According to the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning Stavros Dimas is the “EU’s Environment Chief“. Well, sort of. He’s actually European Commissioner for the Environment. Now would the same programme dream of calling John Hutton “Britain’s Industry Chief” or Hillary Benn “Britain’s Environment Chief“. No, of course […]
The requirements: music in the living room, printer and internet connection in the office, laptops to connect from anywhere in the flat, and the need for hard disk backups of both laptops. Today I reckon I’ve finally managed the whole thing: the Ultimate Home Network. My internet connection is with […]
Poland is the latest EU Member State to look like it might put a spanner in the works of ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon (DJ Nozem has a good list of the other silly requests currently known). BBC has a lousy article about it, and EU Business has a […]
My visits to London give me a short, sharp dose of news in the UK – and what a dose over the last few days. I saw part of a remarkable interview on Newsnight last night (available on the BBC website here – link top right) with Jeremy Paxman interviewing […]
It’s always good to have played a small part in a victorious political campaign, and so it has proven with the website Chuka4Streatham; that was my limited contribution to Chuka Umunna’s successful bid to be selected as successor to Keith Hill as Labour candidate in Streatham. Details of the vote […]
My connection with politics is like some kind of bad addiction. It hurts a hell of a lot most of the time, but you get some highs out of it from time to time. The last week has been one of those highs, and it’s even better as it’s an […]
Realising that its international reputation is not, ahem, what it once was, Belgium has launched a PR campaign called “Only in Belgium” to try to attract investment. Apparently this initiative goes across the language divide in the country – so much so that the map on the homepage prominently displays […]
Now the Daily Telegraph in its gruesome eurosceptic tone is speculating about Patricia Hewitt as Britain’s next nominee to be a European Commissioner. Now I reckon I got there first with this one – I posted about it first on 29th November 2007. Not bad, eh? Devil’s Kitchen commented on […]
I always enjoy watching ZDF Heute, the news programme of one of Germany’s state owned Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. Not only is the manner of delivery of the presenters so refreshingly staid and old-fashioned, but the way stories are covered is amusingly dead-pan. This lunchtime there was a report on how […]
Yesterday afternoon I was sat in the 10ºC sunshine at 1200m above sea level sipping a beer in Châtel (Haute Savoie) after 3 days of skiing, with no sign of snow in the village. Yet climate change and energy efficiency were on my mind – it was more interesting to […]
Can someone please explain to me what’s going on with the Labour Party’s branding strategy, or the lack of it? I’ve already posted about Labour’s logo problem (i.e. what is the logo presently) but now the party also has 3 different slogans on the go – the Blair-era new Labour […]
It’s probably the most famous quote about European politics – Henry Kissinger’s “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” From today there’s a new campaign website that might just start to give an answer to that historic question… whodoicall.eu calls for One President of the EU – […]
