Latest posts
How the current ‘debate’ about election reform is giving precisely the opposite of a principled outcome
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So wrangles about how and when to hold a referendum on the future of the UK’s election system rumble on… and how messy the whole thing gets. The only given is that there will be a referendum sometime in this parliament –&...
Your staffing budget is fatter than my staffing budget! EP has no right to grumble at the Commission
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Oh the irony! A Member of the European Parliament – Inge Grässle (whose name sounds rather like graisse, the French word for fat) – has had a go at the European Commission for creating its hundredth Director...
See no citizens, hear no citizens, speak to no citizens – the institutional approach to the European citizens’ initiative (ECI)
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A friend pointed me to the Working Document on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the citizens’ initiative from the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs. Rapporteurs for this...
New York – Newport – Brussels
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The original (53 million views at the time of writing) The Newport spoof (ace, especially for me as I grew up there, 1.2 million views at the time of writing) The Brussels (half-)spoof (where I live now, 26k views, some catching up to do!) Set all of...
Dog owners are a social menace
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Right, this is a blog entry that’s going to annoy a lot of people. But I’m very annoyed. So here goes. I’m totally, utterly and completely sick of dog owners. Note I am not completely and utterly sick of dogs. I’m no...
Financial weight
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It’s one of the problems I have as a freelancer, and I’m not alone in this – how much am I supposed to charge for the web design services I provide? An invoice running to hundreds or even thousands of pounds or Euros sou...
Gender images on the Tube
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Ever seen this notice on the London Underground? Bet you have. You’re sure? Perhaps it’s time for a bit of a guerrilla feminist campaign in the public space in the UK. All we would need would be 2 triangles of blue sticky back p...
A small milestone – 5 years of the Euroblog
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On 19th July 2005 I wrote a small blog entry about my frustrations with Ryanair, and also explained my blogging debut. “Am I too late jumping on the blogging bandwaggon?” I mused at the time. Looking back it for sure was not too late, and...
An odd selection of classic Youtube
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A few things I’ve come across recently and thought I should share… A couple of these are thanks to Bente Kalsnes who always has a knack to find excellent things! 1. Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us RSA animation ab...
You’re reading the 5th most influential blog in Brussels (apparently)
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I spent an interesting couple of hours this morning at the launch event of the Brussels Blogger Study 2010, a report by public affairs company Waggener Edstrom about influence of bloggers in and on the EU. You can download the PDF of the study here (...
The London plan
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I loose track who I’ve told and who has just heard earlier stages of the plan… so here’s an explanation about my imminent move to London. Essentially for the last 6 months I have been wondering whether to move. After 3 years ba...
Diane 4 Leader – it’s not about the candidate as such, it’s more important than that
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“If in 1994 you’d wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you’d still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since” was a class...
The EU and mobile phone / 3G data roaming
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I have respect for the UK blog Political Betting – I never bet on anything, but I like Mike Smithson’s rigourous analysis of odds. However when it comes to anything to do with the European Union reason and rigour seem to go out of the window. Tak...
Hopeless new web comms plan from Reding
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Via Twitter I came across this post in French by Michael Malherbe about a letter sent from Commissioner responsible for Communications, Viviane Reding, to Commission President Barroso. Euractiv managed to get hold of a copy of the letter that contain...
The marketing sense of an elephant – Commission Representation to Belgium
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One of my favourite political books – mentioned on this blog before – is Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff. The idea behind the title is to show what happens when the wrong words are used. You read...
Time for grown up football relations between England and Germany – let’s have Klinsmann in the BBC studio on Sunday
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This weekend the World Cup starts to get exciting with the knock out round, and England are drawn against their old foes Germany at 1500 BST / 1600 CET on Sunday. When these countries have faced each other before the coverage in the UK press has been...
If I wanted to blow up a train this isn’t going to stop me
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I’ve seen some idiotic security controls in my time, but yesterday at Estació de França, Barcelona, beats all of them. The station, as the name implies, is the old terminus station for trains from the north of Catalonia towards France, and i...
World Cup balls
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As if anyone needed more evidence that I spend time thinking about odd things and then blogging about them, here’s yet more evidence: this is a post about the science of the ‘Jabulani’ balls used at the World Cup in South Africa. Mo...
Politicians that don’t get Twitter – MacShane, Byrne, Swoboda
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There are two ways to use Twitter as a politician. The first (the right way) is to build a discussion, a conversation with people, to reply to normal Twitter users as well as other politicians and journalists. Politicians that understand this in...
London: the question’s when, not if
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I’ve known for a while that I needed to move away from Brussels. I even tried to crowdsource some answers about where to move. But now my mind is made up – London it will be, from sometime later this year. I don’t know q...
