Recent Posts

Brexit

Labour: a new relationship with the EU

An excellent Twitter thread by Alistair King caught my attention yesterday, critiquing Keir Starmer’s supposed new slogan “make Brexit work”. Meanwhile Andrew Adonis summed it up visually with this: “Make Brexit Work” pic.twitter.com/ExqjoKThal — Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) November 7, 2021 Aside from the snarky tweet, there is a nugget of […]

German Politics

#BTW21Diagramm Possible Coalitions after the 26th September 2021 Bundestag Election / Mögliche Koalitionen nach der Bundestagswahl am 26. September 2021

High resolution PDF and PNG files, the draw.io XML and the .ods files of the workings are all available here! Hochauflösende PDF- und PNG-Dateien, draw.io-XML und die .ods-Dateien sind hier verfügbar!   Version 1.0.0 EN – 05.09.2021, 18:00 The first version of the new series! Based on the polling and […]

Brexit

For now, the EU doesn’t have to care about what Brits think of it

This tweet caught my eye this morning: Underlines the problem facing the EU as retaliatory steps liable only to reinforce this perception. The EU may be an effective negotiator, but it is pretty terrible when it comes to comms. https://t.co/zaBwCAtf5L — Anand Menon (@anandMenon1) August 2, 2021 My first reaction: […]

EU Politics

Trains for Europe project now live

For years I have made pretty much every long distance trip I can by train. Conference in Iași? Sure, train via Ukraine to get there. Teaching in Geneva? Night train back to Berlin. Holiday in the Balkans? I’m the one who will take the Bar-Belgrade train. But what can I […]

EU Politics

What’s up with this 9th European Parliament?

It’s two years since the 2019 European Election, marking the start of this 9th term of the European Parliament. And for a while I have had this nagging feeling that something is not right about the Parliament in this term. So I will have a go at addressing this problem […]

Brexit

Brexit. That’s pretty much it from me.

This Twitter thread by Holger Hestermeyer caught my eye yesterday: Some thoughts on a trade tweet that – as many have pointed out – is wrong. Now I try to no longer critcise tweets of others, but there’s a point here and I would ask you to refrain from any […]

Brexit

The problem when journalists don’t ask the obvious question

Yesterday the European Parliament Conference of Presidents agreed that two Committees – INTA and AFET – would vote on the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) this week, but that any decision as to when the plenary of the European Parliament would vote on it was deferred. The decision was […]

Technology

No, I am not about to start a newsletter or a podcast

A Twitter thread by Jeff Jarvis caught my eye yesterday. “I far prefer blogs to email newsletters & podcasts” Jeff wrote, and I agree with him. I mused about why this was over my morning espresso. I pondered further during a cable internet outage at lunchtime. And now, when I […]