European Political News

The Thunderdragon’s “We The People” column this week is about the EU Referendum (or lack thereof). He posts on a Thursday evening every couple of weeks, a time which has a habit of missing most of the visitors - so we are starting to put a plug in on Friday morning. Tags: Thunderdragon, We The People

As the news informs us that MPs have decided not to allow us a democratic vote on the Lisbon Treaty… The European Union and related issues is a topic that causes great schisms across most parties, one that is usually widest across the Conservative party, but recently it is the Lib Dems who have been most split by it, primarily over what we should have a referendum on, the “Libson Treaty” or EU membership itself. Referendums and Democracy Referendums are a form of direct democracy, whereby we the people answer a yes-or-no question on a subject of importance. In some countries, such as Switzerland, referendums are standard events. In others, such as here in the UK, they really aren’t. After all, we have had only one referendum ever. Which just happened to be on entry to what is now the EU. Referendums are important events, no matter how often they are carried out, and just become even more important the rarer they are. After all, the last referendum decided that we would be members of the Common Market, which has become the EU without we the people getting another vote. Even though the last vote was held a decade before I was even born. (more…)

Back in early December I posted a run-down of the list of weekly columns on the Wardman Wire, using the excuse that the site “has been a bit of a building site recently with a lot of changes”. I’m pleased to say that the move from a personal political blog to a site with a wider team of writers is nearly complete - so there may be a bit more stability round here for the next few months (at least in terms of who is writing). This is an extra Blog Platform column to map out where we are and where we may be going. What Happens each Week I’m doing a rundown by day this time. There’s more to say, but I’ll keep this post as short as I can manage. Now that the rate of change on the blog is slowing down (at least in terms of new and guest writers), I’ll see if I can be more reliable at making sure that things appear on the right day. Our practice is - with one or two exceptions - to publish the column each day at 11:00am, to give time for the article to hit the RSS feed in time for the lunch break. Then nothing else appears until perhaps 4pm. As ever, the best way not to miss anything is to subscribe to our RSS feed. Nearly Every day “The Daily Roundup” is currently a roundup of 10 or a dozen newspaper stories designed to provide “blog fodder” for our readers. It focuses on interesting and occasionally unusual stories. On good days it is published around 1am; on not quite so good days with breakfast or a little later. As you can see from the podcast player in the sidebar, we experimented with a daily podcast - I hope to take that forward, but I’m thinking about a practical approach. The “Morning Funny” (which needs a better name) is a cartoon or joke which appears at the start of the day - usually at around 9:00am. There are agreements in place with 5 or 6 different cartoonists to reproduce their work, and I sometimes re-recycle a joke from the Adam Smith Institute Jokester; make that “used to re-recycle” - he has retired. Monday “The Day Job” is about what bloggers do when they are not blogging. I have only done one of these, and intend to increase the frequency. Tuesday “Politics Decoded” is Garbos weekly political comment column - running for 6 months now. Garbo publishes his “bon mots” before lunch on a Tuesday with the reliability of Mr Gordon asking Mr Cameron questions at PMQs instead of answering them. (more…)