I’ve moved in Brussels – from St Josse to St Gilles – and in typical Belgian style the cable TV operator is different in St Gilles. Seems the Belgian notion of competition is to divide up the communes between different suppliers rather than allow suppliers to compete on the same […]
Someone jumps the queue at a crowded Eurostar terminal at Gare du Midi. A driver does not indicate and almost knocks me off my bike when he turns unexpectedly. Someone parks a car on a zebra crossing meaning it’s impossible for pedestrians to cross. A passenger barges into a carriage […]
Gender framing has reared up in the German general election campaign as reported by The Local. Berlin Candidate for the Christian Democrats Vera Lengsfeld has put up pictures of herself and Angela Merkel both boasting considerable cleavages with the slogan “Wir haben mehr zu bieten” – “We have more to […]
Following on from my post about Bildt and Fischer, today is the time to look at two other strong candidates for top jobs in the EU, this time both of them Brits – Chris Patten and Tony Blair. I’m prompted to write this post after the FT carried a story […]
If the second referendum in Ireland on the Treaty of Lisbon this autumn goes yes then the EU is going to have a new foreign policy chief from 2010. The Treaty of Lisbon creates the position of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, aka EU […]
If you don’t like a politician what do you do with him or her? International organisations are always an option. Could this work for Labour and Gordon Brown? Let me explain. Brussels is full of national politicians who no longer had a role in their national capitals; Neil Kinnock was […]
OK, here we go again. Open Europe having a further whine at something going on in Brussels, this time the amount of money the European Union spends on ‘propaganda’. Also not a surprise is the choice of EUObserver to carry a column from Open Europe’s Lorraine Mullally, and in Sweden […]
I came across this map at The Guardian’s website about worldwide numbers of swine flu cases. I write this post from Belgium, currently at less than 200 cases, and more or less free of the swine flu paranoia seen in the UK. But why has the UK been so hard […]
I have a bit of a problem. It’s summed up in German with the phrase die Qual der Wahl, essentially the problem of choosing. This applies to this blog as well as to basically everything I spend my time doing. I have too many ecclectic interests for the blog – […]
Rumours of tensions between David Cameron and Boris Johnson rumble on, as covered today by Alex at Labour List. I don’t want to comment on Boris vs. Cameron as such; others are better placed to debate that. I just have 2 small remarks. First, Britain has had more than a […]
I’m just back at my desk after a week in a small village France with my parents. My laptop is out of action so I was without e-mail and internet for a week – quite refreshing. It also gave me plenty of time to think and to discuss things with […]
European Citizen has an interesting and thoughful post about why Guy Verhofstadt’s statement that “The three largest groups in the European Parliament announced today their commitment to pro-European values” is essentially the wrong approach. European Citizen’s critique is not too far away from my own analysis of the travails of […]
