September 19, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on Margot Wallström and citizen engagement
A new post from me at dLiberation, reporting on Monday’s launch of the Tomorrow’s Europe deliberative poll.
You may also want to check out the introductory post by Professor James Fishkin, Director of the Deliberative Democracy Center at Stanford University, explaining the background to his development of Deliberative Polling as a workable technique, and the thinking behind it all.
September 18, 2007
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments
A delightful time was had by all at last night’s launch debate/party for Tomorrow’s Europe in Brussels – except my feet, which got pounded by the picturesque Brussels cobbles (thanks to be being too cheap to get a taxi) and then soaked by the decidedly less picturesque Brussels rain (for the self-same reason).
An array of intriguing people also met, from high-profile politicos through to the chap behind tip-top French superblog Euros du Village, and in my absence the new project that took me to Belgium has gone live, so go have a look-see:
dLiberation – a Nosemonkey-edited look at deliberative democracy, EU participation, and the future of the European Union, brought to you by openDemocracy.
I’ve got two vaguely introductory posts up so far, which should give you an idea of what we’re hoping to achieve, with many more to follow – from me and a range of experts from academics to MEPs through a few choice Brussels bureaucrats, bloggers and more. Go have a gander:
September 16, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on Off to Brussels on the morrow
It’s been a few years since I’ve trekked out to the Belgian capital, and once again it’s work-related – popping to this impressive building alongside the European Parliament to cover the launch of Tomorrow’s Europe for openDemocracy. More details soon – rest assured, however, that my blogging output is going to increase considerably over the next few weeks…
September 13, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments
So, is new Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov going to be the next President? After all, Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister (out of nowhere) shortly before the 2000 presidential election in which Putin took power. Is Vlad following Boris’ lead in appointing his own successor?
Because, let’s face it, Russia’s been going even more mental than usual in the last few months – always a sign that an election’s coming up. Hell, even in the last couple of days we’ve had reminders of pre-Litvinenko poisonings from the President of Ukraine, massive bomb tests and Russian bombers being intercepted entering NATO airspace.
With three months to go until the parliamentary and six months until the presidential elections (in which Putin – despite his massive domestic popularity – can’t stand for constitutional reasons), unlike the last few election periods (2003/4, 1999/2000 and 1995/6) so far there hasn’t been any major chaos in Chechnya, nor heightened threats of “Chechen terrorism” to provide a handy unifying force. Instead, Putin seems to have picked a far bigger menace to help bring Russia together behind whoever it is he picks to succeed him: the West.
Ah… Cold War rhetoric… Don’t you just love it?
But anyway, who’s this Zubkov chap, who’s now pretty much the front-runner to be Putin’s successor (following the precedent of Yeltsin’s appointment of the then largely unknown Putin as Prime Minister shortly before the 2000 presidential elections)?
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September 9, 2007
by Nosemonkey
8 Comments
It was a good day – almost enough to make up for the rest of this summer being so interminably grey and boring. We won the football, we won the rugby and we won the cricket. Then it was all wrapped up with a picnic in Hyde Park and the last night of the Proms, singing Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and God Save the Queen in a group in which I was the only Brit. Hurrah!
(But why were us poor sods in the park subjected to such an interminable amount of Will sodding Young for Christ’s sake? I’m sure he’s a lovely chap and has a pleasant enough voice, but since when has blandly derivative manufactured pop counted as classical music?)
September 8, 2007
by Nosemonkey
8 Comments
Get rid of at least one of the psycho twins now that you’ve got a general election two years early. Poland should always have been at the forefront of the 2004 EU intake’s push for serious reform – but thanks to the Kaczynski brothers it has instead ended up both isolated and one of the EU’s biggest internal problems.
For more on the run-up to the Polish parliamentary vote that decided on a snap general election, check out always tip-top Poland blog The Beatroot from a few days back (and again), and on the vote to dissolve parliament itself.
More from the Financial Times, Washington Post and International Herald Tribune.
September 7, 2007
by Nosemonkey
14 Comments
Everyone in the UK knows that of the national daily papers, it’s really only the barely-read (and increasingly unreadable) Guardian (c.311,000 sales per issue) and Independent (c.190,000 sales per issue) who are in favour of the European Union.
The Times (c.595,000) and Sun (c.2,916,000) follow their owner Rupert Murdoch’s eurosceptic lead. The Telegraph (c.833,000) and Mail (c.2,205,000) play to the middle-England, vaguely xenophobic gallery. The People (c.667,000) is also instinctively anti-EU in most of its approaches, most of the time. The Express (c.735,000) does what the Mail does, only with less panache. If you count the similarly unthinking Star (c.667,000) and Sport (c.93,000) as newspapers, they’re also primarily anti-EU on the rare occasions they bother to mention it.
Then there’s the effectively EU-neutral Mirror (c.1,425,000) – which will run anti-EU pieces quite happily, but also take on pro-EU government propaganda just to be different to the Sun – and largely impartial Financial Times (c.130,000).
So, daily – according to those ABC figures – that makes 13,055,000 anti-EU newspaper sales and 1,555,000 EU-neutral sales, compared to just 501,000 pro-EU newspaper sales.
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September 5, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on Dog bites man Wednesday
Having not finished the long-winded, political theory-heavy (and therefore excruciatingly dull) post I started this morning, I thought I’d have a hunt round the BBC News site to find something worthy of a brief musing.
But no, it was not to be. Pity the poor news teams – and I speak from some experience here – every single story is either blindingly obvious or days, weeks, months, even years old:
Bob Crowe is the worst advert for trade unionism in decades
Politician bitter at being sidelined by his party slags off the guy who beat him to the top job
Political party’s policy direction not 100% supported by every member of said party
Institutional incompetence (and again) and the weather is more scary than pathetically incompetent wannabe terrorists
So’s the global economy (most likely)
Everyone in the UK forgot about the 10th anniversary of Mother Theresa’s death
Products made in sweatshops are often a bit crap
Nothing constructive is being done about the situation in Darfur. Still.
Apple is launching yet another vaguely pretty overpriced gizmo that I have no desire to own
*sigh*
No news may be good news, but it really is boring. How many more months have we got to put up with 2007? It’s been one of the most tedious news years in, well, years… The only excitement has been the long-overdue retirement of a politician who announced that he was going two years ago, and a bunch of floods that overstayed their welcome in much the same manner. (Though with rather less loss of life and property damage than Blair caused in Iraq – boom boom! – see what I did there?)
Something interesting from me soon, I hope – but the world’s really not giving me much to play with here…
September 4, 2007
by Nosemonkey
9 Comments
Not having particularly kept up with Scottish politics after the ’45, and despite having close Scottish relations involved on the fringe of the Scottish political scene, the niceties of the devolution settlement have largely eluded me. I’ve only made it up to Scotland once since devolution anyway, and spent the majority of the trip in the remote Highlands getting boozed up on fine whisky.
You’d think that for someone with a keen interest in British constitutional history I’d have paid more attention, considering that devolution was always – potentially – the most significant constitutional change since universal suffrage was introduced. I just never really thought it would have legs, and that the entire experiment would end up being scrapped once it was shown to be a huge waste of money. More fool me, it would seem, as it appears that something very odd indeed may be happening north of the border.
Because, you see, in constitutional and international legal terms, terminology is hugely important. Call the Scottish political executive an executive, fine. Call it a government? Well, it’s not, is it? It has elements of the powers of a government, but it’s merely a subservient element of the federation that is the United Kingdom, surely?
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September 3, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments
When we pulled out that time, we tried not to leave anyone behind – the chap in charge of the unfortunate rear-guard even popping back in a motor-boat the day after the evacuation finished to see if anyone was still about.
Hell – we even got a decent chunk of the French out.
There was no particular reason to bother rescuing the French types who’d been helping fight the Nazis. They’d failed to defend their own country, we’d tried to help out but were unsuccessful, and escaped by the skin of our teeth. To try and get the French out as well risked our own troops, and extended the evacuation by a dangerous couple of extra days.
But, of course, it was the right thing to do. We’d joined the war to help out our allies across the Channel, after all, given some hope of proper assistance, but failed. We could have just cut and run entirely, and let the French try to clear up their own mess (even though, by then, they didn’t have much hope) – but that wouldn’t have been the done thing, would it?
If we could rescue several tens of thousands of Frenchmen using fishing boats sixty-odd years ago, I can see no reason why we can’t help out those few hundred Iraqi chaps who’ve been working as translators, cooks, and miscellaneous support staff for the British army in Basra now that we’ve begun our Iraq Dunkirk. To leave them behind to face the wrath of the insurgents would be akin to leaving the French army on the beach, chugging away while waving, laughing, pulling the odd moonie and shouting back to them with heartening cries of “chin up!” as the Luftwaffe circle vulture-like and the Panzerdivisions lumber over the horizon.
Here’s a reminder, here’s the link to write to your MP for free.
As regular readers will know, I usually couldn’t give tuppence for the situation in Iraq – it’s bored the hell out of me since before it even started to the extent that I’ve been neither for nor against it since around March 2003.
But this is potentially the most cowardly and pathetic media-led action seen in a decade of a media-led government – to avoid a few days’ worth of overblown tabloid headlines about an influx of Iraqis, the British government is prepared to abandon loyal allies and their families to torture and death. It shouldn’t have to be pointed out (though sadly it is), but whether you supported the war or not, that’s simply not on.
August 31, 2007
by Nosemonkey
9 Comments
A fun little article on Europe in 2057, combined with Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s reiteration of the UK government’s position on a referendum over the new EU treaty, has got me pondering once again. (Warning – it’ll be a long one…)
It all starts from the fact that – and as I argued earlier this month – the new EU treaty simply doesn’t do what it needs to.
In setting up an EU president (with a maximum term of just five years) and marginally streamlining (via a – relatively – minor expansion of qualified majority voting) the process by which the EU can bring new laws and regulations into effect (because, obviously, we haven’t got enough already), it provides mere cosmetic fixes for deep structural issues while altogether ignoring some of the most vital underlying problems.
After all, where’s the vitally-needed rethink on the Common Agricultural Policy, the single most indefensible aspect of the EU’s existence? Where’s the fresh take on the Common Fisheries Policy? Where’s the expansion of democratic accountability, the significant increase in the power of the European Parliament, the long-promised massive reduction in the power of the Commission? Hell, where’s the logical and fair redistribution of political power and EU subsidies across the full 27 member states which was, after all, the primary reason for a new EU treaty in the first place?
It is, in other words, the international treaty equivalent of whacking some lipstick on the elephant man, the proverbial polishing of a turd.
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August 28, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments
See? Some, y’know, politics and stuff soon. In the meantime, read this and this, then put pen to paper.
And if you want more Europe-focussed bits and pieces (what with this being an EU-centred blog and all), try John Worth’s handy guide to the world of Europe blogs (well, ones in English, anyway…) – oh, and the Britblog Roundup‘s rather good this week and all
August 17, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments
Ashley Mote MEP, a former UKIPer (who even they wouldn’t have in the party more than a few weeks) who went on to join the controversial far right “Identity, Sovereignty, Tradition” group in the European Parliament, is a bit of a hero of mine.
He’s been tirelessly fighting the evil Brussels money wasting machine ever since he was elected on the UKIP ticket back in 2004 – and now, finally, after a trial that’s been dragged out for a good three years… he’s been done for fraudulently claiming £73,000 in state benefits.
No idea how much the trial will have cost, but considering an MEP’s salary is somewhere in the region of £60,000 (not including expenses, etc.) that means he’s managed to syphon off – at the bare minimum – a quarter of a million pounds at taxpayers’ expense.
Plus, hilariously – and almost unbelievably – Mote is not only a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (he he he!), but also a substitute on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. A financial fraudster. On the committees for Budgetary Control and Economic and Monetary Affairs. Perfect!
He’s even had the gall to challenge the procedures in place to scrutinise the EU’s accounts (e.g.) and to attack the British government for *ahem* wasting taxpayers’ money on the EU (he he he!). And if that’s not brilliant enough, he’s also had the balls to accuse the EU of – wait for it – not doing enough to combat fraud!
In other words, had he not got so many close ties to pretty much every anti-EU party in Brussels, and were it not for UKIP’s poor scrutiny of its candidates (or is that simply desperation for any candidates?) having allowed him to get elected on the dodgy list system in the first place, Mote could have been an ideal example of the rampant corruption that’s supposedly endemic in the EU for the anti-EU lot to use at every given opportunity. As it is he’s just yet another example of how so many nutty single-issue political groups can’t be trusted to do anything right. Hurrah!
I love Ashley Mote. Almost as much value for money as Robert Kilroy Silk (remember him?)
August 17, 2007
by Nosemonkey
9 Comments
As regular readers will know, I’m no economist and don’t pretend to be – which is why I sometimes get all confused.
While I think John Redwood is a bit of a fool for raising the whole scrapping inheritance tax idea again when it still appears to be hugely unpopular, can anyone tell me why allowing people to pass their savings on to their family when they die without the state taking yet another chunk of their hard-earned cash is such an horrific idea?
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