Back in the autumn of last year I did a partial redesign of this blog. Since then the blog has sprouted all kinds of buttons, and looks a bit of a mess. In the meantime WordPress has evolved to version 3.2 and offers a whole bunch of new features. So […]
How does the Labour Party regenerate itself in opposition? It’s a question many people are asking themselves, and there’s one person in particular – Maurice Glasman, complete with piles of books and evocative cigarette – who’s putting himself about to try to help determine the ideological direction of the future […]
Others will post more profound observations about Google+, but for me it has provoked one fundamental question: what are my rules for adding friends, followers, people into circles etc. on the different social networks I use? Oddly, thinking about this has actually led to a rationalisation of my Facebook use […]
Martin Kettle has penned a piece in today’s Guardian entitled “Greece, Schengen, Nato – it’s time to admit the European dream is over“. It’s the latest in a series of pieces that are appearing a lot in the UK press at the moment – whatever the UK’s own headaches about […]
“You have to understand: you are the enemy.” Those were the words I heard uttered by a researcher in the European parliament to civil servants from the EU’s member states a couple of years ago. What – with aghast looks on their faces – did the researcher mean, the civil […]
“You were the future once.” So said David Cameron to Tony Blair in a notable exchange during the latter’s final years in office. As I sit today drinking a blanche at a pub on Place Luxembourg, Brussels, so the phrase could be adapted to fit my evolving experience of this […]
There are two main issues at stake with the so-called ‘Six Pack’ of EU legislation designed to prevent eurozone countries overspending in future. The first is the amount of wriggle room to be given to states that break the rules, and the second is the extent to which states themselves […]
I first wrote about the Silvana Koch-Mehrin plagiarism case on 12th May, the day she chose to resign her positions in the FDP and as Vice President of the European Parliament. Notably she remained a MEP at this stage, saying that the resignations were to protect her family and the […]
Look across Europe, and think of the calibre of its leaders. Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron. Zapatero, Berlusconi, Tusk. Reinfeldt, Løkke, Pahor. Brussels with Barroso and Van Rompuy. This is not a quality lineup, not what one would classically call a statesman or stateswoman among the lot of them. Not a Schuman, […]
VoteWatch.eu has been a vital tool in the EU politics watcher’s toolbox for sometime – it allows you to see how individual MEPs vote, how cohesive political groups are, and how often MEPs turn up to vote. The data it contains is restricted by the data that is made available […]
I suppose drafting polemics takes time, or perhaps there is another reason for his deficiency. For Daniel Hannan MEP, European poster boy for the Tory right, seems increasingly to be neglecting the very work he is supposed to be doing – representing his constituents from South East England in the […]
It has not been a good few months for the European Parliament, and today probably tops all of the days for stories that show the EP in a bad light. As Jason O’Mahony points out, the EP lost the Toland Case in the ECJ yet still refuses to publish the […]
