I’ve spent the last three days in Barcelona, observing the 1st October independence referendum, not in any sort of official capacity, but as an interested politics nerd. Political tourism if you like. After my fascinating trip to Scotland prior to the independence referendum there in 2014, it was obvious that […]
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 […]
A concise summary of what is happening with the Volksentscheid Tempelhofer Feld (Tempelhof Field Referendum) was hard to find in English. So this is my effort to write one, to help explain this rather complicated issue. At the end I’ll give my personal view. What’s happening? On 25th May 2014 a Volksentscheid […]
There are some things party politics and representative democracy struggle to solve – those few issues that divide parties, that cross left-right divides. Britain’s relationship with the European Union is one such issue and, as a result, prompts calls from the right and, to a lesser extent, from the left, […]