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 […]
The upgrade work for the new blog is complete. Here is a quick summary of the changes… Running on WordPress 2.7, with a new theme based on Hybrid / Leviathan New Sportblog added, with excellent mapping like this thanks to the excellent XML Google Maps plugin for WordPress Twitter updates […]
There are going to be a few changes here at this blog over the coming few weeks as, from a professional point of view, 2009 promises to be a year of major changes. I’ll be starting a Limited Company in the web design business together with a number of others […]
Having skated the Berlin Inline Marathon in 1 hour 35 minutes in September 2008 I’m determined to do better in 2009. So I need to make my training regime more professional… Problem: when skating there’s no way other than GPS to measure your speed. Pedometers don’t work. So I managed […]
I’ve just found myself shouting at the television as I happened to have the misfortune to see part of a programme on BBC1 called Dom’s on the Case that looks at healthcare provision in the UK. There were 2 main parts to the programme that I found particularly twisted. First […]
Woo hoo. London is going to get a new Routemaster bus, for Mayor Boris has declared it will happen. He’s announced 2 winners in his design competition. The winners are shown above. The buses are to be on the streets by 2011. Not. A. Hope. Here’s why. Firstly, how long […]
Berlaymonster is rather critical of an ALDE-funded poster on the bridge over rue Beliard, asking What is the EU for? But big pieces of PVC above Brussels streets are not the only place that the centrist / liberal group is dishing out cash. The large banner ads today at both […]
So Peter Mandelson announces that Royal Mail is to be part privatised. Cue much teeth gnashing / soul searching / resignations / bemoaning of the loss of a national icon, bla bla. Come on folks, let’s get real about this. Royal Mail, much like Woolworths, MFI and plenty of others […]
UPDATE 10.4.10: This is not a blog entry about the death of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski (Yahoo erroneously ranks this entry in searches for ‘Kaczynski dead’) – for news about that tragic accident please see this story from BBC News. Former Polish PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski drew widespread scorn in […]
Iain Dale has today written a long post about how some Labour people think he’s in some way the mouthpiece of the Tory Party. I don’t agree with parts of the way his article is put together (for example: Sunny Hundal is one of the most straightforward and interesting people […]
Declan Ganley, instrumental in the campaign that resulted in Ireland voting No to the Treaty of Lisbon, has set up his Libertas Party that will field candidates in the EP elections in June 2009. I’ve been trying to work out what I make of this, hence why it has taken […]
So there will be another vote in Ireland on the Treaty of Lisbon. “Oh no” was my first reaction. Then the first person who heard my reaction asked me “so what else should they do?” That is a question I cannot answer, and indeed I don’t think that Libertas has […]
