Thinendofthewedge has just spent a most enjoyable ten minutes here. Euroblog is always a worthwhile read if only for the author’s ability to send some people’s blood pressure readings off the scale.
On this occasion, though, the entertainment is provided by a perfect example of how the EUgh and its supporters are gifted by a very special ability to unintentionally illustrate the sort of thinking that scares the shit out of most sceptics.
Blithely, and not a little patronisingly, Mr Worth dismisses all reaction to Ms Mikko’s draft proposal to regulate European blogs with the airy instruction to “get a grip folks” as poor old Ms Mikko is only capable of knocking up a Resolution rather than a big bad Directive or even bigger and badder Regulation.
Despite making allowances for his previous and current employment, Mr Worth’s inability to think about the issue beyond the constraints of the EUgh’s finely balanced (ie pondersome and complex) legislative mechanics is remarkable.
It does not matter whether Ms Mikko is passing a Resolution, Regulation or hot wind, the fact that she and 32 committee colleagues approved a draft which suggests blogs should be regulated and that some form of distinction exists between bloggers and “the public” is enough to incite either howls of laughter or screams of rage.
Disregarding this, and with a polite nod to Mr Worth’s focus on EUgh institutional mechanics, is it not also more than a little worrying that 33 members of a body which is intended to provide oversight of its more powerful sister institutions should give every sign that they would fall over themselves in haste to support any future clampdown on blogging originating in the Council?
Well, it worries me.
Not Mr Worth though, who moves effortlessly from EUgh mechanics to EUgh people by asking: ”Does Marianne Mikko know much about blogging? I doubt it.”
Ah, well, that’s ok then. In Mr Worth’s opinion, the MEP who has given herself the responsibility for drafting a report largely concerning blogs probably knows nothing about them. I’ll suspend disbelief for a moment and let that pass but just to ensure a certain logical flow, should we then assume that the 32 other members of the Culture Committee who approved the draft also probably know nothing about blogs?
That assumption might be a little harder to swallow. But then life seems to be increasingly full of indigestible rubbish these days.
Tags: blogging, blogs, eu, EU culture committee, euroblog, europe, free speech, liberty, Marianne Mikko, regulating blogs, regulation
