18
April
Tomorrow I set off for a journey lasting just over two weeks, mostly for work but with a little holiday in between. The whole trip is by train. Here’s the schedule, and how I booked at at the lowest price possible: Thu 19 Apr – London-Paris Eurostar – £73.00 (€86.37), standard class Eurostar. Booked 3 [...]
18
April
My presence on various social networks was getting rather out of hand, so I’ve had to work out a rule of thumb as to who to add on each network. Here are my conclusions – comments most welcome! Facebook - I’ll accept friend requests from anyone I’ve met and – if I happened to be in [...]
17
April
Here we go again. Today Steven Hill has laid out his institutional vision for the European Union on Social Europe journal. His plan – with a bicameral European Parliament – is not too distant from ideas raised by Denis MacShane in the past. Binding national MPs into EU decision making might sound like an appealing [...]
17
April
Christopher Howarth of Open Europe has written an eminently sensible* piece for Conservative Home about how David Cameron needs to get his EU policy sorted out. Howarth’s case is that Cameron should appoint a Europe Secretary – one minister in Cabinet with the responsibility for policy towards the EU. The crux of the piece is [...]
16
April
I’m on a bit of a Twitter high these days. On the weekend I passed 5000 followers (probably only to drop below the level again once Twitter eliminates some spam-bots), and today two political Twitter league tables have been published. I am the 10th most-followed person in UK think tanks on Twitter, and 5th on [...]
12
April
Stonewall has been running an excellent campaign on 1000 buses with the slogan “Some people are gay. Get over it!” So – surprise, surprise – some bigots decided to run a counter campaign on 25 buses with the slogan “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!” Only Boris Johnson, in the middle of [...]
26
March
The good news: President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz seems to have confirmed his commitment to a single seat for the European Parliament in a Swedish radio interview (very short summary from EUObserver here). Problem: he wants the seat to be Strasbourg and not Brussels. While such an arrangement may be in the long-term [...]
25
March
Whether (and indeed how) Scotland would remain in the EU if it became an independent state has been an issue that has risen up the political agenda over the past few months. Theresa May has weighed into the debate today, stating that border controls would have to be imposed between Scotland and England if the [...]
