Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has caused a stir by promising today to persevere with his plans to abolish Council Tax in Scotland and replace it with a 3p in the pound increase in income tax. As far as I’m concerned he’s right. This will probably draw howls of derision […]
In 2006 this blog was ranked 10th best left-of-centre blog in the UK in Iain Dale’s blog list (2006 and 2007 scores here, 2008 here). Last year it was 40th, and this year it’s in 100th position, despite me investing at least as much time writing the blog now as […]
Bruno Waterfield has written a blog entry about a leaked Commission document looking at the media environment in Ireland and how that contributed to the debate (and the result) in the referendum in Ireland on the Treaty of Lisbon. The leaked document is available here. The document has a lot […]
For my offline friends I reckon this will be a surprising result – I’m apparently only 51% a geek, which puts me 3% behind top Norwegian EU / tech blogger Bente Kalsnes. I think it has something to do with my dislike of the literature of sci-fi and, after all, […]
I’ve posted before about the environmental impact of meat eating, and some of the half truths of high food prices. The German magazine Spiegel looked at the issue last week (article in English here), specifically with regard to beef production, and came up with the stat that 1kg of organic […]
Conundrum: lots of cable TV channels at home in Belgium thanks to Coditel, but just an old TV connected to the cable TV box. But in the other room sits a nice iMac with a 24″ LCD screen. So why not get the cable TV channels on the iMac? There’s […]
Female readers of this blog, forgive me. This entry is directed at men. Perhaps men behaving this way have also posed a problem for female readers? But anyway I digress. To the point: men’s legs and wha’s between them. What is it about men that makes them sit in positions […]
Rounds are fired, politicians posture, and families flee. So is the story from Gori today and from Mostar at the start of the 1990s. As war in the Caucasus turns to nervous truce I’ve been watching the news reports and reflecting on the goings-on while spending during two weeks in […]
At Kön/Bonn Airport yesterday as 3 NATO surveillance planes took off one after the other, bound for Afghanistan I subsequently discovered, but reason for reflection nevertheless. I picked up a copy of Süddeutsche Zeitung when boarding my plane and one particular article caught my eye, a column entitled “Für Georgien […]
The debate about the new 10 Downing Street website has been rumbling on for a short while and having commented about it on a few blogs it’s probably worth summarising what I make of it. I have had nothing whatsoever to do with the development of the site – this […]
CaféBabel has an interview with Commission President Barroso (hat tip: European Union Law Blog) and they have a good go at him, which is refreshing to see. He declined to answer the question “Why didn’t you resign after the Irish referendum? It would have been a strong political message to […]
Norwegian Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs Helga Pedersen has got in a flap about the film of a British registered trawler throwing 80% of its catch overboard after leaving Norwegian waters and entering British waters – see the video and read the news story from The Guardian. The article […]
