Nosemonkey's EUtopia

In search of a European identity

August 16, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

Ennui and some new EU blogs

Why can't I be here, exactly? Not fair!

For the last few months I’ve been working insanely hard on a couple of real-world projects, one of which has just fallen through (through precisely no fault of my own). I haven’t had even a single night out of London since March and haven’t had a proper holiday in almost two years. Meanwhile, a mate of mine’s off to the Bahamas tomorrow. For a fortnight. The utter, utter bastard.

Is it any wonder I’m finding it hard to summon the enthusiasm to write about the exciting world of European politics, especially considering that it’s silly season, so very little’s going on?

But still, the end of this month will see my third anniversary of near-daily blogging. From what I can tell, that puts me up there with Fistful and EU Referendum as one of the longest-running EU-focussed blogs out there – and both of those have the benefit of more than one author to call on.

So, despite the decline in readership brought by a combination of the shift from my old address (to which a surprisingly huge number of people are still linking, despite the lack of activity there for the last nine months or so) and decline in number of posts, thanks to my complete lack of inspiration I thought I’d point you to some of the newer EU blogs that have sprung up of late, and see if my encouragement can give them the impetus to keep it up.

So, in no particular order:

The European Parliament is that rarest of beasts – a loosely pro-EU English language blog that doesn’t appear to be written by an ignorant teenager who ends up doing more harm than good to the pro-EU cause by making ill-thought-out arguments and wild generalisations, backed up by silly attacks on eurosceptics based on little more than stereotyping. In other words, it has a lot of promise.

Global Power Europe has been going a few months now, making the case for “a strong, active, dynamic and just European Union” with a mixture of intelligence and what appears to be proper research and understanding. Rare indeed in the world of blogs.

WSI Brussels Blog comes from the World Security Initiative, aiming to “inform, stimulate, and shape the debate around the security and defence dilemmas facing Europe and the world” – and is thus far looking like an interesting addition, not least thanks to the potential for security cooperation to become a much bigger EU issue over the next few years.

Public Affairs 2.0 is another focussed new EU blog, this time looking at “the use of digital in politics, public affairs and communications in Europe”. With Brussels increasingly looking to the web as a way to effectively disseminate information (see EurActiv’s interesting report on blogs and the EU from a couple of months back), if this keeps going it could prove a handy resource.

Analysing EU may only be posting intermittently (a grand total of 11 posts in the last three months), but looks to be worth reading when new ones appear, approaching the EU as it does from a broader international perspective.

Mary Honeyball is a new edition to the world of elected representative bloggers, being a Labour MEP for London. Oddly, however, her blog seems to be rather more focussed on religion rather than politics, but to each their own.

Social Europe Blog, meanwhile, is another from the left (and left-wing blogs really are surprisingly rare when it comes to the EU) – this time from the magazine Social Europe “the journal of the European left”. It’s been going a few months now, is moderately regular, and seems to have promise (even if they haven’t linked to me yet…).

And then there’s a bunch of others that have been and gone in the few months since I last did a new EU blog roundup, like Brussels Media, Europhobe, EU Energy Policy Blog, and no doubt countless others I’ve completely missed.

If there are any new ones I’ve forgotten here and that are worth checking out, let me know. In the meantime I’m off to do yet more real-world work. Despite the fact that today looks to be one of those rare sunny days, the lack of which has made summer in the UK this year even more depressing than usual, and I’d really rather be sitting out on a beach somewhere. Ho-hum…

August 13, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Ukraine: time for the EU to act (again)

Supporters of Yulia Tymoshenko protest this weekend

We all remember the Orange Revolution of late 2004. Regular readers will know that since liveblogging the thing, I’ve occasionally returned to the complex and heated world of Ukranian politics to try and work out just what the hell’s going on over there – and more often than not, what’s been going on is petty squabbling, infighting, broken alliances, team-ups with former enemies, disillusionment and political stalemate. Wikipedia has a good round-up of the events of the last few months.

The latest development? Only the banning of the main opposition party. It’s just the newest madness after months of political stagnation caused by the fracturing of the old Orange alliance of President Yushchenko and his “revolutionary” partner Yulia Tymoshenko (his erstwhile Prime Minister), and the return of Viktor Yanukovich to the office of Prime Minister.
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August 11, 2007
by Nosemonkey
9 Comments

Neil Clark of the Guardian is a fictional construct

I mean, what other explanation can there be for this pile of wilfully-ignorant, almost precisely wrong in every way piece of abject dross?

“The most nauseating aspect of the campaign is the way we are repeatedly told that the Iraqi interpreters worked for ‘us’.
Who exactly is meant by ‘us’? In common with millions of other Britons, I did not want the Iraq war, an illegal invasion of a sovereign state engineered and egged on by a tiny minority of fanatical neoconservatives whose first loyalty was not to Britain but to the cause of Pax Americana.”

I gave up reading the Grauniad several months ago, so I didn’t realise it had turned into a satirical journal – that’s a pretty fine pastiche of the American pro-war right’s standard version of the supposed rabid idiocy of anti-war liberals. Because, I mean come on – no one could write that sort of rubbish with a straight face and genuinely mean it, could they?

But wait – it gets better!

“The interpreters did not work for ‘us’, the British people, but for themselves – they are paid around £16 a day, an excellent wage in Iraq – and for an illegal occupying force. Let’s not cast them as heroes. The true heroes in Iraq are those who have resisted the invasion of their country.”

Yes – you did read that right. Neil Clark just called the nutters detonating car bombs in crowded markets “heroes”.

*applause*

Go read it – it’s fantastic. It’s almost enough to make me want to begin to wholeheartedly support the war, donate all my savings to the Republican Party, plaster my flat with big posters of George W in flight gear, and to chemically castrate and set fire to every single liberal (whether with a small or a large “L” and in the modern and the classical senses, just to make sure) in an attempt to prevent the likes of Clark ever breeding and polluting our world with their gloriously idiotic views ever again.

In more sensible news, read Dan Hardie’s latest update on the campaign, and watch this, courtesy of the decidedly anti-war Tim Ireland (or, in Neil Clark world, Tim Rumsfeld):


See also Mr Eugenedes on the glorious Mr Clark, and if you can be bothered head over to the fiction suit’s testing ground, where the seams of self-righteousness come in for a bit of a battering, but swiftly re-assert their hold through sheer smug self-satisfaction in the knowledge that there’s not the remotest possibility of being wrong when you consider yourself the truest lefty in the world.

Oh, and note to the Guardian: if you want someone to churn out mindlessly ill-considered, utterly un-researched garbage to spew out to your hilariously bipolar online readership, both confirming the prejudices of the American right-wing trolls and acting as a fluffer to the dwindling enthusiasm of the nuttier reaches of the British left, then I offer good rates.

Neil Clark, I salute you – truly amazing levels of delusion, sir, and a wonderful contribution to neocon efforts to smear all lefties as nutters to boot…

August 8, 2007
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

The new EU Reform Treaty: pointless

The lovely EU flag

So, I’ve been slowly chugging through the tediousness that is the EU’s draft Reform Treaty.

Packed with boredom and predictability, with no real surprises and very few really important changes to the way the EU currently works, it’s one of the dullest documents I’ve had the misfortune to read in quite a while. Which, let’s face it, is hardly surprising considering it’s taken years of petty squabbling and bland compromises to get agreement on the thing. It is, however, rather easier to read than the old Constitution text, strikes me as a fair bit shorter too – and also seems to be full of both contradictions and missed opportunities, which should allow lawyers, politicians, journalists and analysts to argue over precisely what it means and achieves for years to come.

But first, what does the thing actually set out change?

The main new introductions are – from what I can tell – as follows: Continue Reading →

August 6, 2007
by Nosemonkey
15 Comments

The UK smoking ban, one month on

Filthy criminal!

So, the smoking ban’s been in force for a bit over a month, and no one seems to care too much, because the weather’s perked up a bit so smokers can shuffle outside without too much annoyance. The effects so far seem to be:

1) My favourite pubs being rather less busy, and frequented by far fewer regulars

2) Pubs having lost much of their atmosphere (ho ho, etc.), and feeling a lot less relaxed

3) Pubs appearing to have more than the usual number of idiots with no concept of pub etiquette getting in my way, queue-jumping, and failing to realise that pubs exist to provide alcoholic beverages, not cappuccinos that take the bar staff five minutes to make when they could be pulling me my pint

4) An increase in the number of vehement non-smokers who now think they have a God-given right to tell (note, not *ask*) smokers to stop puffing away, even when said smoker is my father enjoying a quiet cigar at an outside table next to a busy, highly-polluted main road, thus ruining my parents’ trip to the big smoke (geddit?) due to unnecessary aggression (easily soothed by nicotine, I find) caused by a moronic assumption that smoking has been banned in *all* public spaces, rather than just enclosed ones (despite months of expensive publicity)

5) Pavements outside pubs being impossible to walk along after about 6pm each evening due to the large number of smokers and their friends who have been forced outside

6) The untimely death of one man

7) The small, pointless plastic sign industry receiving a lovely, government-sponsored boom, as the bloody things must be displayed pretty much everywhere

Prime example of the last point – and the insanity of an inflexible blanket ban: wandering around central London in the sunshine over the weekend, for the first time I noticed that *every single public phone box* has been fitted with a “No Smoking” sign.

This despite the fact that:

a) fitting more than one adult into said booths is tricky at best, making passive smoking in the things a highly unlikely occurrence

b) the law was supposedly introduced to protect the health of employees who may have to breathe other people’s smoke while going about their jobs, and phone boxes have precisely no staff

c) pretty much everyone in the UK owns a mobile phone, making telephone boxes pretty much redundant

d) there are thousands of phone boxes in London alone, each of which will have been fitted with a government-approved plastic sign at a cost of £7.50 a pop (not to mention the additional cost of labour, adhesive, etc. to fit the things) – even with bulk-buying discounts, we’re talking tens of thousands of pounds pointlessly wasted

I, meanwhile, have cut down considerably to avoid mid-drinking-session nicotine withdrawal pangs, meaning that the government has already lost (based on approximate figures of percentage tax per packet) about £30 in tax from me alone in the last month.

Assuming, as an erstwhile ten-a-day smoker, that I’m moderately representative (and bearing in mind that I smoke the cheaper rolling tobacco, rather than factory-made fags), and that the number of smokers in the UK is still around 26% of the population, (or around 15.6 million), I make that a loss of £468 million in tax revenue in just one month – which, over the course of a year, would amount to 5.6 billion (more than the cost of the Iraq war from 2003 up to last summer).

And that’s before I even bother mentioning the tedious arguments about potential longer-term costs of a healthier population living longer, thus costing the government more in terms of pensions and old-age health care, or the likely drop in revenue (and thus taxes) in the pub trade.

So, could anyone who knows economics (Chris? Tim?) explain to me how the smoking ban can be remotely viable for the government in the long term? Surely the one-off sale of hundreds of thousands of little plastic “No Smoking” signs alone isn’t going to be anywhere near enough to replace the lost revenue?

(Oh, and sorry for the lack of posts of late – I’ve been both busy and lazy…)

July 27, 2007
by Nosemonkey
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links for 2007-07-27

I am Sarko - hear me roar!

July 25, 2007
by Nosemonkey
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links for 2007-07-25

You see, Putin's not interested - he's double-hard, is Putin

July 24, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

links for 2007-07-24

Barroso at the IGC

July 23, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

On accepting responsibility

Iraq, 18th July 2007

As regular readers know, I don’t have much time for the Iraq war. Nonetheless, from Dan Hardie and reproduced in full, a worthwhile campaign:

—

We can’t turn them away

Since British troops occupied Southern Iraq in the spring of 2003, thousands of Iraqi citizens have worked for the British Army, the Coalition Provisional Authority (South) and for contractors serving UK forces. There is now considerable evidence that their lives, and the lives of their families, are at risk: some former workers for the British have been murdered, and many others have fled to neighbouring countries or gone into hiding in Basra. The British Government, for whom they were ultimately working, has not offered them the right of asylum in the UK. This is morally unacceptable. It is also unnecessary, since we are well able to accommodate several thousand Iraqi refugees, most of whom already speak English and all of whom have already worked for our country.
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July 23, 2007
by Nosemonkey
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links for 2007-07-23

Sarko puts Goron in his place...

July 22, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

links for 2007-07-22

Turkish nationalist supporters

July 19, 2007
by Nosemonkey
11 Comments

That UK / Russia spat: background and a conspiracy theory

Vladimir Putin, looking eeeeevil...

Well, now that the EU has lent its collective support to the UK’s efforts, and with Gordon Brown heading off to meet Nicholas Sarkozy tomorrow (where the Russia dispute will almost certainly be raised), it’s no doubt past time to have a gander at what this is really all about – and where it’s likely to lead.

Because, let’s face it, though the high-profile murder of a political refugee on the streets of London is a fairly big deal, it’s not remotely big enough to warrant escalating an already tense European relationship with Russia. After all, if every political murder led to international incidents, when are we going to start expelling diplomats over the suspicious death of Egyptian billionaire (and alleged Mossad agent) Ashraf Marwan a few weeks back?
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July 18, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

Brown’s EU diplomatic strategy

Brown and Merkel

What with the ongoing spat with Russia (hyped out of all proportion, I reckon, and hope I’m not proved wrong), the fact that our dear new Prime Minister has made his first overseas jaunt while in office seems to have been largely forgotten. The fact that Brown managed a solid three weeks in the UK before nipping off abroad – approximately 400% longer than Tony Blair ever managed during his ten years in office* – has likewise received little comment. (Blair’s first overseas visit, by the way, was to the US, which could be significant…)

But why, with so much to do in Europe, Germany? Why suck up to Angela Merkel, with her relatively unstable coalition and two weeks after she passed the EU presidency on to Portugal? Why not follow the EU presidency itself? Why not head to Brussels and meet Commission head Barroso? Why not try to form a good relationship with Europe’s most secure and powerful politician, Nicholas Sarkozy (who he’s due to meet on Friday)? Why not Sarkozy and Merkel at the same time, in an EU big three spitroast?
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