In the 18 months I’ve lived in Kreuzberg I’ve passed Mustafa’s Gemüse Kebap (website, map) stand on Mehringdamm dozens of times. Come rain or shine, summer or winter, there is always a queue of people waiting outside it. Today I finally tried it. Part of the intrigue for me is […]
Humour about the EU is hard enough – how do you make the European Union funny without just falling back on crass national stereotypes? And then to try to do that in German, bearing in mind that – well – the stereotype is that Germany is not the funniest place […]
The video above shows extracts of German Christian Democrat politicians talking about Greece. The statements are as follows: “Der Grieche hat jetzt lang genug genervt” (“The Greeks have annoyed us long enough“) – Thomas Strobl “Es gibt in Europa andere Staaten, denen es wahrscheinlich noch schlechter geht und die nicht […]
Dear Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Matteo Renzi and Mariano Rajoy, dear Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Alex Stubb and Wolfgang Schäuble, dear Jean Claude Juncker, Martin Schulz and Donald Tusk, You might not sleep much tonight if the summit drags on. But sometime you will go to bed, wake up in the morning, […]
Maybe it is not my place to say anything about Greece. I am not an economist, and I am not at the negotiating table. But I am tired of what I am reading – from politicians, journalists and others on blogs and Twitter – and hence I have drawn up […]
On 18 May (18 days ago) I started a little experiment. Using SocialBro I started a private Twitter list called People Who Interact. This list was automatically created – out of everyone who either replied to a tweet I wrote, or RTed a tweet of mine. The summary of the […]
Back in 2005 I was coming towards the end of my term as President of JEF-Europe but I still had ideas. No one will ever invite me to speak at conferences again I thought, so I better try writing things instead. Some friends of mine in Swedish politics were blogging […]
This afternoon I tried to go into the European Parliament. The EU institution that is supposed to represent people like me – citizens of the European Union. I am not a lobbyist or a journalist or an employee of another EU institution. So I could not get in. I approached […]
I’ve registered a whole bunch of Twitter accounts over the years for a variety of purposes. Recently two of these accounts were suspended by Twitter, and the process of what (didn’t) happen as a result requires a little bit more analysis. Both were suspended in late March 2015, and I […]
So Cameron is in Riga, trying to charm fellow EU leaders that British exceptionalism a reformed EU is possible. News about it here. But one phrase particularly struck me from Cameron’s words – we’re going to give the people a “proper choice” he says. The choice Cameron proposes is his […]
So the Labour Party has another leadership election. Unlike in 2010, when I was still a Labour Party member and heavily involved in the process*, this time I have no vote (having quit Labour to join the German Grüne as I now live in Berlin). However that doesn’t mean I […]
The construction vehicles pictured above are a JCB 3CX (on the left), manufactured in Rocester, UK, and two Volvo Construction Equipment machines (on the right), a L120F and L120E, both manufactured in Arvika, Sweden. My point of course – in light of comments yesterday by Chief Executive of JCB, Graeme […]
