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 – […]
Dear Violeta, It has been a little while since I last wrote you a postcard from one of my cross-border rail trips. But this week I took a little journey from Berlin to Szczecin / Stettin in West Pomerania in Poland, represented in the European Parliament by Bogusław Liberadzki – […]
My trip today, 10 April 2018: Toulouse (population: 467000, 1.3 million in the urban area) to Béziers (population: 75000). Distance 176km by train, 180km by road. Departure time: sometime around 1500. Towns along the route: Castelnaudary (population: 11000), Carcassonne (48000), Narbonne (53000). Beyond Béziers are Montpellier, Nîmes and Marseille. Here […]
A couple of months ago I had a conversation with two academic friends of mine about why they refused to use any messenger other than WhatsApp. “We just want it to work!” they said. “Well, Volkswagen cars work” I hit back. “That’s different,” they said. But then what about fairly […]
English politicians are prone to playing lip service to the unity of the United Kingdom. Theresa May even made sure she visited Northern Ireland on her whistle-stop one year until Brexit tour last week. May leads the Tory Party that is officially called the Conservative and Unionist Party. But how […]
Back almost five years ago I spent a week live blogging from Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise ship in the English Channel – you can find all my posts from that trip here. Now I am writing this on my way to another live blogging trip – I am going to Charleroi […]
Sometimes a tweet from a politician really hits the mark. So it was with this yesterday from European Council President Donald Tusk: I have just recommended to EU27 leaders that we welcome, in principle, the agreement on transition. In practice, the transition phase will allow to delay all the negative […]
The UK government’s Brexit strategy at the moment could be summed up as trying to do the minimum possible to get Brexit done. Avoid confronting the inevitable trade offs, wish away the negative economic consequences, and try to push all the difficult decisions forward into what the EU calls the […]
A difference of ideology I can tolerate. Even willful distortion from political opponents I have come to understand. But low quality journalism by those who should know better continues to really rankle. So I was hopping mad earlier today when reading this piece by Gary Younge in The Guardian, a […]
A clever tweet caught my eye this morning: Ever wondered which gender #Brexit is? Obviously male, since 55% of men voted Leave, while 51% of women (and 80% of women aged 18-24) voted Remain. Happy #IWD2018🙂 https://t.co/8IX0doz1ex https://t.co/wqWfIQClid — Peter Ptassek (@GermanyonBrexit) March 8, 2018 It prompted me to think […]
The superficial difference between a Hard Brexit and a Soft Brexit is political control – taking back control, to coin a phrase. A Soft Brexit leaves the UK having to abide by the rules of the Single Market or the Customs Union or both but, as a non-EU Member State, […]
