The Financial Times reports today that the team lead by Wim Kok, set up after the March economics summit, and charged with carrying out a review of the Lisbon process, is likely to find that we are badly behind schedule. This is hardly surprising since the Lisbon agenda was rather stronger on rhetorical nicety (including [...]

Looking pretty good.

Ohhhhhh, I can’t resist this. Anatole Kaletsky writing in the Times:
Turkey is likely to scupper the strongest argument in favour of ratifying the European constitution: the claim that voting rights among the EU member nations must be reformed to accommodate past and future enlargements. The fact is that, far from preparing the EU for the [...]

Whilst speculation abounds in the weblog world that Google is about to launch its own browser tchnology, more traditional media seem to be enthusing about the possibility of Google book search:
Google, beset by a growing number of competitors in the internet search business, will shortly unveil a number of new features to its own [...]

Ok, I’m feeling in a wicked mood today, so how about something really controversial (just for a change). It’s now as near to official as we’re going to get it that Sadam Hussein wasn’t making any serious advance towards the development of WMDs.
So, this being the case, what exactly is going on in Iraq?

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Amidst all the fanfare about negotiations opening on Turkey’s membership, we shouldn’t lose sight of other things that are in the pipeline. EU enlargement commissioner G?nter Verhuegen has just given Bulgaria and Romania the green light for a January 2007 target date.
?For the year 2007 we feel that accession may be appropriate and these [...]

?Europe? has not had a good press in recent years, coming under criticism for things as diverse as its moribund economy, its lack of military might, its squabbling governments or even the return of anti-semitism.

Read more… or Read more right here… »
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The European Commission has recommended that accession talks for Turkey should begin, but hasn’t laid out any dates for the process:
Commission officials are reporting on the progress Turkey has already made, along with Bulgaria and Romania.
The final decision on Turkey rests with the leaders of all 25 EU member states in December - with accession [...]

This post might not pass any seriousness test, yet when a friend sent me the photo below I could not help but feel that this clearly unindented design is a subconscious consequence of the embryonic German desire to actually look into the future and reap the benefits of the socio-economic changes (”Hartz IV”) as well [...]

The WorldChanging bloggers, who I should start reading, are celebrating their first anniversary. They’re running a bunch of guest posts to mark the occcasion.