I’m writing this blog entry at Frankfurt Airport. My flight departs for Lilongwe, Malawi (via Addis Ababa) shortly. I’m teaching in Lilongwe this week, then have a long weekend on the shores of Lake Malawi. I’m back in Europe (and
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Sick of “EU doesn’t sign off books, therefore corrupt / evil / useless / nasty” (delete as applicable)
Ho, ho, here we go again. A question posed in the House of Commons by Philip Davies (Con) as cited by the Open Europe blog: Given that the accounts of the EU have not been signed off by the auditors
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British press in petulant Frenchman controls the city shocker
The French President can behave like a petulant teenager, yet the British press (and the British Bankers’ Association) seem to not understand that the best thing to do with a petulant teenager is to ignore it. The Times led today
Continue readingDa ist wahrscheinlich ein gott (aber natürlich nur ein christliches gott)
The Swiss referendum banning the construction of minarets has caused a load of hand-wringing. Why? Of course it’s absolutely wrong to deny freedom of religious expression, and the outcome of the vote is wrong. I’m no fan of any religion
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I fear there will be no Buttiglione in 2009
Back in the autumn of 2004 I was working in London. It was a year or so before I even started this blog and I was working as a civil servant on EU energy policy. News reached us that a
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A strange wave of anti-Communism in the EU’s corridors of power
I’ve come across this little summary from PressEurop of an article from the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza which looks at comments within the EPP saying that anyone who formerly co-operated with “repressive regimes and undemocratic organizations” be denied the post
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ECR Group: the worst Twitter strategy I’ve ever seen (after no website for 3 months)
It took them 3 months to get a website together, and not before I had hit them with a bit of cyber squatting. Now the ECR Group in the EP is at it again with its catastrophic IT – this
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EU flood aid money for Cumbria (let’s avoid the errors from last time)
In June and July 2007 parts of the UK were hit be severe floods. The EU has a Solidarity Fund to help its Member States deal with natural disasters, yet in the months after the floods wrangling continued about whether
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All followers are equal but some are more equal than others (a follower strategy for Twitter)
This post is motivated by two recent experiences. The first was being asked at an event a couple of weeks ago for some ideas to develop a Twitter strategy for a recruitment consultancy, an area of work about which I
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The PdF Compass
I’m on my way back to Brussels from Personal Democracy Forum Europe in Barcelona. I enjoyed participating in the conference, and was also very grateful to have been able to moderate one of the sessions there. Some of the everyday
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Where we could have been this evening – Lamy/Freiberga/Miliband
I try to see the positives where I can, but I am really struggling this evening. Who actually wanted Barroso, Van Rompuy and Ashton to be running the European Union? It all strikes me as the lowest common denominator of
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Baroness Ashton for High Rep – really?
Rumours are reaching me via Twitter that Baroness Ashton, UK Labour politician and outgoing Commissioner for Trade is the individual the socialists are now backing to be the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy. I must say I am astounded.
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