Denis MacShane has written an essay entitled “Europe’s parliament: Reform or perish?”, a paper which he says is a contribution to the debate about the future of the European Parliament started by Andrew Duff, Julian Priestley, and Anand Menon and John Peet. MacShane tries to take a position in which […]
I seldom blog about it these days, but sport is important for me as a way to stay healthy and – to a large extent – to stay sane as a freelancer. Haruki Murakami talks about these sorts of things in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. […]
Some lines have been crossed in today’s news in the UK about European Union politics. First we have Liberal Democrat (yes, you read that right, Liberal Democrat) transport minister Norman Baker having a go at an EU transport white paper: We will not be banning cars from city centres anymore […]
There’s a story on The Telegraph website today entitled Twitter ‘elite’ send most tweets. That’s not quite a fair representation of the story itself – the most important parts of the story are these: Fifty per cent of all tweets read and shared on Twitter are generated by only 20,000 ‘elite’ […]
Like or loathe them but UK Uncut have been highlighting tax avoidance in the UK in a way no-one has ever done before. Vodafone, Fortnum and Mason… more on their site. But this is not a UK problem alone. Different corporation tax rates apply across the EU, and as if […]
At the rally in Hyde Park yesterday after the March for the alternative, the first two speeches were given by Brendan Barber and Ed Miliband. I’ve used the text of the respective speeches (Barber’s here, Miliband’s here) to generate two Wordle clouds: Barber Miliband Quite an interesting contrast here, reflecting […]
Since news broke on Sunday that three MEPs – Zoran Thaler, Ernst Strasser and Adrian Severin – were prepared to accept money in return for tabling amendments to legislation, I’ve been trying to work out what conclusions to draw from all of this. You can read more on the ongoing investigations and […]
The photo above is not a mockup. It’s not a joke. It’s a genuine sign in the corridor on the second floor of the Rayne Building at St Anne’s College, Oxford. I was at St Anne’s for a conference earlier this week. The sign struck me as very odd… What […]
The usual symbol for an embassy on Google Maps is a flag, yet the Embassy of Iceland to the UK is represented by… a shopping trolley. You can see the contrast in the screenshot to the right, and see it on Google Maps here. Is Google passing a judgement on […]
EU justice Commissioner (and, very incidentally, Commissioner responsible for communications) Viviane Reding yesterday gave a speech entitled “Your data, your rights: Safeguarding your privacy in a connected world”. You can read the speech here, and there are articles from The Guardian, The Register and The Telegraph. I’m actually surprised – […]
The screenshot above was taken at 1719 today, showing William Hague’s Twitter account, @WilliamJHague. It’s worth noting the three tweets present at the top, shown in more detail here: The first tweet is explicitly party political, while the second and third are retweets of governmental business. The Hague account states […]
Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are announcing some preliminary Labour economic policies today, and one of the headlines is a reduction in VAT on petrol, from 20% back to the 17.5% level it was set at prior to January this year. The main argument is that as petrol prices rise […]
