The ECR Group in the European Parliament – not at ecrg.info
On 22nd June 2009 David Cameron announced that the UK Conservatives would form a new political group in the European Parliament, working together with reactionary and unpleasant parties such as Lijst de Decker from Belgium, Law & Justice from Poland and the Civic Democrats from the Czech Republic.
The new group took the name European Conservatives and Reformists (a contradiction in terms even in the name) but no-one thought to register any domain name for the new group before its establishment. So on 22nd June I had a look around to see what I could find – ecrg.info was still available and I purchased it and registered it with Google. Now more than 3 months on there is still no official ECR Group website as far as I can see, and the single page of my website has risen slowly up the Google results, so much so that I’m starting to get mails via the website from all sorts of organisations asking for information about the ECR’s MEPs and positions and even asking for speakers for conferences. I’ve now politely e-mailed all of these people informing them that they are victims of cybersquatting and asking the valid question: how can any political organisation that has gone three months without a web presence be taken at all seriously?
The UK Conservatives decision to leave the political mainstream in Brussels has left the UK with as many MEPs in the main political groups as Romania has. They are politically wrong and, it seems, administratively incompetent, at least when it comes to their web presence. I hope my little domain name experiment has at least shown this to a certain extent.
Congratulations on what should have been a brilliant stroke: except those dimwits at ECR clearly don’t recognise the value (power?) of the internet.
Is this the David Cameron who wants to be PM of what should be a leading EU member state?
Surely it should be “Every Crazy Reactionary” Group?
How about Every Crazy Radicals’ group?
Why don’t you open a ‘suggests’ section so all of Europe’s Conservative Reformists (an oxymoron if ever I’ve seen one) can send you their loopy ideas on what the ECR should stand for?
French Derek,
Recently I saw a story that the UK Conservative Party is launching new obamaesque interactive web pages etc.
But even the most basic information from the European Conservatives and Reformists (sic!) Group has been beyond the will or ability of the players.
How can you be a leading player of anything (except in a destructive sense) if you run off to the fringes faster than anyone can catch?
The BBC has reported that party level cooperation between the German CDU and the UK Conservatives is on ice for the time being.
Seldom have I seen a government causing such a catastrophe long before it has been voted in.
Congratulations on what should have been a brilliant stroke: except those dimwits at ECR clearly don’t recognise the value (power?) of the internet.
Is this the David Cameron who wants to be PM of what should be a leading EU member state?
Jon,
In a blog post two days ago, I looked at the web pages of the political groups in the European Parliament.
You can access the political groups from the start page of the EP, but the links to two groups lead nowhere:
One is, as you mention, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), with the anti-EU UK Tories, the Polish Law and Justice and the Czech Civic Democrats (ODS).
The other is Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD), which is the home of assorted Europhobes.
I could hardly believe my eyes, so I ran a few desultory web searches to see if it was a technical problem with the EP links, but no. The hard line nationalists are nowhere to be seen.
If I remember correctly, William Hague asserted that leaving the centre-right group of the European People’s Party would in no way marginalise the UK Tories. In reality, they seem to have chosen to become extinct, from a netizen’s point of view.
One can always compare with the other political groups, with updated information and language options.