Links 3 August 2010

Interesting piece by JohnJoe McFadden on the GM milk issue. I was particularly interested to read

As far as is known, no one has ever died or even got sick from eating GM food. Why are people so scared of GM ingredients, while cheerfully accepting far greater hazards?

This issue of risk perception is one I find really interesting. For example, all the people who started cycling after the 7/7  bombs. More than 3000 cyclists are killed or seriously injured every year on London’s roads. So the odds of getting killed are much higher going to work on a bike than on the Tube. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have made that decision, just that the psychology of decisions goes way beyond the rational choice I learnt about in my Public Policy lectures at LSE.

I loved this – just as I love courgettes…

In recent years courgettes have extended their repertoire to include round varieties and brilliant yellow “banana” courgettes. Such a clever vegetable – what’s not to love?

The Grahnlaw blog is examining the best of the Euroblogs this summer. He doesn’t follow me, so I’m not in contention (cough cough), but it is nonetheless 🙂 a discussion worth following.

EU geeks might want to check out the Business for New Europe paper on the case for a UK Sovereignty Bill, which concludes that

We consider that the maintenance of the status quo, with enhanced parliamentary scrutiny of EU matters, is the most constructive way forward.

We have lived through 25 years of EU treaty change and then all the uncertainty over the issue of British membership of the euro. We now have the prospect of a treaty-free decade, without all the parliamentary upheavals that parliamentary ratification entails. Our members would find it perverse and damaging for a Conservative / Liberal Democrat government, declared business-friendly to be adding uncertainty by opening up this particular can of worms.

And finally (as they say), this amazing set of photos which superimpose photos from World War Two on the same buildings and settings today.

Published by Antonia

I'm a British citizen and European Union offical, who lives in Brussels again after 6 years in London and 8 in Melbourne. I went to the London School of Economics and University of Melbourne. In 2008 I took part in the Eisenhower Fellowship Multination Programme, the subject of 3 of my blogs. You can find me on Twitter as @antoniam or on Mastodon as @antoniam@mastodon.scot

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