saying any of those four possible phrases about the campaign for someone running for mayor of a London borough, and not leaving themselves open […]
Attending Personal Democracy Forum, re:publica and other equivalent events has – both directly and indirectly – opened my eyes to the writing and thinking of a whole group of US public intellectuals. I’ve had fun meeting Jeff Jarvis, have heard Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky and Cory Doctorow present, and have […]
On October 19th Jon Cruddas delivered the Aneurin Bevan Memorial Lecture, entitled ‘Taking back the Big Society”. The text of the speech is available at Liberal Conspiracy here and if you’ve ever heard Jon Cruddas deliver a speech live you can almost imagine how he would have delivered it (I […]
The European Commission has put together the smart video above about the EU budget. Clearly professionally filmed and produced, I wonder whether it will it will convince anyone about the merits of the budget? Yes, OK, it’s 1% of EU GNI, that’s all very well. It’s decided in a transparent […]
16th September – order O2 broadband and they send me a confirmation e-mail. 17th September they set up my direct debit. 24th September they activate the line, 2 days late, but not bad. The day after they even rather nauseatingly tell me I am connected, and to smile about it. […]
