My Europe is a compromise. Politics at the EU level is consensus politics, done through bargaining, horse-trading, lowest-common-demoninator agreements and backroom deals. That is why there can never be a “United States of Europe” and why federalism in Europe will never work; without a common “European nation,” political leaders are forced to struggle for compromises…
Downsizing for Africa
I’m in the process of downsizing my blog, in preparation for my trip to Africa. I had originally wanted to make my site as multimedia-rich as I could, with lashings of audiovisual material. That plan, however, was cooked up before I saw the internet statistics for Ethiopia. There are only 360’000 internet users in Ethiopia,…
Tory MEP Agrees Gays Aren’t Normal
Does David Cameron even have a clue what his MEPs are up to in the European Parliament? Last week Philip Lardner was suspended from the Conservative Party for writing that homosexuality was not “normal” – the official party line being that Lardner’s views had “no place in the modern Conservative party” and that they were…
UK Bureaucrats Cosy up to Tories
It’s a miserable day in Trento today. It’s cold, raining and the skies are overcast. But I’m still smiling, because the wife’s back with me in Italy after doing research for a couple of months at the University of Bath. David Cameron is also no doubt smiling today, because his party has possibly just dodged…
A Snapshot of Europe
Let’s take a snapshot of Europe as it is today. Imagine yourself as an eagle, high up in the clouds, your view obscured in all directions by swirls of pillowy fog. You can’t tell up from down, left from right, backwards from frontwards; gliding through an ocean of seething grey. Then… There! There – a…