Horrifically busy in the real world, hence the longest break in blogging on this site in more than six years. I am, however, still commenting away about the EU (among other things) in 140 characters or less on Twitter on a daily basis – that’s the best place to find me these days. You can get an RSS feed of my Twitter ramblings here – just be warned that it’s not all politics related, some of it’s personal, some of it’s very silly, and some of it’s very sweary.

Twitter has a wonderful ability to suddenly introduce you to new people – a 140 character limit meaning that you can read hundreds of different people’s opinions every day in a way that simply isn’t possible in long-form. If also means I’ve been coming across more ridiculous nonsense than I have in several years, as I keep getting alerted to stories and blog posts from sources I’d never normally come across by myself.

When these are EU-related, they’re normally incredibly familiar – the usual stories that get repeated year after year. Having, as I do, fairly extensive archives, I keep finding myself using old posts to rebut “new” stories – be it over the EU budget, the EU’s role in guaranteeing British freedom, the concept of an EU superstate. Along the way, I’ve got into arguments with anti-EU campaigners from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Bruges Group, OpenEurope and more.

It’s all great fun. A bit like blogging in the good old days, when I actually had time to read and comment on other blogs.

Having said that, I’m planning to start blogging again soon. I’m writing less and less in the day job these days (unless you count innumerable emails, Powerpoint presentations and planning documents), and am starting to get rusty.

There’s still a question of precisely what to write *about*, though. I’ve covered many of the broad EU issues – often several times. I have no time for party politics or the “personalities” of the Brussels bubble (something I’ve never been a part of anyway). I usually haven’t got the time – or expertise – for detailed policy analysis. And as entertaining as arguing with eurosceptics can be on Twitter, I prefer to keep the blog for considered argument and polite debate – turning the focus back to pointing out the flaws of eurosceptic arguments tends to attract the kind of responses I have no interest in dealing with.

And in any case, these days there are plenty of other EU bloggers to do that sort of thing – you can find them via Bloggingportal. (I remember when this here EUblogosphere were all fields – just me, EU Referendum (sadly increasingly shrill in its anti-EU vehemence these days), A Fistful of Euros, and a handful of others, now long since departed.)

So, back properly soon. Hopefully. At which point I’ll hopefully also find time to give this place a spring clean – some of the site’s code has broken, and a redesign is long overdue to make the text more readable. The only trouble is I’ve lost my FTP details, so can’t get in to change anything…

Details here. I’ve been named the UK finalist in the internet section for my June 2009 post on the percentage of UK laws that come from the EU (also published on Liberal Conspiracy and BlogActiv).

From the announcement:

“An article on the percentage of our laws originating in the EU got the UK nomination for the internet section. The judging panel found James Clive-Matthews’ EUtopia blog overall very entertaining, but selected this entry for its attempt to clarify how the arguments used to make claims about the influence of EU legislation often take original quotes out of context. EUtopia does not draw any conclusions, but lays out the context for the various claims and counter-claims, as such helping to clarify what is often a contentious issue.”

Which is nice.

I would also like to state for the record that nothing I have written on this blog has ever been published with the hope of securing money. It’s all just for my ego – not for anyone else’s, and certainly never to support any political institution or ideology (except on the very rare occasions that I feel that such support is warranted).

So although I find (UKIP press officer) Gawain’s old description of this as the European sycophancy prize amusing, I’d dispute it. Because any blogger/journalist willing to spew out rubbish that they don’t believe in the hope of sucking up to the powerful is never going to be worth reading anyway – and no amount of prixe money will ever alter that.

On a related note: For a more detailed analysis of the percentage of UK laws that come from the EU, check out this detailed report into the subject (PDF). Fascinating stuff – and also tends to support my own vague conclusions.

Insanely busy in the real world, is all. I even missed this place’s 7th birthday…

If you want to find a bit more EU-related commentary in the meantime, your first port of call should be Bloggingportal.eu – a handy aggregator of 500+ EU-related blogs, with some of the best posts highlighted daily.

If that doesn’t sate your appetite for the most insanely complex political system ever conceived, you could also head over to the Nosemonkey’s EUtopia Netvibes Universe, where there’s a whole bunch more EU-related topical stuff.

If you’re really desperate for Nosemonkey-related commentary, you could also try following me on Twitter – though be warned that on Twitter it’s not all EU-related, I tend to be rather more sweary and rage-filled, and there’s also a number of digressions on London, life, movies, blogging, UK politics and the general idiocy of our fellow man.

I should be back and blogging at some point. Whether it’s soon or not it’s too early to say… (I do have a fascinating post planned on the balance of trade at some point, though…)

Forgot all about this, as the interview was originally conducted back in October, but it’s in the latest issue of Shift Mag, which focusses on Euroscepticism. Have a gander at the whole lot here or, below the fold, check out my responses to the following:

1. In the blog nosemonkey, you explain your political views. How have you passed from being a small -“C” conservative and entirely anti-EU to a small -“L” liberal and largely pro-EU?

2.According to you, what are the main shortcomings of the eurosceptic group?

3. Do you think eurosceptics could weigh up in EU decisions if people took them more seriously?

4. Five good reasons to be Eurosceptic and Five good reasons to be Pro- European in Europe today?

5. With the adhesion request of Island, with the “NO-YES” referendum in Ireland, a new phenomenon seems to emerge: “EUR-OPPORTUNISM”. Will it be the strongest cement of European Union for the future? And maybe the sworn enemy of Europe as identity ? What’s your opinion?

6. In your blog, you say you are more in favour of the idea of the EU than the current reality. Can you explain?

7. How can the EU get more legitimacy amongst EU citizens?

Please note, these answers were given a few months ago now, so my views may well have changed… I’ve highlighted a few key points in bold on a quick skim through, though – it’s a long one. The last bit in particular, though, is worth a read, if I do say so myself…
Continue Reading

So, it’s looking like it’s lightweight, little-known Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy for the President of the European Council, and lightweight, little-known Baroness Ashton (current UK European Commissioner, Peter Mandelson’s almost invisible replacement) for the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Two no-marks, for two jobs that many have claimed are among the most powerful in the world.

Does anyone seriously believe that Van Rompuy has what it takes to impose his will over the likes of Sarkozy, Merkel and Berlusconi in Council meetings?

Does anyone seriously believe that *anyone* is going to take Baroness Ashton seriously, a woman who’s been at the Commission for only a year, and was unqualified even for that? (See also…)

The Presidency of the European Council has been described by many as “President of the EU”, with many imagining that because of this its holder will have powers akin to that of the US President.

The High Representative for Foreign Affairs has likewise been talked up as “EU Foreign Minister”, meaning many take it to be akin to the US Secretary of State.

But where America gets Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, we get Andy Pandy and Looby Loo.

Yet more proof of where the real power lies in the EU: Not in EU institutions or the corridors of Brussels, but with the governments of the member states. For it is the heads of the member state governments who have agreed this pair of no-marks – and the only explanation I can think of is that the governments of the member states want these two new roles to be as powerless and unimportant as possible, so as to maintain their own power.

So much for the Lisbon Treaty ushering in the end of national sovereignty and the dawn of an EU superstate. With these two appointments, the EU has been effectively neutered as a state-like world power. Eurosceptics can rest easy in their beds.

Update: See also initial reactions from Julien Frisch (“a massive disgrace”) and Jon Worth (“I am astounded”)

All kinds of real-world excitement of late, including some very good news on the job front just this morning, has kept me off blogging for a bit.

However, I’ve been informed that if anyone fancied leaving comments in support of what I’ve been doing online with this blog and elsewhere over the last few years over at the EurActiv Awards site, then I’ll have a better chance of winning something or other.

And while I’m blegging support, you may also fancy putting in a positive comment or two to my suggestion to the excellent public-spirited chaps at MySociety that they develop an EU version of the invaluable democratic-accountability-boosting website TheyWorkForYou. This could do more for EU accountability than any number of actual Commission initiatives in one swoop – without any kind of public funding – and so should be in the interest of anyone who wants more EU transparency, both europhiles and eurosceptics alike.

I’ve been a bit quiet over the last few weeks, largely thanks to the real world getting in the way.

One of the major projects I’ve been working on, however, is now in a pre-launch beta phase, and so can be officially revealed: Ideas on Europe – a new group blog that I’ve been developing in partnership with UACES, the University Association for Contemporary University Studies.

Describing itself as a place for “informed analysis, comment, dialogue and debate on all things European”, Ideas on Europe is intended as a non-partisan, multi-national, not exclusively political portal for academics working in the field of European Studies – taking in politics, economics, history, sociology, public policy, culture, geography and more – to engage with those of us outside the ivory towers as well as those within.

At the moment we’ve got nearly 40 contributors on board – a number that’s set to rise considerably – ranging from postgrad students to named chairs at high-profile universities. Some of them have begun to make their first forays into blogging, with posts from Jaani Kaerne (from the University of Tartu in Estonia), EUoplocephalus (from the University of Surrey in the UK), and (in German) Vanessa Buth – as well as a few from me – leading the way.

Among even this initial contributor base, there is a broad range of expertise and experience – with blogs dedicated to subjects like welfare, migration, security, energy, north Africa, and education, as well as more generalist contributors. Now that the site is going public, we should start to see a bit more activity from these early adopters.

Many of the areas we aim to end up covering are currently sorely under-represented in the world of Euroblogging – not to mention the relative lack of academic contributors to the various online debates, most of which are currently dominated by a combination of enthusiastic amateurs and professional political types – so I very much hope that those of us who’ve been active in this section of the internet give the site and its contributors our support, encouragement and advice as it starts to get off the ground over the next few months. Not least because the vast majority of our contributors have never blogged before – nor, indeed, taken part in online discussions.

I’ve already answered some questions about Ideas on Europe’s aims and intentions over at Kosmopolito (which now has its own presence on the new site) and also at Blogactiv, but naturally enough, I’m happy to answer any more that anyone may have here.

Jon Stewart’s take on the European Parliament is, it must be said, pretty much spot on…

A European elections follow-up from me, over at the Guardian.

For those that missed the Twitter heads-up, I was back on BBC World News Today last night discussing the European election results. The programme itself can be watched on the BBC’s iPlayer here for a short while – the segment I’m featured in starts around 17 mins and 29 secs in – and I’m working on getting an alternative version up for non-UK types, which I’ll add as an update to this post as and when I can.

Update: Below the fold – an alternate video source for international readers.
Continue Reading

Check me out – BBC World News Today earlier (broadcast c.7pm UK time on BBC4 and BBC World), discussing the EU Elections – I’m a regular media whore.

If you’re based in the UK, you can get my slightly nervous pearls of off-the-cuff wisdom (and check out the unflattering profile view) here for the next week or so. It’s on the BBC’s iPlayer, so non-UK Nosemonkey-watchers are out of luck, I’m afraid. (Unless you happen to know the dark arts of setting up UK proxy servers to get around the geographic block, that is. *ahem*)

Websites name-dropped for finding out more about how to come up with a considered vote were EUprofiler.eu and VoteMatch.eu – both very much worth checking out.

I’ll be back discussing the result a week on Monday, by the sound of things.

Update: Below the fold, my handsome visage. (I need to lose some weight…) And – for I don’t know how long – a non-geographically-specific video thingie
Continue Reading

The perils of being a freelance writer/editor/sub in the current economic climate have finally started to hit home, and as from May I’m set to be about £1.5k a month down on my current earnings – not a nice situation for anyone, I’m sure you’ll agree.

As such, I’m actively on the lookout for new gigs: Writing, editing, sub-editing, in print or online, on pretty much any subject-matter – I have worked professionally on everything from book reviews for the academically-inclined Times Literary Supplement to write-ups of Big Brother, with a strong background in film and travel, and specialise in structural editing, fast but accurate subbing* and translating content from print to the web.

I have a good ten years’ professional experience across print and the web, ranging from large-circulation glossy consumer magazines through ISP portals with several million visits a day, and am competent in Photoshop, Quark, InDesign, and across a range of content management systems.

Companies worked for include AOL UK, Archant, BBC Worldwide, Gibson Square Books, Haymarket, the House of Commons, the Law Society, News International, openDemocracy, Pageant Media, Publicis-Blueprint, Virgin Publishing and Visual Imagination.

Publications my work has appeared in include The Belfast Telegraph, The Big Issue, Britain magazine, The Camden New Journal, The Dublin Informer, The Ham & High, The English Garden, Heritage, Heritage Cities Planner, The Irish News, London Planner, The Manchester Evening News, The Metro, Pink News, The Press Gazette, Realm, The South London Press, Starburst, The Sunday Telegraph, Wales on Sunday, The Western Daily Press, and The Yorkshire Post.

A basic CV can be found here for those that may be interested, and references can be sourced on request.

If anyone has anything coming up that I may be able to help out on, please do get in touch via nosemonkey [@] gmail.com or info [@] jcm.org.uk – I can offer competitive rates, and all offers will be gratefully considered. (I also have a tendency to be far too honest and am a bit of a perfectionist, so I won’t take anything on if I don’t think I can do a good job.)

Bleg ends. Normal service (or lack thereof) will resume shortly…

* Note: My professional subbing/editing skills may not be too apparent on this blog, as most posts are first drafts. I’m not getting paid for it, you see…

I’ve been asked to give this a plug – the deadline’s 31st May, the age limit is 17-35, and the prize (of which there is one for every EU member state) is a trip to Berlin in August/September (just in time for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall). Over to the PR guy:

Applicants can write an article with their views on EU Enlargement and submit it on our website – it does not have to be long, it can be much less than the maximum 2,000 words. It can also be about Europhobia, we don’t mind! I am hoping that some of your members/writers might be able to share their views! Would it be possible to contact some of your writers or friends to let them know about the event? All national winners will be given an all expenses paid trip to Berlin where they can partake in an exciting conference with EU officials and the other international winners.

I’m not sure that there has ever been such a thing as an “exciting” conference with EU officials, but still. Berlin’s meant to be fun (I’ve still never been – perhaps I should enter…), so why not, eh?

And I missed its birthday thanks to, well, being in a bit of a blogging lull at the moment.

Anyway, 5th March 2003: that’s when I started this place – on a basic Blogspot account with a standard template, long before such wonders as WordPress existed and handy tools like RSS feeds and trackbacks had become widespread, and at a time when I wasn’t aware of a single other political blog (though I must have been aware that they existed, as I remember feeling that 2003 was far too late to get into this blogging game to hope to have any kind of impact).

The first post (with most of the links now broken, as that was in the days when few sites gave their articles permanent URLs) can be found here. The first paragraph ever written on this blog – surprisingly – still largely stands:

This blog will contain the musings of a one-time Eurosceptic turned pro-European. Turned largely by the inanity of the innumerable Eurosceptic rantings. However, there will be few cases of rampant Europhilia – the zeal of the convert has not overwhelmed me. The arguments will be mostly balanced, and stupid claims from both sides will be equally vilified.

And now for the next six years – hopefully full of the long-promised increase of articles providing historical context to current debates, as well as some of the same old stuff.

The trouble is, you see, that the EU hasn’t progressed AT ALL in the six years I’ve been writing about it. I’ve been over all the arguments countless times, and they’re all still the same. Take this post from November 2004, for example. It covers all the bases: the EU’s identity crisis post-Cold War and enlargement and Europe’s role in the world, eurosceptics sniping from the sidelines, the fall-out from the Iraq war’s impact on EU-US relations, Britain’s relationship with both, the EU Constitution (that (d)evolved into the Lisbon Treaty) and the need for major EU reform. Go through the archives, there’s scores of similar posts, many of which could have been written last week – or at any point in the last decade, so little has the EU progressed since the run-up to the Treaty of Nice back in the late 1990s.

Little wonder, then, that I’m finding it hard to drum up much enthusiasm at the moment – but genuine wonder that I’ve managed to stick it out for so long. After all, as I’ve repeatedly noted over the years, if the EU could be summed up with one handy phrase it would be this: incomprehensible and boring as hell.

“A week is a long time in politics”, they say. Not when it comes to the EU, it’s not. Hell, the last decade has seen so little progress, ten years may as well have been a week.