I’m now back in the UK after 4 days away in Portugal. I spent yesterday afternoon watching the sunset over the waves of the Atlantic and this morning I was drenched on the way to my office – a dire 1950s building. Feels like a hangover, only without any alcohol having been involved.
Anyway, I’ve just been having a quick browse around the web about what people have been writing about the PES Congress. In English there are some reports from Eric Sundström (who I spent plenty of time talking to in Porto!), Graham O Maonaigh and Cant d’ocell (both of whom I do not know). Richard Corbett MEP also has a short post – here. There are also some posts from the PES Activists that were at the Congress, although any posts other than mine are in French. Beyond that, the blogosphere seems quite quiet – the Technorati search for PES Congress comes across some round-ups of what happened, and also some posts in Spanish that I cannot understand.
It really feels like we were working in some kind of a bubble. These were party delegates sent to Porto to talk and take decisions. Beyond that, who cares? Thousands of Euros were spent, thousands of documents printed, tens of buses hired to transport people around etc., etc., but apart from a select ‘in crowd’ it’s as if nothing actually happened. Bit bizarre.
I could agree that thousands of euros were spent on this congress but… definetely I can’t agree that there was no use of it. Maybe you are used to this kind of event, but for us (fresh politicians from new member states, particularly Lithuania 😉 ) the congress was an inspiring show 🙂 where else you could hear speaches of people who you could see only on TV 😉 it is great to feel a member of big and strong family of socialists of Europe.
Don’t feel bad. Welcome to reality. If G. Washington, Ben Franklin, et al, had had access to “the Internets” in 1776 they’d have felt the same way. Most people, in any society, don’t care about politics, and those who do always feel as if they’re in a “bubble”
The mportant thing is: you’re doing good work. Keep it up; it has its own reward, truly.