Adriaan Schout and Jeroen van Dijken wrote a column last week in Dutch daily de Volkskrant entitled EU kan goed zonder Europees Parlement – essentially that the EU could do OK without the European Parliament. I picked up on the story via euro|topics. The whole line of the column, as […]
So here we go again. The EU has a multitude of problems on its hands: Russia turning off the gas, the Gaza conflict brewing, and no-one really knowing what to do about the economic downturn, least of all the Commission. The Czech Presidency has already made a few gaffes, and […]
In response to the Harry is racist scandal David Cameron said this: I think it’s important that in the great institutions… we root out attitudes like that. That has to go right across the institutions. I’m not sure whether Cameron reckons the army or the royal family is the great […]
As covered by Iain, Bob, Guido, ConHome and the Spectator the new Derek Draper blogging initiative Labour List has now seen the light of day with a soft launch. So what should be made of all of this? The list of people contributing to Labour List is impressive. There are […]
OK, it’s not my sole ambition to be on TV! But I remember as a 16 year old thinking: some day I would like to be interviewed on television or radio speaking a language that’s not my mother tongue. To appear in such an interview would mean I was doing […]
I don’t normally frequent the websites of the European Court of Justice and the European Ombudsman. Yes, I am an EU geek, but not that much of an EU geek. But a friend asked me some questions today and hence I visited both sites. You could argue that the ECJ’s […]
Why am I not surprised about this? The Czech Presidency has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as ‘defensive’. Hmmm, I think not. I’m not looking forward to the Czechs in the chair for the next 6 months. Bring back Sarko, all is forgiven. [UPDATE] They don’t even know who’s who […]
This makes me so, so, so happy! The atheist buses are on the streets of London.
Just back from an excellent morning run – 10km from Leyton through Hackney Marshes, then Walthamstow marshes (almost as far as Tottenham Hale) and then back. There was a sprinkling of snow on the ground, and the grass in the marshes was hard and icy. But where else in London […]
So the UK carrot crop is going to be wiped out, according to Martin Evans, Chairman of the British Carrot Growers’ Association quoted in The Observer today. The EU wants to tighten rules on what pesticides can be used on crops, the UK government doesn’t agree, can be outvoted under […]
I have a simple rule for my own blog: I don’t write about things I don’t know something about. So there’s no US politics here, and nothing about the credit crunch – others are much better qualified to write about those sorts of things. Oh how I wish print journalists […]
Every fifth year is decisively different for the EU: election years. And this year is one of those years. For the 40% of the population that will go to vote it’s a relatively minor event, but in Brussels itself election years are very different. MEPs try to cram a few […]
