MEPs... Say What!? Tweets of the week
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Joel LewinWho says EU politicians are a bunch of faceless bureaucrats? They're people just like us, and here's the proof. Each week Cafébabel will be bringing you a selection of the weirdest, whackiest and most touching Tweets from European parliamentary candidates. We'll bring you bright ideas, brilliance and loonies, and above all we'll bring you reasons to vote in the May elections.
Translation: "In Germany Daniel Cohn Bendit is accused of paedophilia. In France, he is working for the Europe Ecology coalition in the 2014 EU elections".
Known as Danny The Red in the days when he lead the May 1968 French student revolts, Daniel Cohn Bendit is both brilliant and bonkers, the kind of charismatic politician Europe so desperately needs. Frightened by his popularity and irresistible charm, traditional, rotund politicians, like crusty French candidate Tobias Teuscher, dig up unsavourary, unproven rumours from Cohn Bendit’s past. In this Tweet Teuscher plays the paedophilia card, a tactic also employed by UK conservatives against Harriet Harman.
In Europe, 80 million people live below the poverty line. 30 million suffer from malnutrition. The EU has set up a new £2.5bn fund – European Aid to the Most Deprived. Despite the fact 500,000 people have visited food banks in Britain since Easter last year, the British government has refused to use the fund to support Britain's poorest. Jude Robinson is highlighting the gravity of the problem.
Translation: "I miss Reagan. He spoke for 1 ½ minutes, not 1 ½ hours, and not as if he was speaking to the tsar of half the world, but as if he was speaking with a KGB lieutenant-colonel. Putin would have been so scared his botox would have melted."
Jacek Kurski is mocking Barack Obama's pussy-footing round Vladimir Putin during the #CrimeaRiver crisis in Ukraine. Kurski seems to think Putin could do with a tough talking to à la Ronald Reagan, or perhaps he’s just jealous of Putin’s boyish good looks.
Katie Hopkins is a columnist for The Sun newspaper, a former contestant on reality TV shows The Apprentice and I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and, as you can see from this tweet, she certainly does not subscribe to notions of political correctness. In the 2009 European elections, she polled just 0.6% in her constituency, but this year she hopes to bring in the votes by spitting venom at Europe, immigrants, Muslims, the working class and school children. She dislikes "lower class” names such as Charmaine, Chantelle, Chardonnay and Tyler, and would keep her children away from kids with these names. Catch her mouthing off on a screen near you.
On a brighter note, not all EP candidates are spouting bile and campaigning on negative, visceral issues. Here's Ivana Bartoletti campaigning for sexual equality in Europe with a red umbrella flash mob in Rome. A gender pay gap of 16.4% across the Union means this issue is vital. 8 March was International Women's Day and hundreds of women with red umbrellas lined up to form the equality sign; = . Here's to hoping that candidates with progressive ideas and positive campaigns make themselves heard above the white noise of the eurosceptics.
Translated from I tweet dei deputati europei... say what!? #1