Launch credo: elitism is good

Spring weekend in London. Whenever you come back to the real world you always think about the huge EU publicity machine you have left behind, aware of its huge communications budget. You think of a particular debate, a debate carried out among journalists, and between officials: and that is, how can the EU communicate itself to the public? The European parliament has recently relaunched its website, in an attempt to become more user friendly. (And with the new dot eu suffix). Its slogan is: 457 million people at one address. (www.europarl.europa.eu). Some wags have said: and no readers. It is still to policy-oriented, too boring.
The thing is, the EU is not supposed to be democratic. It is the old argument of whether politics is an expertise or best exercised on the democratic principle. The Eurovision song contest model - where juries produce the Finnish winner, whereas the professional judges of yesteryear came up with Abba and the surprisingly good 1975 Dutch hit ding-ding a dong - is just another instance of how the masses, I am afraid, don't always know best.
The question is as old as Plato, but it is probably more true than ever before. The rewards of modern life are convenience; the price is complexity. So we have to leave modern politics to the experts.
You won't read the above in any of MEPs' increasingly numerous blogs, because they daren't tell their electorates - they themselves are becoming moree expert to keep with the ever rmore technocratic commission.