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 […]
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 […]
Back in 2009 Tom Steinberg wrote this: The most scary thing about the Internet for your government is not pedophiles, terrorists or viruses, whatever you may have read in the papers. It is the danger of your administration being silently obsoleted by the lightening pace at which the Internet changes […]
The FT wrote yesterday how the European Commissioners Janez Potočnik (then with the Environment portfolio) and Antonio Tajani (then with the Industry portfolio) both knew in 2013 about potential differences between car emissions in real conditions and in lab tests. “There are widespread concerns that performance [of cars] has been […]
I was invited to speak at DG Cambridge on 14th October about UK – German relations in the context of David Cameron’s EU referendum. Antony Carpen was kind enough to film the speech, and put it up on Youtube: There are three parts to the speech: – How did UK-EU […]
The video above shows extracts of German Christian Democrat politicians talking about Greece. The statements are as follows: “Der Grieche hat jetzt lang genug genervt” (“The Greeks have annoyed us long enough“) – Thomas Strobl “Es gibt in Europa andere Staaten, denen es wahrscheinlich noch schlechter geht und die nicht […]
I’ve long been fascinated by the German politics, and how German politics is perceived beyond Germany. One aspect of this is how Merkel is described as the strong leader, internationally – a picture that is generally not reflected within Germany itself. For all their fascinating insight, pieces like the long […]