London Met Univserity, the UKBA and foreign students

LMU

This has absolutely nothing to do with Ukraine, unless you happen to be a now hapless Ukrainian student who thought they were going to study at London Metropolitan University. The UKBA has revoked the London Metropolitan University license to educate non-EU students with immediate effect. Fair enough, if the university is so terribly poor at […]

Boxing Clever? – Klitschko’s UDAR Party

Before I start, it is necessary to raise the issue of Ales Bialiatski, human rights campaigner in Belarus who has been in jail for exactly 1 year to the day for - being a human rights campaigner - and is still nowhere near seeing a trial for being a human rights campaigner.  Enough!  Let him […]

Ukrainian election advertising & Twitter

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For some quite unknown reason, I have recently taken to commenting about the electioneering adverts of various contenders in the forthcoming  Ukrainian parliamentary October elections on twitter.  To my surprise it has been quite popular and subjected to numerous retweets on occasion. That said I can be quite cynical as this tweet about the Communist […]

The trials and tribulations of being an independent TV station in Ukraine

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Normally I stay away from the headline news in Ukraine, quite simply because you can read about that in other places, albeit I wouldn’t guarantee the objectivity, accuracy or unbiasedness of the reporting in those places necessarily. Like so many foundational pillars of society in Ukraine, the media here also too often sets low standards […]

Beware of those citing polls - Ukrainian elections 2012

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The Ukrainian parliamentary election campaigning begins officially in about 10 days time as the 90 day period prior to election day rapidly approaches. If you live in Ukraine, you would naturally be forgiven for thinking it had started prior to Euro 2012 as far as some candidates are concerned, as I have mentioned before. The […]

Review - New Europe, Old Problems - New Eastern Europe, Summer Edition 2012

Occasionally I get asked to review matters relating to Eastern Europe (normally specific to Ukraine) or write about them (sometimes for money) for specific clients on specific subjects.  It is always a pleasure to do both and be involved with Ukraine and its neighbourhood in any guise. Anyway, some weeks ago, Adam Reichardt, Managing Editor […]

PACE to send 41 election observers to Ukraine

You will recall I wrote about Ukraine’s invitation to external bodies to send election observers for the forthcoming elections back in March. The Council of Europe/PACE has stated it will send 41 observers under the supervision of Andreas Gross of Switzerland.  Mr Gross has written two rather interesting papers over the past 4 years relating […]

Ukraine - Social Media and Anti-Corruption

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Whilst on Dnipropetrovsk 24 TV, a local channel, Prime Minister Azarov, a very frequent Facebook user, suggested that whilst he encourages anybody to inform authorities of corruption within their ranks, should they wish to do so, he encourages them to inform him personally via Facebook. This idea was then given a national broadcast via the […]

A description of a democratic EU

Not exactly anything to do with Ukraine, unless you want to compare democratic deficits which as I have previously written is just political fluff to divert attention from issues closer to home when politicians do so, here is Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament,  outlining a 10 point plan to make the EU democratic. […]

Accepting invitiations - EU observers arrive for Tymoshenko cassation

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You will remember about a month ago I wrote about Prime Minister Azarov’s invitation to the EU to send top level international observers to witness the cassation of Yulia Tymoshenko’s 2009 gas case trial and conviction at the highest court in Ukraine beginning later this month. Well, the EU accepted the offer at the time […]