Concrete Achievements

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  • Early morning Leeds. Heading to Florence by rail for an event tomorrow.

    Early morning Leeds. Heading to Florence by rail for an event tomorrow. A little bit of #CrossBorderRail that would make @jonworth proud.

    Quick change act.

    Paris sous la pluie.

    open.spotify.com/track/3y2NiCSg…

    Dales this morning, Alps this afternoon. Delayed but still on time for my connection in Turin #CrossBorderRail

    No longer on time for my train in Turin but being philosophical about it, and enjoying the view that one day* I won’t see because of the TAV

    * if I live to a ripe old age

    The last Italo was cheaper than a hotel in Milan …

  • Links from the week of 27 June 2022

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 20 June 2022

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 13 June 2022

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Brits defending the ECHR are in a tough spot.

    Brits defending the ECHR are in a tough spot. A lot of the distinction-drawing between the EU and ECHR feels to me like “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”. People see the CoE and EU institutions as part of a general European setup.

    In most places the distinction doesn’t matter much. It’s only in the UK where the EU has been declared the enemy that it’s important to draw the distinction – but the same spirit of international collaborative rule making runs through both so they *feel* similar.

    This is why pro-HR Brits are in a tough spot and why – as @Samfr said the other day – if the UK Gov wanted to stoop so low as to run a “kick out foreign judges” campaign the field is well set up for them.

    The answer longer-term has to be getting the UK back to its essential identity as part of that European democratic and liberal community – but it’s going to be a hard road, and will need a big culture shift against exceptionalism.

    Until then, it’ll be constant rearguard actions to defend even the most basic of rights for those in the UK. Labour also needs to start laying the groundwork for that culture shift, which it won’t be able do by pretending there’s a “Better Brexit” out there. @labour4europe

  • Links from the week of 6 June 2022

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 30 May 2022

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • I am once again begging @Eurostar just to say that there is no wifi and the trains are…

    I am once again begging @Eurostar just to say that there is no wifi and the trains are Faraday cages, so no one ever tries to get anything done online from their trains.

    An hour trying to book an urgent onward ticket and maybe got to the payment page twice before the network connection failed. 🤯

    Realised I needed an onward ticket just after Lille. Just arriving at St Pancras now.

  • It’s very sobering reading and absolutely right.

    It’s very sobering reading and absolutely right. The PMOS lying to the press, very senior officials permitting a culture of rule-breaking. An unbelievable breach of the code, and I cannot understand how Case has not resigned. twitter.com/jdportes/statu…

    Trying to imagine Robin Butler or Richard Wilson allowing it. And it’s easy to say “not in my day” but this is of a piece with the wider Berlusconisation of the British state machinery. And even il Cavaliere didn’t have as much personal control as Johnson enjoys.

    The next government needs a plan (written now) for state reform.

  • I’m getting a bit weary of this sort of thing.

    I’m getting a bit weary of this sort of thing. Are there people in the FR, DE etc political systems who think this? Probably. Is that the official position of any of those countries? No. Are they objectively behaving in pro-Putin ways? No. twitter.com/anders_aslund/…

    A few misquotes out of context (as is pointed out in the replies) don’t mean France is pressuring Ukraine to surrender. Slow action from Germany is not great but not a sign that they want Russia to win (listen to scholz’s speech last night).

    And the country that is actually blocking things – Hungary – never gets a mention. It’s all the bad old Western Europeans. (Or, for Brexiteers, the evil EU undermining heroic British leadership).

    Maybe I’m wrong, maybe stuff is happening behind the scenes that we don’t know about. But I would expect that to be sourced better than a few viral misquotes, unsupported by countries’ actual actions.