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 […]
German Politics
Notes about Brits getting German citizenship in light of Brexit
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 […]
Does Berlin need a cycling policy referendum?
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 […]
2 years as an outsider in the German Grüne
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 […]
EU blogger meets Syrian refugee, and out of it comes something potentially fantastic
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 […]
In this world, a guy can build a self-driving car in a month in his garage, but it takes a city three years to plan to paint a cycle lane
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 […]
Why [insert your city] is not the new Berlin
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 […]
UK – German relations in the context of the UK’s EU referendum
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 […]
Touring the Berlin Brandenburg Airport: no closer to the answer
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 […]
Berlin: startup city, technological backwater
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 […]
Berlin’s future cycling plans are wrong. Here’s a way forward.
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 […]
Radweg Bergmannstraße to Jannowitzbrücke (Kreuzberg and Mitte)
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). […]