I went to a concert of the band Guillemots at the Brixton Academy on Friday. The concert itself was a bit strange – Guillemots are very professional, but they are hard to relate to as a live band. The main man – Fyfe Dangerfield – hides himself behind 2 enormous […]
This is one of the oddest EU-related things I’ve come across recently. A colleague was looking for pictures of ‘Eurocrat’ in Google Images. That search drags up – among other things – a picture of Gerhard Schroeder, one of Daniel Hannan, and a few of a wire fox terrier. It […]
I happened to be doing some research into the composition of the European Parliament’s Committees and came across the somewhat strange composition of the Development Committee (DEVE). It turns out that there are only 2 UK MEPs that are full members of the committee – Glenys Kinnock (PES / Labour) […]
I’ve been a bit slow on the EU blogging front recently – it’s been hard to remove myself from the mire of HTML and website work. But this morning – via Nosemonkey – I have come across this essay by Timothy Garton Ash about the 6 themes Europe needs to […]
Gérard Onesta, Vice President of the European Parliament from the French Greens, has released his ideas about how to restart the ratification process of the European Constitution. His ‘Plan A+‘ suggests leaving the text of the Constitution intact, but dividing up the text for the sake of ratification – making […]
Andrew Marr’s Sunday AM programme on BBC1 this morning had a feature on political blogging, and the 20 seconds or so about a Labour blogger was none other than Harriet Harman. The header of her blog that I designed managed to get a quick view on national television. Quite cool! […]
We were promised the heaviest snowfalls for years. The Met Office issued a severe weather warning. Colleagues in work were discussing yesterday how they are going to get to the office today. So what did we get? A bit of slushy snow – nothing much at all! As I write […]
Have a look at the notice pictured above (click image to view it at full size). This pictures are from Danygraig cemetery in Risca. This is Caerphilly unitary authority’s approach to dealing with the issue of church headstones falling over – you can read their press statement here. Every gravestone […]
OK, so this might be a bit of a petty blog entry, but I want to have a rant about that most simple of everyday tasks: going to the bank. I do most of my banking online so manage to avoid bank branches whenever I can, but Friday was an […]
I’m feeling really quite stuck at the moment. It seems that I am doing everything a bit, but nothing really to my satisfaction. I’m trying to carry on doing a full time job, go to weekly Swedish and Italian lessons, keep things moving in the Labour Movement for Europe, start […]
Have no fear. I’ve not turned into a ranting car driver, complaining that the bumps in the road spoil my journey. It’s more serious than that. I’ve come close to being thrown off my bike in recent weeks thanks to inadvertently hitting potholes. The damaged road surface pictured – on […]
There’s been yet another effort to change Britain’s time zone – i.e. putting the UK on Central European Time. This effort has been tabled as a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons by Tory MP Tim Yeo, although he calls the new timezone SDST (see Yeo’s ePolitix blog). […]
