The General Election is the 6th of May. I should be out and about in Bath and North East Somerset campaigning like (I hope) my friends are. Instead, I’m in Spain. I keep reminding people, to their surprise, that I study languages, not politics. Amazingly, students of politics are the least politically engaged people I [...]
The Labour Party last week launched an interesting social media experiment. (Tories in the audience will now be yelling “Because you have no money!”) The idea was to let ordinary members create a poster for billboards, as the Tories attempts from high-up ad companies were getting hammered on the internets with their three campaigns ruthlessly [...]
On Sunday night, I received the results to Round 1 of the by-election. They make for interesting reading! I had to deal with it in an Excel spreadsheet and figure out who was who, but YOU get this nice handy chart: So, there are a number of interesting conclusions I draw from this. (Note the French [...]
As voters in Pasteur, Cimiez and Libération vote in the first round of the by-election for Nice 6, I’ll take you through the choice they face. There are 11 candidates in total from the extreme left all the way to the extreme right. The two winners from today will go through to round 2 next Sunday. [...]
On Sunday, habitants of the 6th canton (district of a town) of Nice will go to the polls to elect a new Conseiller Général (It’s kind of like a Local Councillor). This is a by-election, after the elected UMP candidate was disqualified for breaking the rules on funding. The area in question is Nice 6, [...]
Today I embarked on the first of the international political practice of leafleting and petition signing. I’ve thus been getting involved in the campaign against the construction of line 2 for trams on the Promenade des Anglais, which is the long walkway and road that goes along the front of the sea and, of course, [...]
We’ll kick off EuropeWeek with the biggest topic in British-European policy; The Lisbon Treaty. Let’s look at how it’s been handled rather than what it entails; we’ll save that one for later. In 2004, the European Union underwent a “Big Bang” enlargement and added 10 Eastern European countries to its membership list. Meanwhile, the Convention [...]
Welcome to EuropeWeek! In the final run-up to the elections to the European Parliament, I’m going to be blogging mainly on the topic of Europe. I’ve decided to launch my own little campaign because in Britain, at least, the debate over Europe is farcical at best and dangerous at worst. Hopefully, this website can become [...]
The following generated quite a bit of controversy, which I don’t really understand. (Why go into politics if you can’t handle some constructive criticism?) Nevertheless, I’ve decided to exercise my right to freedom of expression and repost my analysis. Unfortunately, it is probably too late for the candidates to use my feedback to their advantage. My final [...]
