34. Well, it’s just a number? Well, not quite. It’s the last two figures on car numberplates from the French département of Hérault, the region of France where I spent all my summers from 1990 until 1998 (and plenty of time subsequently). See a 34 drive past and I think […]
While researching my previous post about European Capitals of Culture I discovered that capitalsofculture.eu was still free to register. So I’ve registered it and created a small page to ask the Commission what they are doing about publicity for this flagship programme, ripping off the Commission’s lousy page design to […]
Tonight is the launch of Liverpool 2008 – European Capital of Culture (Wikipedia page). But how much is the EU actually involved in the European Capitals of Culture? The picture is at best extremely opaque. Let’s get a few things straight. The idea of capitals of culture dates from a […]
I’m happy to announce the launch of a new website for a Labour candidate today – Chuka Umunna’s site Chuka 4 Streatham. This is the second website project I’ve launched with him after TMP Online that has grown strongly in the last year. I’ve known Chuka since 2002 and I’m […]
On my bookshelf of hefty political tomes stand 4 volumes steeped in relevance to the Labour Party: Aneurin Bevan by Michael Foot, Red Queen (Barbara Castle) by Anne Perkins, Kinnock by Martin Westlake, and Courage: 8 Portraits by Gordon Brown, the latter two signed by the Labour leaders past and […]
So the Government is going to build new nuclear power stations. John Hutton will announce it today, Take II after the initial mess of the “procedurally unfair” consultation process. I’m not an outright hater of nuclear power – I think we would be foolish to decommission the UK’s existing nuclear […]
Without wanting to sound too much like Donald Rumsfeld, there are some things I know that I know nothing about, and I put US politics in that bracket. This blog has categories for European and UK politics for a reason. I don’t know the relative importance of New Hampshire or […]
What is it about the Labour Party’s obsession with faith? If you click ‘Get Involved’ in the main menu bar of the Labour Party website (screenshot pictured) you get 4 main headings: Join the Party, Conference 2008, Faith Groups and Labour – winning for women. OK, I’ve heard people say […]
It was rightly thought to be outrageous that UK teacher Gillian Gibbons (story, news summary) was imprisoned in Sudan under blasphemy laws when children in her class named a teddy bear Muhammad. Now the National Secular Society is leading calls to do something about the UK’s blasphemy laws and have […]
The rather gruesome eurosceptic blog EU Referendum likes to think they have information to back up their conspiracy theories about the EU. Yet a post today about FCO diplomatic cuts shows how little they actually know: Interestingly, no mention is made of the embassy in Brussels (pictured) – which deals […]
Alistair Darling is concerned about an energy price hike in the UK – npower is hiking its domestic gas prices by 17% and electricity prices by 12%, and other firms are set to follow npower’s lead. His solution? He has publicly stated how he is approaching Ofgem about the matter. […]
London elects its Mayor in 2008, and the campaigns of the respective candidates are going to be warming up in the coming few months. Yet in one core respect Tory candidate Boris Johnson is already ahead – he has a decent website (Back Boris) which comes up as the 3rd […]
