The original blog: commentary about everything except transport
When I’m in Belgium I am a happy resident of St Josse-ten-Noode. It’s on the doorstep of the EU institutions and it’s Belgium’s poorest commune with an average income of only €7079 per year per inhabitant. Lathem-St-Martin is the richest
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Today’s EUObserver has an article about how the European Commission is struggling to find enough English language mother tongue interpreters. As everyone in Brussels works in English, so the need for Brits and Irish to speak other European languages declines
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I am completely and totally sick of politicians who whine that the reason the EU will not work is because there is no European demos. Vaclav Klaus was at it again today in the EP, and Bruno Waterfield is practically
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European Elections are now very much on the horizon and I’m happy to have been able to work with one MEP to create a campaign page – Swedish Social Democrat Åsa Westlund’s site went online this week, of course powered
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I met Dave Keating, author of the excellent Gulf Stream Blues blog, for a coffee yesterday and we started to chat about UK politics. What, he asked me, were my thoughts about Gordon Brown’s prospects? It seems that as the
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6000 working groups during the Swedish Presidency!? What do all those meetings do? That’s the question posed by Open Europe. Undoubtedly there is a cost, and a financial burden, posed by this number of meetings but – frankly – what
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There’s nothing that manages to get my annoyed quite the way that border guards do. Especially when they are fat, pompous Austrians with a gun in a holster at their hip that greet you with ‘Grüß Gott’ and control your
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Oh, what a day. I’ve been teaching Italian civil servants about the principles of UK government written and oral briefing – the fourth day of five days of training that has taken me from Bologna to Roma and now to
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“The President of the European People’s Party (EPP) Party, Wilfried Martens, has just upped the pressure on David Cameron by asking for a clear decision by April from the Tory leader as to whether the United Kingdom’s Conservatives will sit
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Having been shocked by the horrible living conditions of the Roma in the Italian capital while jogging earlier this week I today returned to the area, camera in hand. There were no police or military present this time. It’s far
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I travelled on a brand new ETR600 Pendolino between Roma and Caserta this evening. I ideally needed to get an internet connection and there was a WiFi signal in the train, called ‘Passengers’, but it was WPA Password protected. I
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President of the EPP Party Wilfried Martens has just upped the pressure on David Cameron by asking for a clear decision by April from the Tory leader as to whether the UK Conservatives will sit in the EPP-ED group in
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