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 […]
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 […]