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, […]
The joys of EU energy market liberalisation. EDF, the French mostly state owned energy firm, bought London Energy a few years ago – the firm is the main electricity company for most of London. Personally I don’t have any problem with this, with the partial difficulty that EDF is pro […]
I wrote a little while ago about the efforts of the Bruges Group to force the Tory MEPs to quit the EPP-ED group in the European Parliament – read that detailed post here. I am quite amused today to discover that a blog has been launched to defend the other […]
Excellent news: the Labour Party has just released 2 new blogs. Bad news: these are about football! Yes, I’m quite serious. Alistair Campbell and Sadiq Khan MP will write blog entries about the World Cup – click here for the website. OK, it’s fun. But does Labour not have any […]
From Polly Toynbee’s article from today’s Guardian: How tragically revealing that half of all prisoners are completely illiterate and another 20% have a reading age under eight. Plus prison numbers will hit record levels this week, and the UK has Europe’s longest sentences on average. Hell. And this is after […]
