2005

Just back from a trip outside the EU, to Norway as a matter of fact, to ask questions of a bunch of Chinese telecoms people who just put in the first US-type (CDMA-450, fact fans) network in Europe there. Sitting in Oslo airport, waiting for a colleague to rock up from Stockholm, the sweating hack-gaggle…

Back in late 1942, the British Army’s Bureau of Current Affairs prepared a guide for the soldiers who were about to move into Tunisia as the 1st Army landed in Operation TORCH and the 8th Army completed its march from Alamein. Thanks to the lads from ARRSE, we have some pages from it… You may…

This is deeply depressing. “Britain’s first hi-tech identity cards are being issued to London workers today, the Evening Standard can reveal. The cards, containing details of credit history, criminal records and immigration status, are being introduced to combat identity theft and illegal working. Hundreds of staff at City banks, blue chip companies and government departments…

As everyone probably knows by now, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is trying to call new elections after a cudgelling from the electors of Nordrhein-Westfalen. I say trying, because unlike in Britain he doesn’t have direct control over the dissolution of parliament, and he may have to arrange his own defeat in a vote of no-confidence.…

Richard North has answered my question, stating that neither he or Helen Szamuely has been paid for their efforts with the Bruges Group. However, EU Referendum Blog still doesn’t carry any disclosure of their association with the Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities (the European Parliament caucus that includes UKIP) or the Bruges…

Democracy is something we do. It’s not in the structures, but in the practice of democracy, that its benefits emerge. So, I’m kicking off a series of blog posts on how to be a democratic Europe. Or, if we want a more democratic EU, how we can do democracy in Europe. As a start, Nosemonkey…

In Vienna, they’ve started running freight over the tram system. The Wiener Linien, the public transport authority, runs perhaps the best system I’ve ever met (especially as they haven’t discovered the ticket barrier yet), including an intricate network of tramways carrying a variety of different trains that I’m not sick enough to detail. The plan,…

Richard Moderate, as opposed to Ken Moderate, has a brilliant post on liberalism and the Lib Dems. Needs reading.

Time for a little masturblogging, I think. I think it’s fair to say that the general election has been a real step forward in British blogging. It was the first time, really, that the UK blogosphere really functioned as such rather than as a collection of blogs orientated either towards Europe, or towards the US…

The “Matador of Tumbledown” post from last weekend got quite a bit of attention, which is all good, and at least none of it came from bemedalled veteran Jocks claiming I’d misrepresented them completely and in fact it was a barrel of laughs. I’m just going to do a small return to it, and apply…