{"id":1946,"date":"2008-12-10T18:46:58","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T18:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1946"},"modified":"2008-12-10T18:46:58","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T18:46:58","slug":"euro-elections-09-bring-it-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2008\/12\/euro-elections-09-bring-it-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Euro elections 09: &#8220;Bring it on&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theparliament.com\/latestnews\/news-article\/newsarticle\/former-top-eu-parliament-official-tells-eurosceptics-bring-it-on\/\">Really?<\/a> Are you really sure, when talking about anti-EU mobilisation for next year&#8217;s elections, that you want to borrow <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/world\/iraq\/2003-07-02-bush-iraq-troops_x.htm\">the words of President Bush<\/a>, speaking about Iraqi militants attacking US troops way back in 2003? You don&#8217;t think that might be, erm&#8230; tempting fate just a little? Just a tad unfortunate, perhaps?<\/p>\n<p>And so my hopes for these elections continue to diminish. I&#8217;ve yet to hear any senior UK party figures (bar the single-issue UKIP and racist maniacs in the BNP) make any mention of the things. And the likelihood of these being the first elections in which I have been entitled to vote in which I decide not to bother rises by the day.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, a surge in the anti-EU \/ eurosceptic vote could actually be a good thing. It may just &#8211; if it is sufficiently EU-wide, and not just among the usual suspects of the UK, Denmark, and so on &#8211; finally make these idiots we&#8217;ve got running things realise that, erm&#8230; the EU needs something rather more than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/europe\/3567790\/EU-to-spend-27m-on-boosting-vote-turnout.html\">half-hearted publicity drives to boost turnout<\/a> and more <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lisbon_treaty\">shoddy compromise treaties<\/a>. It might just, if we&#8217;re lucky, make them realise that the organisation&#8217;s in the midst of a serious identity crisis &#8211; one that will take some genuinely radical changes in attitude and approach to sort out.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt it, but live in hope, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Bring it on&#8221;, says the outgoing secretary general of the European Parliament to the eurosceptics. Oh dear&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2008\/12\/euro-elections-09-bring-it-on\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections","category-eu-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1947,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946\/revisions\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}