(note: this is a counterfactual – just in case you’re reading it after October 2015!) It is Wednesday 21st November 2015, and David Cameron has called a press conference at Downing Street. With his face going rather puce, the anger showing in the edge to his voice, he delivers the […]
The prospect of the UK holding an in-or-out of the EU referendum fills me with dread, but debate of the merits of holding this vote, and how each side might frame its messages are topics for blog entries in future. What voting no would mean is outlined in this blog […]
Relating to the Jack Straw lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian sugar firms (background here), a few quick remarks. First, we know from this, that: I got into see the relevant director general and his officials in Brussels … and we got the sugar regulations changed We also know the meeting […]
“Party strategists must be scratching their heads […] after the latest debacle” writes David Shariatmadari in The Guardian, examining the story of the British Conservative Party using a Photoshopped picture of a road near Weimar, Thüringen, Germany to illustrate their latest election poster. Shariatmadari’s piece goes on to list the […]
NOTE: this is a piece commissioned by the Norwegian online magazine Vox Publica, and was translated into Norwegian for that purpose. The Norwegian version can be found here: Skottland: Hvorfor uavhengighet etter 300 år? The English original is here with permission from Vox Pubica, but – unlike other posts on […]
At the end of the televised Salmond-Darling debate I tweeted the following: The basic #indyref Q is this: will Scotland be better governed from Edinburgh or London? IMHO: Edinburgh. So #VoteYes. #ScotDecides — Jon Worth (@jonworth) August 5, 2014 With 77 retweets so far, it seems to have struck a chord […]
I’ve been partner in a small Limited Liability Partnership in the UK since 2009, and since the start getting our banking right has been a bit of a headache. We have a low turnover, but issue between 50 and 70 invoices a year, and many of those are paid from […]
Gergely Polner (@eurocrat on Twitter) normally knows his stuff about the EU. Sometime spokesperson for the Hungarian Presidency of the EU (still the best social media outreach by Presidency), then head of public affairs for the European Parliament in the UK, and now head of EU affairs for the British Bankers’ […]
I was back in the UK for the first time in ages last week and was frustrated as a result of not being able to use two services I had grown to rely on – my Three Pay-as-you-go Data SIMcard, and Auto-TopUp for my Oyster Card. What’s the problem? A […]
A friend on Facebook pointed me towards an article in GQ about the Wythenshawe & Sale East byelection. I’m not a regular GQ reader, but the headline – Running On Anger: on the campaign trail with UKIP – and the content of the piece are worth reading. The tactics employed by […]
“At the TUC conference this week in Brighton, RMT union boss Bob Crow asked his colleagues to back a British referendum on the EU. His call for a referendum was roundly rejected. On the internet, the group Labour for a Referendum has posted three times [1, 2, 3] on LabourList […]
I’ve lost track of the number of times people have defended the British First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system with the argument that because the system generally produces a clear winner (a majority for one party), the system hence avoids the need for the complicated coalition negotiations and trade-offs necessary […]