I’m now sat writing from the Alfandega conference centre – a sprawling old building beside the Douro river. Clearly plenty of cash has been spent on this Congress – huge banners and signs are to be found at every corner. The Delegate Bags are no exception; they come complete with […]
It’s 9.30 on the first day of the congress. Only I’m not there yet. I’m sat in cafe beside the River Douro, escaping the driving rain. However the cafe has a whole Phil Collins CD playing, and the track that’s just been playing was “I Wish It Would Rain Down” […]
Part of my task as a blogger at the PES Congress is to demystify what is going on there for those that are unable to be present on the spot. Yet it’s also worth spending a moment to demystify the very process of writing the blog and keeping it up […]
“The constitutional treaty is no more – it is a diseased dead parrot.” So said Home Secretary John Reid after the 4th December JHA Council in Brussels (article from EUObserver). Now, I’m not the greatest fan on John Reid – I think his views on law and order are repulsive, […]
I went along to a round table discussion this evening, organised by Policy Network and CER. Former Swedish Finance Minister Pär Nuder and UK Minister for the Third Sector Ed Miliband were speaking. The debate was interesting enough, but more importantly it started me thinking about Pär Nuder’s political ideology […]
I have the great privilege of having been chosen as one of the PES Activists to write a blog on the Party of European Socialists Website about the PES Congress taking place 7-8 December in Porto. The blog can be found here. However the functionality of the system there is […]
I’m an honest person. I pay my taxes. Well, I do when I can. Or when I’m asked. It however seems that Southwark Borough Council does not really want any money from me. As soon as I moved to Villa Street (8th September) I sent them a letter telling them […]
I happened to be looking for something related to my time at Oxford and wondered how Oxford University Student Union is getting on. I used to serve on the Exec there, and also was the OUSU Webmanager for a year or so. I was shocked to discover that one of […]
I’m really struggling on the blogging front at the moment. I have so much work to do – both in the office and in my ‘free’ time – that it’s extremely hard to get my thoughts in order to write anything significant about the EU at present. It also does […]
Hell, what a week. First of all, after the masses of work invested to get the Speak Up Europe website online by yesterday morning, the server it’s running on then was not accessible for the entire evening due to a technical fault / crash from the hosting firm – 1&1. […]
My sincere apologies for the long periods of silence on the blog. I have been working stupidly hard over the last couple of weeks, developing a number of different websites. The first of these – Speak Up Europe – is a Typo3 website on the EBD Euroserver for a Plan […]
Excellent news – Segolene Royal has won the vote in the French Socialist Party to become their candidate for the Presidential elections in the spring of 2007. Stories from EUObserver and BBC. She won a resounding 60.62% of the vote with Dominique Strauss-Kahn on 20.83% and former prime minister Laurent […]
