A quick run through the comments section of the Blessed and Ever Fragrant Margot Wallstrom’s blog (She’s the Vice President of the European Commission you know, very important person.) reveals two fascinating little snippets , two wonderful little factoids that  add to our knowledge of how the EU is run, plus one blindingly obvious national sterotype, so absurdly obvious that it must be a fake.
There are also the usual jibes and pointed remarks from the awkward squad which are, as always, highly amusing. The full set of comments is here.

Fun fact 1.
One of the most pro-EU commenters (and defenders of TEBAF [The Ever Blessed and Fragrant] Margot) turns out to be one of Margot’s employees. Well I never! In these days of fragile industrial relations it is so good to see the workforce and management standing together, is it not?

Fun fact 2.
The blog takes three people to run it, TEBAF Margot, the moderator and a techie. About 5% of their time each it is thought. At TEBAF’s pay rate of 225,000 euros a year (before expenses and allowances) some 11,250 a year for the posts and some similar sum for the back up (while there are two of them, they are not on quite such generous packages). At a post a week (roughly her output) some 216 euros a post (with another such sum for the infrastructure) . Now, I am, in other locations, paid to write, including one place where I am paid to write on a blog. The going rate for such is some 10% of what we are paying the Commissioner, TEBAF. Just a simple confirmation of what we already know, that the EU is 10 times more expensive than any other way of doing something.

National Stereotype.

        quel dommage de ne pas avoir des versions de ce blog en d’autres langues que l’anglais!

Yes, it’s a Frog, complaining that all of this blogging stuff is being done in English. Simply beyond any form of parody really, such a stunning example of the stereotype Les Anglais whining that it cannot possibly actually be real. Further proof that it is not by an actual Frenchman is that he goes and does something about it himself, rather than leading a street demonstration to make the government do it.

Now, given that us bloggers are now liable to the libel laws (and we must therefore assume to all of the other  laws, on such things as xenophobia, holocaust denial, not insulting the President and all those other wonderful little laws thought up by the lovers of freedom in other lands)of every country in which our posts can be read, not the ones we write them in, as Martin Stabe has pointed out to us, that would appear to make me guilty of xenophobia (the ancient and noble art of frog bashing) and lese majeste which is fortunately not a real crime anymore.

I wonder how many more laws I can break before lunchtime?