Recent Posts

Janez PotoÄ?nik
EU Politics

Techo-Commissioner

Wow! He’s the European Commissioner responsible for Research, so you would hope he would be quite high tech, but Janez PotoÄ?nik has launched a new website with animations, an audio message greeting you, and a gaudy yellow background too. So for details of what the EU is spending its €4.5bn […]

Alla Ska Med
EU Politics

Alla ska med – Swedish election campaigning

20 days to go until the Swedish election, the campaigns are in full swing. So what should be made of all of all of this? And might the Social Democrats manage to hold on to power in the face of the conservative ‘alliance’? For election news in English, try The […]

Oneseat.eu
EU Politics

Oneseat.eu – target is close, so SIGN!

The online petition calling for one seat for the European Parliament – oneseat.eu – has now passed 900000 signatures. It’s an excellent initiative to call for the ending of the wasteful monthly trips of the European Parliament to Strasbourg. Anyone in favour of an effective European Parliament and value for […]

Goran Persson
EU Politics

Toynbee on Sweden – bit wide of the mark

Polly Toynbee has written a column in The Guardian today about Sweden, this time analysing the threat of Fredrik Reinfeldt to Persson’s government in the forthcoming elections. Toynbee often raves about the good things in Swedish society, and has generally been astute about Swedish politics in the past, but today’s […]

Chirac Schröder
EU Politics

Social Europe – what is it?

I’ve been trying to work out what my answer to that question should be for some months now, and attending the United Seminar of JEF in Norway [my blog entry, pics from JEF-Sweden’s blog] a few weeks ago helped me to clarify some of my thoughts, now summarised in this […]

Segolene Royal
EU Politics

French politics takes a coarse turn

French politics has its downsides – the domination of an ENA-educated elite being the principal among them – but la politique à la française has normally managed to avoid the more vulgar approach typified in the UK and especially the USA. Not so for the 2007 Presidential election it seems. […]

Orange
Technology

Fantastically lousy service from Orange

It’s part of France Telecom, one of Europe’s largest telecommunications groups, but Orange’s UK broadband service is really getting me down at the moment. The broadband connection where I live in Clapham keeps on breaking down at all the times I want to use it (weekday evenings and weekends), and […]

First Great Western Buffet Car
UK Politics

Coffee in a bag, or else you get sued

Somehow my reservation in the train from Newport back to London on Sunday was in the Family Carriage. 4 small kids were sat close to me, completely ignored by the parents, and hence make an almighty racket. This was further compounded by the woman sat next to me who spent […]

Merrow Street
UK Politics

Moving to Southwark, and London’s housing market

I’m now 99% confident that I have everything sorted out for my new place to live – I’ll be moving sometime in September to Villa Street, Walworth [map], and Helena will join me there from late September. This is in the Camberwell and Peckham constituency, so Harriet Harman will be […]

Server Rack
Technology

Servers, Flats, Rain and Trains

The fact that you are reading the blog entry is quite something; once more the website server that I administer for Europäische Bewegung and others has suffered some serious problems. I’ve hence been burning the midnight oil, or more like consuming the 2am cups of coffee, to try to solve […]