My visits to this blog are constantly surprising to me. I now have visions of Brussels, or Strasbourg, or Luxembourg, or wherever the Parliament lets itself be pushed this week, as some sort of gin-soaked version of an MGM studio in the thirties–you know the sort of thing, extending one way in time with Titanic, through Regle de Jeu to, maybe, that one with the two mad old women on Sunset Boulevard.

Anyway, to business. You have apparently been appointed one of my ‘MEPs’ because the list to which you were attached attracted some postal votes. I know that this is true because I saw it on the telly. I therefore wish you to put down the French 75 (gin not cognac I hope) and tell me,–if you are voting on it–

1) what are you going to do about the vote on Net neutrality in the EP, assuming that it hasn’t happened?

2) are there any ways in which we can all get together to keep big corporations from enclosing the digital commons?

Message ends. Don’t go straight back to Cannes, it’s a sad knockoff of LA or Sundance anyway 😀

On a more positive note we could consider that if the MEPs are watching films and having a go at being amateur film critics, then at least they are being distracted from their usual tasks; bossing us about and wasting our money.

Like most people, I was disgusted to read that 400 MEPs and their assistants had squandered £350,000 of our money on a three day ‘study break’ in Madeira. There was though, the consolation that the steady stream of regulations would be slowed down by all the sunbathing around the two five star hotels they had booked for their ‘freebie’.

Always look on the bright side!