If you were a head of state or Prime Minister, wouldn’t you want your own plane? Or perhaps the question should be how does the UK government not already have a dedicated plane for state business. Yet the decision this week to purchase 2 planes for use by the Prime […]
Yesterday evening the Young Fabians organised an event at the Turkish Embassy entitled “Cold Turkey? Is the EU dream dead?” – details of the event here. More than 60 people came along to the immensely grand residence of the Turkish ambassador to London, and heard him give an introduction defending […]
I am very tired of the labels used in the Labour Party to categorise people. You are either supposed to be a Blairite or Brownite, a reformer or a loony leftie etc. Further, these labels tend to be assigned by association rather than through any logic or sensible rationale. A […]
There is one Brit who seems capable of explaining the EU in an amusing and pleasant way – Eddie Izzard. He went to the last European Council meeting with Blair, and has recorded a Podcast about it – hear it here (pic to the right is from pm.gov.uk). He’s also […]
The launch event of the Labour Movement for Europe, London and the South East Region took place on Friday. Peter Skinner MEP spoke on ‘Is Europe A Labour Issue?‘, with Mary Honeyball MEP and David Schoibl from LME also speaking. We had about 18 people at the launch – not […]
I spent all of yesterday at the Compass Conference in London. Bit depressing, spending all of a summer Saturday indoors, but it was worthwhile to go along. The programme of the conference – attended by 1000 people they claim – was very impressive, with an enormous number of breakout groups […]
No, I’m not losing my mind. Dutch PM Jan-Peter Balkenende might do something good for the EU today or tomorrow: raising the issue of the EP having its seat in Strasbourg at the European Council meeting in Brussels. See this article from EUObserver. Balkenende is far from being my favourite […]
I was wondering why so many people were commenting on what I’ve wrote about the Commission concours. Surprise, surprise: it’s thanks to Google. Type ‘concours farce‘ and you get my blog as the number 1 entry. Typing ‘plan d campaign‘ gives my site in 5th place, and ‘Adieu EPP‘ gives […]
This week’s edition of Café Babel gives an overview of the impact of blogs on EU politics – read the edition here. Interesting for me to read this issue now – I’ve only just completed this article for The New Federalist about the same subject. However, like much of what […]
I’ve just watched the second half of the Angola vs. Portugal World Cup match while sat on the small balcony / fire escape outside the kitchen of my flat, with the sky darkening and the clear summer sky cloudless and disturbed only by the odd jetplane landing at Heathrow. It […]
The Council of Europe report into the rendition flights across Europe was released on Tuesday this week. The press across Europe was filled with details of the claims that were made by author of the report, Dick Marty, that Europe was complicit in deportation of suspects to locations where they […]
At last – some work for the Young European Federalists (JEF-Europe) that does not entail updating their website! I wrote an article entitled ‘Do EU blog?‘ for the latest edition of The New Federalist, the JEF magazine. The article is about whether EU politicians are serious about using the internet, […]
