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!

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

I’m in the middle of finalising all of the business arrangements for techPolitics LLP, the new company for my website work. One aspect of that is VAT registration, and my accountants need an authorisation code from HM Revenue and Customs. Rather surprising then to collect my post and find 13 copies, yes 13, of the very same letter, all posted on the same day and all arriving on the same day… and all posted business second class, and hence all very delayed by the Christmas post. 1 copy, sent 1st class, would have been far preferable!

So what about the internet? The BBC has been at the forefront of online broadcasting with many of its radio channels available online all the time, and TV programmes available on iPlayer. Yet this has also meant a blanket ban on some broadcasts and services outside the UK. Any football commentary on Radio 5 is UK only and on Saturday Live on Radio 4 this morning they had the temerity to read out a reader’s letter complaining that Saturday Live podcasts were not available to users outside the UK. Well, the presenter said with a chuckle, that’s because you don’t pay the license fee!

Hold on a minute. People outside the UK do not pay the fee, but we also do not have the opportunity to do so. There is a crude distinction: if you’re in the UK you get all BBC programmes because you pay the license fee. If you’re outside the UK you must be someone the BBC can patronise with lousy rubbish, leftovers, like BBC World News or remnants of the empire like BBC World Service. I live in Belgium most of the time, 1 hour 51 minutes from London by train – so closer to BBC television centre than half of the UK. I want all the BBC services a British resident should be able to get, and if there were a way to pay for that then I would be willing to do so – I’m one of the people that like the BBC. But there is no way.

There are ways around some of the restrictions – using Foxyproxy to make iPlayer think you live in the UK (video of how to do it here), and having a UK iTunes account so as to access podcasts that way. But this is breaking the rules to get what you want because the BBC seems to treat everyone beyond the British Isles differently. It’s frustrating.

Queue - CC / Flickr

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 on the London Underground without letting the passengers off first.

Cyclists that do not respect red lights and mow down pedestrians.

But what do you actually do about these sorts of things? I know for sure I am not the only one who gets annoyed, and in the Eurostar queue jumping case I could see other passengers bristling with annoyance. So I have now simply taken to talking to the people breaking the rules. If those individuals do not know what the social norm is, or they do not read the body language of the others around, then they need to be told what should happen. So a short “on respecte la file ici” to the Eurostar man sent him to the back of the queue. A short “est-ce que vous savez pourquoi les voitures ont des clignotants?” through the open window of a car that’s not respecting the rules might have a small impact. A carefully placed shoulder or bag tends to do the trick when leaving an underground carriage. Some day someone will probably turn around and hit me when I do all of this but it at least has not happened yet.

I still do not get why people behave like this though. The ball is almost always in the other court. The queue jumper is someone who is also sometimes at the front of queues. The driver who doesn’t use indicators is also surely confused by other drivers. Cyclists are sometimes pedestrians. And the underground passenger who barges on also needs to be able to get off. Surely it doesn’t take a genius to realise that to do unto others as you would want done to yourself is not a bad rule for social interaction in cities?

ASDE Martin Schulz - J. Worth montage

Britain has ASDA, a rather lousy supermarket chain owned by Wal-Mart. Now Brussels has ASDE, the new name for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. The name stands for the Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. Which means the name is not too far away from ALDE, the acronym for the Liberals in the EP, and even the EPP has its ED (European Democrats) adjunct. So everyone’s a democrat. Isn’t that nice. Everyone has an alphabet soup of names. That’s perhaps less nice.

So what are the reasons? Julien Frisch has a breakdown, and also a video from Europarl TV explaining the rationale. Essentially the Italian Partito Democratico did not know which group to join, wanted the socialists to sound a bit more moderate, and hence the name change. So Martin Schulz can now preside over approximately 170 MEPs rather than 150. Woo hoo. Forget the coherency, forget the brand, forget the fact you sound like a supermarket chain, forget even how things will have to be explained at the 2014 elections. That’s a long way off…

(Photo credit: image adapted from this Flickr / CC image)

Terrorist Billboard - James Holden

There is something really incomprehensible about Britain’s approach to terrorism. It seems that the government wants to use every technological, physical and PR tactic they can to make people feel more scared safer.

The most recent is a billboard campaign from the British Transport Police urging you to snoop on your neighbours if you see some vaguely suspicious rubbish in a bin. Amusingly – via The Wardman Wire – this has resulted in a Flickr pool of spoof posters produced from James Holden’s billboard slogan generator.

This follows on from the paranoia that all kinds of buildings must have big barriers around them, everything must be looked over with CCTV, that metal detectors need to be installed in the London Underground and in London hotels, that you can take only 100ml of liquids in hand luggage into an airport (but can buy litres at duty free)… etc., etc.

Let me tell a small story to illustrate the absurdity of all of this.

It was June 2005, about 3 weeks after the London terror attacks. I got on a Number 35 bus at about 7am from Clapham Common Station, heading towards Clapham Junction. The ground floor of the double decker was largely deserted, a couple of people at the back, and a huge bag just left on the wheel arch at the front of the bus. My first thought: who does that belong to? I enquired urgently of the driver who shrugged his shoulders in a blaze fashion. I asked the other passengers and discovered the bag belonged to a guy right at the back of the bus, about 5m from the bag. OK, my fear reduced.

But what about others getting into the bus for the rest of the journey? More than 20 people got on the bus over the 10 minutes of the journey, and not one of them raised an eyebrow about the large bag at the front. All of this despite advertising on London transport about reporting anything suspicious. Individuals do not look out for each other, and a billboard campaign is not going to help; in fact it is likely to make people more suspicious of each other, which is precisely the wrong outcome.

Why, oh why, does the UK always try to deal with the symptoms of terrorism, not the root causes?

The UK needs to emphasise tolerance and understanding, community cohesion and trust. Billboards, metal detectors, bomb barriers etc. are surely not going to manage that. Beyond the UK we heed a decent development aid policy and liberal approach to trade into Europe; reduce economic disparities between the developed and developing world.

In short we need to answer why people allegedly want to blow themselves up on British soil and not try to find every possible way to stop them doing it which is where the government seems to be putting its efforts currently.

1 – Coffee grind (vital)
This is far and away the most important factor to make a good espresso. If your coffee grind is too coarse the water flows through too quickly, giving a kind of americano coffee that can taste a bit burnt. If the grind is too fine very little water passes through the coffee and you get a ristretto of extreme potency. Experiment with different coffee grinds until you get a small cup of espresso coffee with a rich brown crema on top in 20-30 seconds. Good espresso coffee should be adequately finely groud to mean the individual grains are hard to make out with the naked eye and the coffee can be almost moulded with the coffee scoop.

2 – Coffee (important)
Get some espresso coffee – simple as that. Should be 100% arabica beans as cheaper robusta beans can make your espresso bitter. Lavazza Qualità Rossa will do the job just fine. Monmouth Coffee Company Organic Espresso Blend is a favourite of mine. Even the espresso beans at my local Delhaize in Brussels are perfectly fine. Essentially don’t go for bargain basement, but you don’t have to pay over the odds.

3 – Heating the machine (medium importance)
The Gaggia manual states that the machine should be left on for at least 6 minutes before making an espresso. Out of experience I’ve found that 2-3 minutes is perfectly adequate. A Gaggia Classic is rated at 1200W (about half as powerful as a kettle), so don’t leave it on unnecessarily long. Just make sure that you make the coffee as soon as you’ve put the coffee in the coffee filter, and also make sure you make your espresso first before frothing any milk.

4 – Other factors
A few other things to bear in mind:

• Use the 2 cup filter, even if you’re making just 1 cup of espresso, and half-fill it. It’s much easier to fill than the 1 cup filter.
• Avoid water with too much limescale in it – filter water before putting it in the machine
• If you want to grind your own beans (highly recommended) then get a burr grinder – my Krups Expert GVX231 has done a fine job