Fuck EU

Via Mr Eugenides, I see this appeared in yesterday's Telegraph:

Marianne Mikko, an Estonian centre-left MEP, is concerned that growing numbers of blogs are being used by individuals with "malicious intentions or hidden agendas".

"The blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them," she said.

Mrs Mikko has proposed that bloggers should be required to identify themselves and that some popular blogs should come with a declaration of interests.

It is, remarkably, still possible to find people who consider the EU to be a good thing. But quite why an Estonian MEP should be given direct influence over my life is something I suspect even the most witless pro-EU sort would struggle to justify.

Now, this isn't a popular blog, nor is it ever intended to be. I find that articulating my anger about the sheer shitness of certain people does wonders for my capacity to remain tranquil as their assaults upon common sense multiply. And that's why I do it.

But just in case...

Here's my identity: someone who absolutely fucking detests Mrs Mikko. That's all you need to know.
Here's my declaration of interests: I can say what I want, because this is a free country, and your frankly fascist attempts to change that will never succeed. This means calling a twat a twat, which I enjoy, and you are in desperate need of being reminded of.

"We do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source," she said.

The cream rises to the top. There are lots of excellent and very popular blogs, and invariably they link to their sources, state their reasoning and if enough people like them, they remain popular. The crap ones, like this one, remain little more than a way of channelling the rage. Blogging is much more open than the mainstream media, which invariably lifts stories without accreditation, or simply fabricates them.

Chris Heaton Harris, a British Conservative Euro MP, has rejected any moves to "regulate and restrict independent media sources".

"Mrs Mikko obviously does not understand that blogs have become the life blood of a vibrant democracy," he said.

"I hope these proposals are kicked out.

Quite.

Thursday's vote in the European Parliament is not legally binding but is an indicator of growing EU concern over the influence of blogs on the internet.

A recent internal European Commission report, leaked three weeks ago, found that the EU was losing the battle for hearts and minds online.

This may be directly linked to the fact that the EU is shit, and is being exposed as such. If the EU stopped being shit (or better still, was dismantled altogether), people may stop being so horrid.

"Blog activity remains overwhelmingly negative," it said.

Stop being a set of cunts, then.

At last...

Someone who knows what he's talking about!

Okay - he looks to have troublingly extra-terrestrial origins. And the video of him miming the Welsh national anthem in 1993 is just cringeworthy. (Although I'll forgive him for not knowing the Welsh national anthem, in the same way you'd forgive someone for not being able to recite pi to a million decimal places, or something equally irrelevant). Oh, and his bids to be the Conservatives' leader were, uh, not awfully distinguished.

But he DOES know economics, and lucky for we mortals, he shares his views on a regular basis right here. It's pithy, incisive and informed, and as the global financial situation worsens, I'll most certainly be keeping an eye on it.