I have a confession to make. I can’t take the EU’s journalists – the guys and gals who work for EU Observer, European Voice, EU Politix, and, bringing up the reat, EU Reporter, seriously.
They can’t write for a start. They have got the sentence rhythm and sentence structure of a news story about right, applying the gift for mimickry of wannabes, but they have no journalistic insight, apply no journalistic intelligence. They are just teenage note takers. “MEP warns…” Yeah, and suck my dick.
Everyone I talk to about this says, “Yeah, you know, they are all very young.” But why don’t they hire someone older? As they rush around from press conference to press conference, like eager university students, you think: I bet Washington is better served than this. But then the EU is not very serious.
The average person in Brussels is a 26-year-old girl who works for a lobbyist, or an NGO. Who is she? She is from an Italy, or Belgium, or Poland. She lives in an apartment somewhere, sharing a flat with a Spanish food scientist who works for the Valencia regional office to the EU..
She puts her make up in the morning, which takes forever. Appearance is all in Brussels. She puts on the EU uniform: grey slacks, a poloneck sweater. Then she goes to work, if it is not a public holiday, of which there are many.. She has a book by Kundera in her bookshelf, and when dressed up in her bourgeois-bohemian continental daywear, she clatters down the steps to the metro at Gare Centrale you would think: if this was the opening scene in a modern French movie she would be falling in love in the course of it; but in fact she has a boyfriend - he works for the European Voice. She is very proud of this. The European Voice is cool. In her world, this paper – which is just another trade mag, there are loads on the web – is top drawer. What she does all day? Perhaps she sends a pdf file, sends a few emails, reads her local newspapers. Grabs a baguette sandwich from the area around the Place de Luxembourg, which has the world’s highest density of poky little sandwich shops, and are open between 1 and 1.05 pm every weekday afternoon.
Boring? Not at all.
There is her whole private life, a bewildering array of friends, all 26, all of whom provide a network in Brussels. She might be earning unjustifiably much on what some could see as out-relief for the privileged young of Europe, the nieces and nephews of Italian senators But she feels part of a greater whole. Her lobbying makes a difference (she thinks.). And when the EU does stuff on television, well, she is part of it.
I write about this template woman, and there are loads of women who fulfil this template, because she is the exact typical person of the European Voice’s readership demographic. They did a survey on this and say so, they are not shy. Dana Spinant, the editor, is only about 26 herself.
And what are this young woman’s views. She likes and believes in all the rationalist world-improving schemes.
She thinks the prime minister of Colombia – picketed by the commies in the European parliament – is a bad man. And she hates the Kaczynski brothers, who run Poland. They want to bring back the death penalty, limit abortion, hate the EU!
I have undergone an about turn on this. I read a faintly disapproving piece in the EU Observer. It was written in the usual metronomic style that simulates professionalism, The article was about the new regime how the Poles at the EU embassy had jumped ship – ie been sacked – for their pro EU views by new Warsaw administration and were looking for jobs in the EU institutions. Perhaps the article was their job application: the virtuous, educated Euro-Poles. The Kaczynskis are not very house trained, unfortunately.
They can’t write for a start. They have got the sentence rhythm and sentence structure of a news story about right, applying the gift for mimickry of wannabes, but they have no journalistic insight, apply no journalistic intelligence. They are just teenage note takers. “MEP warns…” Yeah, and suck my dick.
Everyone I talk to about this says, “Yeah, you know, they are all very young.” But why don’t they hire someone older? As they rush around from press conference to press conference, like eager university students, you think: I bet Washington is better served than this. But then the EU is not very serious.
The average person in Brussels is a 26-year-old girl who works for a lobbyist, or an NGO. Who is she? She is from an Italy, or Belgium, or Poland. She lives in an apartment somewhere, sharing a flat with a Spanish food scientist who works for the Valencia regional office to the EU..
She puts her make up in the morning, which takes forever. Appearance is all in Brussels. She puts on the EU uniform: grey slacks, a poloneck sweater. Then she goes to work, if it is not a public holiday, of which there are many.. She has a book by Kundera in her bookshelf, and when dressed up in her bourgeois-bohemian continental daywear, she clatters down the steps to the metro at Gare Centrale you would think: if this was the opening scene in a modern French movie she would be falling in love in the course of it; but in fact she has a boyfriend - he works for the European Voice. She is very proud of this. The European Voice is cool. In her world, this paper – which is just another trade mag, there are loads on the web – is top drawer. What she does all day? Perhaps she sends a pdf file, sends a few emails, reads her local newspapers. Grabs a baguette sandwich from the area around the Place de Luxembourg, which has the world’s highest density of poky little sandwich shops, and are open between 1 and 1.05 pm every weekday afternoon.
Boring? Not at all.
There is her whole private life, a bewildering array of friends, all 26, all of whom provide a network in Brussels. She might be earning unjustifiably much on what some could see as out-relief for the privileged young of Europe, the nieces and nephews of Italian senators But she feels part of a greater whole. Her lobbying makes a difference (she thinks.). And when the EU does stuff on television, well, she is part of it.
I write about this template woman, and there are loads of women who fulfil this template, because she is the exact typical person of the European Voice’s readership demographic. They did a survey on this and say so, they are not shy. Dana Spinant, the editor, is only about 26 herself.
And what are this young woman’s views. She likes and believes in all the rationalist world-improving schemes.
She thinks the prime minister of Colombia – picketed by the commies in the European parliament – is a bad man. And she hates the Kaczynski brothers, who run Poland. They want to bring back the death penalty, limit abortion, hate the EU!
I have undergone an about turn on this. I read a faintly disapproving piece in the EU Observer. It was written in the usual metronomic style that simulates professionalism, The article was about the new regime how the Poles at the EU embassy had jumped ship – ie been sacked – for their pro EU views by new Warsaw administration and were looking for jobs in the EU institutions. Perhaps the article was their job application: the virtuous, educated Euro-Poles. The Kaczynskis are not very house trained, unfortunately.
No better
I loathed the smugness of the article, and I realised one I had prepared earlier, clipped together from reports from Poland and altogether more overtly censorious was no better.
I thought: scratch this. My earlier article – Andrew Rettman’s article. It is all rubbish.
It is arrogance piled on with and talent spread very thinly; and I am not surprised the brothers hate Brussels. Who are these people, the virtual careerists, in their virtual world? This place is shit. Anyone for yet another seminar on the single market? I’m off to write about Sudan.
