Chaussée de Charleroi - light stuck on yellow - Jon Worth, CC

Traffic light stuck on amber.

For 6 days solid*.

And no-one has done a thing.

A STIB tram passes this light every 10 minutes – it’s at the southern end of Chaussée de Charleroi. At least one police vehicle will have passed it each day. At least one person from the commune of St Gilles will have passed it each day. At least one person who works for the Bruxelles-Capitale region will have passed it each day. You see what I am getting at… je m’en fous, writ large.

I’ve now personally informed Bruxelles Mobilité about the issue – let’s see what happens.

In the UK there is a wonderful little site called Fix My Street to deal with things like this. You mark a cross on the map, and report potholes, broken traffic lights etc., and the system mails the relevant local authority… and about half of the issues get solved.

I suspect that things go a little deeper in Belgium – it’s more a need to Fix My State than it is the need to Fix My Street. For the hell of it I’ve bought fixmystate.be and fixmystate.eu, just in case I have the energy for a bit of MySociety inspired social entrepreneurship in the Belgian capital.

(P.S. Just for a bit of added spice there was a van, illegally parked, with no hazard flashers on, parked beside the traffic light when I took the picture…)

* – first time I saw it was Monday 15th March, I’m writing this Saturday 20th March, and I’ve passed it on my bicycle at least once every day in between. It may be longer of course…

Reading the book now has helped me try to structure my own thoughts about these matters. For the last two and a half years I’ve lived mostly in Brussels with plenty of time also spent in London for work. Now it’s high time that something changes. That might not necessarily mean a change of home city, but freelance web design and EU politics training based in Brussels is not working. I’ve not found the creative kick I need in the political web design arena here and the practical EU training is not as challenging or fun as it once was. I first blogged about these dilemmas in January – this post is a more detailed follow up. If I am to move it would be from sometime this coming summer.

There’s also a common misconception among friends about my work – because I do web strategy and web design plenty of people assume I can do the work from anywhere. Yes, that’s true, I can work from anywhere, but I cannot get work anywhere. Because the work I get is all thanks to word of mouth, via people I meet at events, colleagues of colleagues etc. I need to be based in a place where the market for political websites is strong and vibrant.

First of all, what are the options?

Brussels, London and Berlin are the obvious possibilities. I always enjoy time I spend in Germany, but is there any city other than Berlin worth living in? Nordic cities (Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm) are organised and creative, but also rather closed and I don’t speak the languages. Same applies to Netherlands. USA and Canada are, for now, simply too unfathomable, and I crave order and Ordnung too much to contemplate France, Spain or Italy.

Running these cities through Florida’s Place Finder comes up with the following scores: London – 70, Berlin – 67, other Nordic or German city – between 55 and 62, and Brussels – 47.

London wins hands down in terms of quality of the job market. The market for political web design and strategy is vast, and I am already well connected in the relevant sector. Being based there also keeps the door to future party political engagement open. There is also the possible side line of EU training there. English is my mother tongue, and I have a decent number of good friends there. Conversely, finding a decent place to live in London is hellish, and escape from the pressure of the city is not easy, and I would be more dependent on planes if and when I need to really escape the city.

Berlin wins enormously when it comes to quality of life. Ever since I lived there for a short while in 2001/2 I’ve longed to return. It’s historic and modern, brilliant flats to live in don’t cost the earth, there’s abundant green space, and I have almost as many friends there as I do in London. But what would I do there? The city has a sky-high unemployment rate, and there seem to be more web agencies than there is work for them to all do. I speak German, but I don’t write it flawlessly. Any prospect of party political engagement is more complex than London, but not out of the question. But might I end up there and have no cash and insufficient work to do?

Other Nordic, German or Dutch cities are some sort of balance between the pros and cons of London and Berlin, and perhaps present more tricky challenges than either. The nature around Oslo or Stockholm might be stunning, but could I see myself living in cities that geographically far from the European mainstream? Conversely there remains the prospect that an interesting project or job might attract me to one of those cities, but that’s a rather distant prospect.

And then there’s Brussels. As an EU and computer nerd it should surely be the perfect place? Work prospects are better than Berlin, but in large part because it takes than less than 2 hours to get to London. Quality of life is better than London, especially when it comes to housing. But the stodgy, unresponsive political environment gives no prospect whatsoever of local political engagement – I’m very much an expat in Brussels. Basic stuff not working, and risking my life every time I cycle are getting me down. Conversely I have more good friends here than I do anywhere else.

And so to the Wikinomics bit… I genuinely don’t know the answer as to what to do, so I’m going to use the wisdom of the crowd people that visit my blog to try to help me answer. Please take a second to vote in the poll below and, if you have brilliant additional suggestions, please comment below!

Broken Car Window - CC / Flickr

A mother of three has been shot in Uccle and EUObserver is jumping up and down reporting on the crime rates in various Brussels communes. You can just hear the typical EU expat having a whinge at Place Lux complaining about things, about how unsafe Brussels streets are… and then doing absolutely f**k all about it.

For let’s get this clear: there is a nagging amount of crime in Brussels – shootings like the one in the article are very rare, but cars being broken into and muggings are all too common. I can’t work out how to compare the Brussels and London stats however.

But what should happen? Officials from the European Parliament speaking to the local police about the issue (as reported in the article) is going to solve absolutely nothing. The area around the institutions is a dead wasteland in the evenings and on weekends and some areas – especially on rue Joseph II and close to the European Parliament off rue Wiertz – are very poorly lit. Dealing with muggings and car theft is in part to do with the police, and the je m’en foutisme of the Belgian public services undoubtedly does not help, but it’s also to do with lighting, the atmosphere on the streets, social inclusion… even something as simple as clear and wide pavements can help.

There are other problems in Belgium of a similar nature – homelessness for example – that the Belgian state just cannot solve, because they require a level of social engagement, and all parts of the public service to work together, that the Belgian state just cannot accomplish. But the EU institutions dominate a whole quarter of Brussels, and most of the people working in those institutions should be capable of political thinking, organising and planning and – essentially – taking some of the matters into the institutions hands to do something about the area around the institutions and the feeling of a lack of security on the streets.

But of course having a whinge is a lot easier…

(Oh and while we’re at it: you’re much more likely to die on the roads of Brussels by being run over by a kamikaze driver not respecting the rules than you are to be shot dead. But of course expats driving around in their large Mercedes don’t think that way.)

Twitpic from @vertbrussels

Brussels on a bicycle is the fastest way to get around, but it’s often like some sort of assault course. Here’s an example.

I set off from home at 1950 last night, heading from St Gilles to a friend’s place in St Josse, going via Flagey, rue Gray, chaussée d’Etterbeek. Along the way I counted:

• 10 cars double parked
• 3 cars that were not road-worthy due to problems with their lights
• 2 drivers not using indicators when turning at junctions
• 1 driver jumping red lights

Why, oh why, don’t Brussels police do something about this? Surely they could earn plenty of cash by fining people? These sorts of things are what makes cycling hell. Then this morning someone tweeted the picture shown above, and all becomes clear.

In both cases my mind starts to work in the same way… what if this were a political campaign online? Where would I look? Where – in short – are the obsessives? The people that care deeply about the matter in question. When it comes to espresso and, to a lesser extent, diving, I count as an obsessive, and my blog posts about my Gaggia Classic and diving Lake Malawi are well read and highly ranked in Google.

So what are the basics of good online promotion for these 2 small enterprises, completely different in sector and location?

1. Get a good, simple (Wordpress) website, designed with Google in mind
2. Keep the site up to date regularly with details of events, new coffees, pictures of the latest fish spotted etc. – provide something for the obsessives.
3. Make use of Facebook and Twitter to interact with users, and give some special offers to fans and/or followers via this medium – perhaps also find some way to give some rewards to regulars this way. Refer a friend?
4. Find other local enterprises to team up with, places with the right demography – The Hub Brussels is just down the road from Blomqvist’s and they are active on Twitter and have the right, young audience
5. Make sure kind things are written about you in as many languages as possible – something like this in French would be handy in English for Blomqvist’s for example

The cost of all of that? Hosting with One.com is €1,25 a month, Wordpress is free to download, and Facebook and Twitter are also free to use. A few free coffees or some discounted rooms in Dahab for the people that do the promotion and you’re already on your way…

Opel Astra - CC / Flickr

A friend from the Belgian SP.A said to me yesterday that she was going to a protest outside the Opel plant (that’s closing) in Antwerp this weekend, and did I want to join the protest in solidarity with the workers. No was my immediate answer – I’m glad it’s closing! She looked at my with a confused expression on her face.

Mass redundancies are never pleasant or comfortable, and my sympathies are with the workers that will lose their jobs, yet overall Europe produces too many cars, and the car sector in Belgium is just too much for a country of this size. Volvo has its largest factory outside Sweden in Gent, Ford has a large plant in Genk and Volkswagen/Audi has a plant at Forest.

All of this contributes to a ludicrously pro-car culture – in Brussels the car rules, the roads morning and evening are chock full of businessmen in their Mercedes and BMWs stuck in endless lines on rue de la Loi and rue Beliard. More than 50% of the new cars registered each year are company cars – firms get big tax breaks by giving their employees a vehicle. A friend in Brussels who had worked for a couple of years asked for a pay rise and was told this was not possible, but would she like a car? So a car she got.

So while my sympathies are with the workers of Opel Antwerp I hope the closure of the plant will make a small step towards Belgian politics being less addicted to the car.

I like new years. It’s a time to look forward. The days even start to get longer in January, and winter sports are always fun. But I digress. 2010 is going to be a year of some major changes for me, and for this blog too.

Essentially it’s all summed up by the image above.

I have a decision to make on how much time to spend in London (best business), Berlin (best quality of life) and Brussels (compromise between the two). Beyond that how much time do I spend on the professional training aspect of my work, explaining to people how the EU works and how to lobby it, versus the website design and the development of techPolitics LLP?

For sure I cannot keep on doing all I have been doing; I’ll go crazy if I do. But what has to give?

I also need to spend more time in the same place meaning ideally at least 7 uninterrupted days a month in Brussels if I can. I also want to improve my diving and skate an inline skate marathon in 1 hour 20 sometime over the next 12 months. There’s also the small matter of a UK general election and what campaigning role I can manage to play.

On the blog front I need to better divide up the topics that interest me – I already have Euroblog and Sportblog, but a division between politics and technology is also in order. I also should spend some more time on some more considered pieces for Left Foot Forward, Social Europe Journal and others. And all of that will necessitate some changes to this blog over the next 12 months, although it’s not top of my to-do list just yet.

Plus who knows what might await in 2010… 2009 started with atheist buses on the streets of London, and ended with a campaign for a Gender Balanced Commission. In short 2010 obliges me to make some choices but there will be plenty of fun things too, and as ever I’ll do my best to cover most of it on the blog here.

Photo credits: Brussels CC / Flickr, London CC / Flickr, Berlin CC / Flickr, EU flag CC / Flickr, Macbook keyboard CC / Flickr

Brussels Houses - CC / Flickr

So ideally I need to delegate work… but to whom, and how?

I’m working with Jan Seifert to setup techPolitics and that has taken some weight off my shoulders. But I would ideally need to find at least a few others with whom I could work – a freelance EU politics trainer, and some people that could do web projects. Not specifically programmers, but people who understand the internet and are sharp and bright. Importantly I do not want to just tell people what to do. I want to work with proactive people who will take responsibility themselves, be willing to build something, a kind of common endeavour.

I fear that the Brussels EU bubble is not really the place to find such people. Everyone is too concerned about the insecurity of being away from their home country. Getting a job in an institution with a solid income and pension seems to be the goal for far too many. It’s a golden cage in my view. The Belgian context does not help – becoming a freelancer in Belgium is complex – but those practical matters can be overcome. There is an enormous amount of Web 2.0 work around the EU institutions to do. Where are the people with whom to do it?

I feel very much like some odd risk taker in an extremely risk averse environment at the moment.