Yesterday evening I was browsing Twitter, and saw this tweet about serious allegations of election fraud by UKIP from Labour politician John Mann (Bassetlaw) retweeted into my timeline. Oh, I’ll retweet that I thought (I’m on John’s side here, not UKIP’s), but Twitter prevented it – it turns out my...
Following my earlier blog entry about Twitter chats I was confronted by a familiar charge – ah, Frans Timmermans is a Facebook guy. He doesn’t like Twitter. That’s the problem. There are probably some pretty good reasons he likes Facebook, and not Twitter, and I will come to those at...
At 1600 CET today, First Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans will do an online chat on Twitter and Facebook* – tag is #AskFrans. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc will do the same on Monday 27th April at 1400 CET – tag there is #ITS2015chat. Oooooh, look, little users...
Dear Alexis, dear Yanis, When Syriza emerged as the largest party at the election on 25th January I smiled. That’s the end of New Democracy and PASOK, a time to turn the page, for Greece to be able to make a new start, I thought. I bet a bunch of...
I am very happy to announce two further dates in the #EUTweetup series. For the next two tweetups we have some special guests! On Thursday 23rd April, from 1600, in Brussels at Wild Geese (new location – Metro Maalbeek (map)) we will be joined by Jason L Knoll – follow...
In January 2013 I stumbled upon Polish MEPs employing a lot of assistants. One employed 19 people, and two employed 17 each back then. The blog entry about that is here, and it was even covered by Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. Today the issue has been raised once more, as...
Getting Linux to run on a Mac is notoriously tricky, but I was willing to experiment and work out how tricky it all is. This blog entry sums up my first efforts, and will be updated in the future when I have learnt more. Mac hardware I was using a...
Henrik Enderlein and Jean Pisani-Ferry started to talk of an “economic Schengen” in the autumn of 2014, and Enderlein and Germany’s economy minister Gabriel were at it again today at a conference in the BMWi in Berlin. This is a really bad idea for four reasons, each of which I...
Relating to the Jack Straw lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian sugar firms (background here), a few quick remarks. First, we know from this, that: I got into see the relevant director general and his officials in Brussels … and we got the sugar regulations changed We also know the meeting...
Summary I wanted to buy a computer monitor, and rather than ordering from Amazon, I chose a smaller firm instead – Compuland, based in Wilhelmshaven. The order was a story of woe, and awful and ridiculous service – and they sent me an empty box. There is no way I...
This morning I closed my Gmail account. For good. This caused some interesting reactions among my friends (notably Andras), so this blog entry is an effort to explain why I have taken this step, and why I am adjusting my online and purchasing behaviour in some ways. I need to...
[UPDATE: I have now a year of experience using the Roomba 650 – pretty much all I write in this review hold, but I now have a few more observations that you can read here.] I make a lot of business trips, and I am tired of returning home to...