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 […]
When was the last time you talked to someone who’d been attacked with bottles in Saxony? Who’d fled from police through a Hungarian forest? Someone who talked with sadness in their face about a friend who was never the same after seeing a baby killed before his eyes? That’s the […]
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 […]
So the New York Times was at it this week, stating “Why Brussels is the New Berlin“. The NYT is a bit slow with that actually, as Deutsche Welle asked the same question back in August – at least their piece had a narrower focus on the arts scene that […]
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 […]
I’ve seen its lights blinking there, out across the north runway beyond Schönefeld. I have even run along its south runway in the Airport Night Run. But today I finally set foot in the as yet unopened Berlin Brandenburg Airport. I signed up for one of the standard tours of […]
Today I sent a fax. Yes, on 17th August 2015 this is still necessary. Because I had received a letter on paper from the administration of the city of Berlin and my reply had to be sent either on paper or by fax. No e-mail address, or indeed telephone number […]
There ought to be a single aim for a city’s cycle policy: get more people to cycle. A number of factors can have an impact on this – the actual (statistically provable) safety of cycling, the perceived safety of cycling, the ready availability of places to park bicycles, and the […]
My first cycle path film documented the dangers of Skalitzer Straße. Now here is the second episode – going north through Kreuzberg from Bergmannstraße, via Baerwaldstraße, Prinzenstraße, Moritzplatz and Heinrich-Heine-Straße to Jannowitzbrücke. This one is characterised by narrow and very bumpy paths (caused mostly by tree roots and poor repairs). […]
Berlin has cycle lanes on most of its main streets, but many of these lanes are poorly designed or in bad condition. One of the worst is along Skalitzer Straße through Kreuzberg – it is an important east-west route between Kottbusser Tor and the Oberbaumbrücke. As the first in an […]
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 […]