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– being a compilation of instant, sometimes off-the-cuff reactions to the day-to-day Brexit saga ……   EU Parliament plenary approves post-Brexit visa waiver for UK nationals 04/04/2019 Update. The full European Parliament, with 502 votes to 81 and 29 abstentions, today backed the draft EU law exempting UK citizens from […]

Brussels 12/04/2019. ‘The Clock is Ticking’, a film by Belgian filmmaker Alain de Halleux, charts Brexit from Europe’s point of view. More precisely, it follows the Brexit process as seen from the standpoint of the EU officials charged with negotiating the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. To make the […]

Brussels, 05/04/2019. On Wedneday this week, 03/04/2019, the EU Parliament Civil Liberties committee (LIBE) passed a proposal for visa-free travel for UK citizens post-Brexit, regardless of any deal or no-deal decision in the UK Parliament. The proposal had already been endorsed on the Tuesday by the EU Council’s Committee of […]

    Thursday 15/03/2019 should have been a momentous day in the UK’s long-running Brexit saga. The third of three days of key Parliamentary votes, on how the UK withdraws from the European Union, was meant to determine if the political deadlock in the House of Commons and the country […]

Brussels, 08 February 2019. While Brussels politicos spent yet another day thrashing about the future form of Brexit amid today’s visit from British Prime Minister Theresa May, the EU Council quietly announced this week that it has reached preliminary agreement with the European Parliament on interoperable information systems in justice […]

Update, 10/12/2018, evening. It seems Prime Minister Theresa May decided to postpone the vote – no surprise there. What happens now is anybody’s guess. Brussels, 10/12/2018. Channel 4’s excellent ‘The Real Brexit Debate’ last night was thought provoking. Four UK Members of Parliament; James Cleverly, Barry Gardner, Jacob Rees-Mogg and […]

Brussels, 07/11/2018. My abiding image of the First World War is of the trenches. The fortifications that marked the front line between 1914 and 1918 spanned much of Europe, yet in Britain the strongest folk memories come from those in France and Belgium, the appalling carnage of the Somme and […]

      Oxford, 15/10/2018. I was musing on the consequences, mental as well as physical, of having an ‘off’ in the last few days. My incident happened last Saturday at dusk, when in a moment of lost concentration on a road I didn’t know, I failed to see a […]

Brussels, 09/10/2018. Europe’s pension savings gap remains dangerously large, exceeding €2 trillion a year, which is about equivalent to 13% of Europe’s GDP (Mind the Gap 2016, Aviva). This is by far the biggest financial issue facing EU citizens, their children and grandchildren, believes Better Finance in Brussels. With government […]

Brussels, 19/09/2018. It was at the Byline Festival in August 2018 that I first became acquainted with the term PACs, or Political Action Groups, when American journalist Caroline Orr discussed the baleful influence of so-called SuperPACs on the American democratic process. I had not heard the term before, though had […]

Oxford, Sept 2018. Overland Event at the end of August 2018, in Hill End camp near Oxford, was inspiring and mundane in equal proportions. Inspiring because it brought together the largest gathering of long-distance motorcycle travellers I have seen, and mundane because in other respects it was a normal, if […]