The Week in Bloggingportal: One loudmouth and other stuff

Photo by olivcris // CC License

Minutes after Godfrey Bloom, a UKIP MEP, blurted out the words “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” twitter exploded with people condemning the remarks.

Blogs were quick to follow and putting it into context; Euromyths explained why the language used was particularly insensitive. Following Bloom’s remarks, Jon Worth went on to further explore the kind of bad behavior MEPs have presented in the past and found that political fringes were more likely to be condemned.

And whilst blogs themselves condemned the remarks, commentators on Left Foot Forward weren’t as quick to judge…

The Brits continued to cause controversy when the Express announced their big “Get Britain out of the EU” campaign. Whether the methodology behind “99% of you say: get us out of Europe” was entirely accurate was, however, questioned.

Bloom’s tirade dominated much of the press coverage on the EU which is why the fact that EU civil servants received a 3.7% pay rise went almost entirely unnoticed in the blogs.

Irish austerity measures, on the other hand, did not. With €15bn cuts in the next four years, of which €6bn will be in the first year, Ireland is taking some brutal measures to ensure it can get its economy back on track.

The buzz around the bail-outs and whether they signify the beginning of an end-of-times domino effect for the eurozone is as loud as ever. In the hub of the EU, speculations on how will Belgium itself fare through it all are rather subdued – without a government and with a public debt rate of 100% the Financial Times still predicts Belgium to be an unexpected survivor.

PS. If you haven’t yet had enough of British and the EU, don’t forget to join us at the bloggingportal event in London! I wouldn’t want to boast but our line-up of panelists is pretty amazing.

-Mia