This was my speech at the Grüne Bundesdelegiertenkongress yesterday in Leipzig. It was enough to get me more than 200 votes for position 14 on the list, and 299 votes for position 20. But not enough to get an electable position. Why? The structures of power in the party won […]
As explained in this blog post, I am seeking a place on the German Grüne European Parliament election list. The decision as to who makes it onto the list will be taken at a party conference on 10th November in Leipzig. This is my first campaign video, examining whether Germany […]
One of my nagging worries about political communication online, and through social media, is the inequality of it. We are still stuck with the idea that social media gives everyone a voice and, to an extent, that is true. But when everyone has a voice, how do you separate the […]
I’ve lived in Berlin since 26 October 2013. At that time I could not have known how the politics of the UK, the country in which I was born and whose passport I hold, would change. I moved to Germany for a combination of personal and professional reasons, and – […]
Last week’s printed edition of Focus had a piece about how Germany’s politicians are using social media. It made the dubious claim that 61% of Green top candidate Katrin Göring-Eckardt’s Twitter followers could have been bought (JPG of that part of the Focus piece here). Let’s actually instead try to get […]
What is going on in German politics, just 7 months ahead of the 24th September Bundestag election? How can a party, the SPD – that was consistently 10 points behind the CDU in the polls – suddenly be running neck and neck with Angela Merkel’s party? This graph from Wikipedia […]
So often the political debate about migration and integration sees the issues at the level of the society as a whole. What can city/region/country do with X thousand new people? How will those areas change? What opportunities or burdens will all of this present to that area? How will the […]
This event is co-organised by the Parliamentary Group of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in the State Parliament Berlin (Abgeordnetenhaus), the Green Party of England and Wales and the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament – I am providing the live stream. Full details of the event here! Live Stream of the […]
Your browser does not support iframes. Am Freitag den 14. Oktober 1830-2000 bin ich Referent auf eine Podiumsdiskussion der Grünen in Dresden zum Thema Brexit und der Zukunft Europas. Die anderen Referenten sind Terry Reintke MdEP (Website, Twitter) und Prof. Alexander Thiele (Website). Die Veranstaltung ist öffentlich – also alle […]
In this blog entry I am breaking about my only rule of blogging – namely that I should only blog about the things I know. Here I am going to try to blog about German law, something I do not understand or know. This prospect scares me, and I am […]
Yesterday one of the initiators of the “Volksentscheid Fahrrad” in Berlin came to make a presentation at my local Grüne party meeting. The campaign initiators want to use Berlin’s direct democracy systems to put 10 major changes to Berlin cycle infrastructure into law – these include some pretty major infrastructure […]
Just over two years ago I joined the Grüne in Germany. My reasons at the time I outlined here. But how has the experience been so far? Reporting about it has been largely absent from my blog and I only tweet about my party political work very sporadically. This blog […]