I can share @demsoc.org's bank account details for any enthusiastic donors...
Working to make European democracy work. "Refreshingly free of the usual platitudes". Belge par choix, Brits door opvoeding, Polish roots. President of Demsoc.org
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I can share @demsoc.org's bank account details for any enthusiastic donors...
The trouble is that these issues all strike much closer to the centre of political power, and are also much less easy spaces to define success. There is a lot of innovation going on though, but it's not at the scale of the money going into tech and defence innovation, more's the pity.
It's impossible to justify that so much money should go on science & technology breakthroughs & nothing to the equivalents in the social field geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/an-aria-fo...
Need to add the Duchy of Lorraine and Bar (if we're counting Leszczynski)
True, plenty will come in from the Vlaamse Rand and of course I also live in a very Flemish wijk, wife works for the Vlaamse Overheid, I'm not in a "normal" situation
It’s an odd thing but it feels like there is more Dutch/Flemish spoken even as the city becomes more multilingual. I do live in the Pentagon, and near Dansaert too, but still….
Ha, I was in a café in Oud-Zuid last week and was pleasantly surprised when I got served in Dutch.
And French is the voertaal - but I do think half the country shouldn't be forced to speak a foreign language when they come to their capital city...
www.demorgen.be/snelnieuws/b...
Link or it didn’t happen.
Oh it will. Ten to fifteen years and I’ll bet you a British euro on it.
Brilliant lads, we're getting roasted for not being normal about flags by the Northern Irish
Here’s the story. But sure, government institutions should communicate via a site whose algo this guy 100% controls. “Belgen het land uit?” Elon Musk mengt zich in discussie over uitspraak van Molenbeekse schepen vrtnws.be/p.xZpVwOk5l
He did the same here today. Boosting a misleading video of a headscarf-wearing deputy mayor replying to racist comments by saying « if they don’t like people like me in Molenbeek there 18 other communes in the city, they can sod off » and pretending it was her ordering « Belgians to leave Belgium ».
One bit of cultural historiography is that everyone up to and including Peter Mansbridge uses the phrase “said the quiet part out loud” to describe Parizeau’s speech, a turn of phrase coined/popularized by a Simpsons episode first broadcast six months previously
I agree but my concern is that in 1934 people would have said « no one will accept huge numbers of Jews from Germany » and also have been right.
I assumed the Gaza Riviera stuff was dead, but apparently not. « Voluntary » relocation of Gazaouis, then a ten year Mandate … sorry, Trust to manage construction of a resort and six « digital towns » for returning Gazaouis. Hallucinatory. www.lesoir.be/696224/artic...
Ga eens op zaterdag door het centrum van Rotterdam lopen, zei Wilders. Ok.
Absolute disaster from #Anderlecht for the second time this week, two red cards and looking like a loss to the local rivals. Something to savour during the international break when I assume we will see the back of Hasi, not before time. #rsca
People need to get off social media, it's not doing anyone any good.
Like the shingles virus
They can hibernate in small circulation journals and earnest websites for many years, undetected by most.
A period of silence on their part is welcome, and the longer it is the better I’ll like it.
The hypocrisy of claiming (to certain audiences) that leaving the EU would allow the UK to be more welcoming to immigrants from outside Europe is also easier to explain as « a lie use as a smokescreen for their racism » than « an honest belief that in nine years has become « expel them all ».
So many leading Brexit voices have gone full racist and fascist that it’s hard to believe in « elite radicalisation » and a lot easier to believe in « finally saying what they always thought ».
"Most existing capability gaps...should be filled by European nations, whose forces must be capable of responding to crises without immediate U.S. assistance." European strategic autonomy is also what's best for Europe. Worth reading 👇 @emmamashford.bsky.social foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/22/u...
Good that Sunder is commenting on #flegs discourse, bad that there is #flegs discourse.
I was living in South Ken at the time. Very strange experience, but I think the florist outside the tube must have retired on the proceeds.
My latest article ‘Democracy Manifest? Ensuring the EU Legislature’s Democratic Legitimacy in the Face of National-Level Autocratisation’ has just been published online and open access in European Papers: www.europeanpapers.eu/en/system/fi...
Beware of any politician doing this. It’s a major red flag of the most cynical political opportunism, weaponization of lies & misinformation, and manipulation of some consultant’s idea of a “wedge issue.” It would waste public money, risk or even cost lives, weaken the city, make traffic worse, etc.
Yup on the Tuesday. Need to hold off for a bit to find out if the project needs me in Denver or Pueblo then.
And the last Colorado Rapids soccer game of the season is the week before. Ah well.
Work is taking me for Denver for a week in October and I briefly thought about attending a Broncos game, even though I don’t really understand American football - until I saw it would cost me more than the outbound flight (350€).
Thanks.
I am regularly in Brighton (and lived there for ten years). Where was it?
Europeans should also have their eyes open about the dismantling of the EU and the rule of law in Europe. Less brazen and noisy than in Trump’s America, but equally dangerous. Maybe even more so, as it attracts less attention. Are we sleepwalking into disaster again?
As in Bourdieu, consecrations also consecrate the consecrator (the Nobel Prize brings honour to the Swedish academy as well as recipients). Here, the desecration of the military funeral desecrates all military honours, and desecrates the power of the military to give honour. Only the Leader remains
Trump world does not want to honour Babbitt. It wants to dishonour military funerals in the same way it dishonoured the Congressional Medal of honour. No consecrated things can exist, no alternative sources of respect of authority, other than the Leader’s decision.
Interestingly most of these are « things I have realised are better in Belgium than in England » having made the journey in the opposite direction (bar a wrong turn at Lille Europe) ten years ago. Except 5, which I knew thanks to the outrage of @dzyrl.bsky.social’s Belgian aunt many years ago.
After doing your own research, I hope.
Nationalism is war, at personal, community, state and international level.
There was someone beaten half to death in the middle of the night outside our building in central Brussels and I think it made 0 news even locally. The only reason I know about it is that the police asked the Comité of our building to check if anyone had seen anything.
Hmm ok then. Not that.
Je hou van it!
Freshers’ week at the local medical school? (always lots of fake blood outside the Royal London at that time of year)
Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”
I’m enjoying the flashbacks to « Weekend At Berdy’s » foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/21/w...
regardless of what happens to the tariffs, they're doomed from the start because the average conservative holds all three of these positions at once: — virtue signals about supporting US manufacturing — against increasing the minimum wage — buys foreign imports because they're cheap
Belatedly saw the third of Quentin Dupieux’s set of films about performance « L’Accident du Piano », starring Adèle Exarchopoulos as a conscience-free social media influencer. I liked it much better than the second (Deuxième Acte) - so now I need to go and watch the first, Daaaaalí!
United Kingdom *and* Northern Ireland? (And no Belgium 🇧🇪 😢
Isn't it social/cultural on both left and right these days? Climate change is shifting from an economic policy issue to a culture war, for instance. There are obviously divides between right and left but much harder to be clear about (triple lock handouts, welfare cuts)
Trump world - obsessed with killing kids, also with people having more kids.
It was so early that I wondered if some likely lads had broken onto the site and hotwired the machinery. But no.
Doesn't it, particularly when the rules don't allow them to start till 07h00...
If I take anything positive out of this at all, it is that once again they have nothing but « stop, go back, don’t change » and that is an untenable position. It can hold for a while but it will be defeated by reality in the end.
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
Woken at 03h38 by the roadworks outside my house starting. Not quite the Friday feeling I was hoping for.
It’s increasingly obvious fascism. Is what it is.
Well that was terrible from #Anderlecht across three matches. Terrible, dull, unimaginative football. Pathetic. Spineless. It’s going to be a grim grim season.
Horst Wessel.
No 😢
Yes I can imagine. I work in a team of three and one of the others is a Union season ticket holder. But kind hearted thankfully.
I sense a grim season ahead.
Hasi has to go. This is embarrassing from #Anderlecht again. What a terrible choice he was, the whole direction has blotted its copybook. #rsca
Is there a lower sort of rat that the rat who rats on his principles so he can harm the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world?
Their first mistake was appointing 1991 Arsène Wenger to the role. A great manager but not the right skill set.
Apparently the E40 is because it ends at the eastern border of Kazakhstan (at a town called Ridder, named after the Russo-German soldier who discovered mineral deposits there)
Car park viewing bench.
Two days in a row now seeing social media ads (Insta and FB) with AI-faked "news" reports with a scam financial offer, one featuring former PM Alexander De Croo, the other with @vrtnws.be anchor Riadh Bahri. The offer itself is very clearly a scam, but the visuals are disturbingly impressive.
I hope that we can get some Guardian reporting about Sunderland-supporting plumber apprentices spending a day around Islington coffee shops, just really listening to their fears and concerns for a change.
Waarom benoemt NRC niet dat er talloze rechtsextremisten (waaronder de Nederlandse neonazi's van WLM) aanwezig waren? Ze interviewen Gaetan Claeys van NSV, waar bijvoorbeeld rechtsextremist Martin Sellner vaker heeft mogen aanschuiven ( Zie bv: www.hln.be/binnenland/p...)
The E-road network always feels very European. It’s across all of Europe so the E40 I take from Brussels to Leuven to watch hockey is the same E40 I used to take from Borispol airport into Kyiv (and hope to take again soon).
I can still remember endless homework help delivered on the Quérelle des Investitures which made me think « oh, right of course » about Henry VIII and his VIII wives.
My two found it immensely dull but there is something to be said for the system at their (🇧🇪) school which started with Greeks at the start of year seven and got to the independence of the Congo at the end of year 13, history being compulsory throughout.
Then same again with the wrong foot. Then blindfolded.
I can assure you all of a warm welcome in the Burgundian Netherlands while Witchfinder General Goodwin goes on the rampage.
Listening to the UK Europe minister calmly saying that drawing closer to the EU might reduce red tape for businesses. Goodness me! Might it? Is this perhaps why the EEC was created in the first place?! Why has no one ever told the British public this before?
It’s just terrible.
But for a lot I think it’s like the English under Johnson saying « we have never had a populist government because we are better than the continentals » - assumed superiority blinding them to reality
Funnily enough was just talking to an American partner org and (at least for them) the answer is yes.
Nederlander kakt in eigen luier en vindt dat het vervolgens wel heel erg stinkt. En kakt in oktober vervolgens weer in eigen luier. Waanzinnig Land.
Just saw this. Feels like a lot of the things I’ve made over the years are fading away. Which is okay in some ways; everything is temporary. But I hope people will be thoughtful in these transitions and respect people’s creations.
Profoundly important from @davidallengreen.bsky.social. The lack of meaningful restraints against executing power in our system leaves us utterly exposed in the face of a Reform government. They could do whatever they want. open.substack.com/pub/emptycit...
My mother (*1935) was outraged her whole life that Birmingham stopped being in Warwickshire. The oddest one was when I was a civil servant and got a letter calling for Ted Heath (at that time still alive) to be hanged for treason for moving Monmouthshire into Wales.
You use the equivalent phrase in Dutch "onder de kerktoren"
Let me tell you about growing up in the six Towns of Stoke On Trent and their absolute enmity towards each other. And their collective and reciprocated enmity for Newcastle Under Lyme.
We once did a participatory budgeting project based on ward-level data and two villages in Sussex (in the same local government ward) insisted on us splitting their data out separately because they hated each other so much and didn't want to cooperate on spending the money we were allocating.
I think it's quite common for referendums on mergers of communes here to be rejected for the same reason.
Even in the era of the Empire it wasn’t a big deal for most.
I've been looking gloomily at how much my family and my company's tech is embedded with US companies, largely Apple.
In the Belgian example he got to be king again a few days later. But I don’t know how it would work in the UK. www.latimes.com/archives/la-...
(Obviously abortion is a huge issue but it was a less significant constitutional blockage)
Happened in Belgium over something much less (temporary abdication to allow a Regency Council to sign an abortion law that the Catholic king of the time had moral objection to).
Yeah I’ve talked to Belgian friends who saw King Boudewijn’s death in 1990 after 40 years as a real milestone.
I was thinking about that the other day and I don’t think there are many 70-year spans in England that wouldn’t give you a sense of radical change at one level (civil wars etc) but yes urbanism was a big moment of acceleration.
I’m sure the Taliban would be delighted to be paid to have their political opponents delivered to them. Perhaps we can arrange to have them delivered direct to the torture cells, or do a buy five get a bone saw free deal.
I also agree that the modern world is very confusing if you have low capacity to deal with stuff (for whatever reason), it’s something I think about in our work on democracy a lot.
How much is it an age thing though. I do notice people of my age (mid-Gen-X) starting to take on some quite “it was better in the old days” mindsets. They didn’t have the post war employment boom to remember, but culturally some are becoming very « c’était mieux avant »