I have a lot of respect for the work that the Fabian Society does, but they just do not seem to understand that the old channels of influence do not work in quite the same way as before. The new Fabian Society website is one of the worst new sites […]
Red tape, regulation, burdens on British business. The number of times we hear that in the British press when complaints are made about Brussels. I was hence dumbstruck today when the tables have been turned and the reaction is still negative. See this from the Birmingham Post for example, and […]
Europe Day is past, so now it’s time to focus on that other great European (but non-EU) event – the Eurovision Song Contest. Iain Dale started to get me thinking about this. The contest is essentially unfair. A few thousand people favouring one song in Andorra give that act as […]
Right, so that’s it then. Blair’s time is over. There was plenty of sancimonious stuff in his resignation speech, and religious references too. All a bit sick-inducing. But the really excellent bit was this: “There is only one government since 1945 that can say all of the following: more jobs, […]
It’s Europe Day today! So pause for a moment and reflect on what has been achieve since Robert Schuman’s appeal for the creation of a Coal and Steel community – the Schuman Declaration – 57 years ago today. We’ve come a long way since then and it’s even been considered […]
Yesterday’s Scottish elections have been criticised due to a large number of spoilt ballot papers, presumably because people did not understand the voting system in use in the 2 different elections taking place. Single Transferable Vote (STV) where you mark numbered preferences was used for the council elections and the […]
It took me months and months to arrange the payment of Council Tax at the flat I’ve lived in since 8th September 2006 in Southwark. I’ve blogged about the problems before. But by February I thought I had managed to fix everything – make my 2006 payment in one go, […]
Labour has launched an excellent website called Better With Labour, looking first at all the changes that have been made to the NHS under Labour and how matters have improved. Life expectancy for males in Southwark is up by 3.2 years! But hang on. This is all very well. The […]
JEF-Europe yesterday published a spoof newspaper – The Daily European – that speculated about future scenarios for the European Union and how it will be in 2057, 100 years after the Treaty of Rome. I’m quite happy that JEF has done this newspaper once more – when I was in […]
Jeremy has pointed me towards an appeal that has just been launched, calling for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. The campaign has plenty of high-level backers but any individual is also welcome to sign. If you care about reform of the UN and global governance it’s well worth having a look. […]
A great British institution – the beach hut. At Southwold in Suffolk there are plenty of them, in many bright colours. It was a pleasure to spend a weekend pottering around the Suffolk countryside, a welcome break from London.
As has been widely reported, Turkey has a bit of a problem on its hands with the selection of its new President. Opposition CHP members of Parliament boycotted the vote, so the election of the ruling AK Party’s candidate – Abdullah Gul – has been called into question. Gul was […]
