At the end of the televised Salmond-Darling debate I tweeted the following: https://twitter.com/jonworth/status/496758648266579968 With 77 retweets so far, it seems to have struck a chord with some people. It also is an aspect of the independence debate that was only mentioned in passing in the televised clash, but for me it...
I’ve been partner in a small Limited Liability Partnership in the UK since 2009, and since the start getting our banking right has been a bit of a headache. We have a low turnover, but issue between 50 and 70 invoices a year, and many of those are paid from...
Gergely Polner (@eurocrat on Twitter) normally knows his stuff about the EU. Sometime spokesperson for the Hungarian Presidency of the EU (still the best social media outreach by Presidency), then head of public affairs for the European Parliament in the UK, and now head of EU affairs for the British Bankers’...
I was back in the UK for the first time in ages last week and was frustrated as a result of not being able to use two services I had grown to rely on – my Three Pay-as-you-go Data SIMcard, and Auto-TopUp for my Oyster Card. What’s the problem? A...
A friend on Facebook pointed me towards an article in GQ about the Wythenshawe & Sale East byelection. I’m not a regular GQ reader, but the headline – Running On Anger: on the campaign trail with UKIP – and the content of the piece are worth reading. The tactics employed by...
“At the TUC conference this week in Brighton, RMT union boss Bob Crow asked his colleagues to back a British referendum on the EU. His call for a referendum was roundly rejected. On the internet, the group Labour for a Referendum has posted three times [1, 2, 3] on LabourList...
I’ve lost track of the number of times people have defended the British First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system with the argument that because the system generally produces a clear winner (a majority for one party), the system hence avoids the need for the complicated coalition negotiations and trade-offs necessary...
Spiegel Online has an interesting article today in English entitled “Britain’s Blind Faith in Intelligence Agencies“. I agree with the title, and conclusion of the piece, but it poses one major question for me: why do the British have this blind faith? This issue has been on my mind a lot...
Alan Rusbridger has this evening written a most extraordinary column on The Guardian’s website about the pressure exerted on the paper by British security services. We are now about 27 hours on from when the initial revelations about David Miranda’s detention first broke. So how, at 0030 CET / 2330...
I’ve been deluged with a load of bile on Twitter today about exports of cars manufactured in the UK to the rest of the EU (see here, here and here). There is even the line that “sales to the EU are so low”. I do not deny that there has been a slump...
According to Philip Stephens in the FT “Facts finally collide with ideology on Europe“, as his column gives solid backing to the FCO’s Balance of Competences review. The reports are “shorn of ideology and political judgments” he says, while “Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Philip Hammond were among cabinet...
So with rather little fanfare, the UK Government’s EU balance of competence review has today published its first six reports (links to PDFs here). The first six reports concern Taxation, Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, Health, Foreign policy, Single market and Animal Health and Welfare and Food Safety. So what can...