european elections

So I got in the post today the election cards for the european elections as I hope many of you have. As it's me that is writing this I can't help recall the time I took a group of Women to the European parliment in Belguim. What on earth was I doing that for you ask? well is was part of a programme I ran taking women from Garvagh, Inishowen and Claudy who were looking at moving forwards with their lives and helping them work with the personal linking it to the political. In the political part we took them to the Dail, Assembly and European Parliment. Explained the different political structures and encouraged them to participating in using them to highlight issues that they or their community were facing.

The trip to the European parliment was intersting, for example did you know that there were actually 3 parliments built while only 2 are used one in Brussels and one in Strasbourg. Every (i think it's month) the whole administration move from one city to the next (who pays for that ?)We were to see the Sinn Fein advisers and Unionist ones.One from the South as well cant remember who it was (cant be bothered to look in the diary) We were to visit the parliment sitting listen to a debate. Ask questions.

A few things that struck me
1. it actually has a very small adminsitration
2. all the MEP post boxes are in alphabetical order so it makes for interesting linkages.
3. The different political partys are connected to different blocks of similar political thinking.
4. Mep's only get to speak via a very tight schedual which is constantly negociated.
5. if you do not sit on a commitee for a particular issue you often will not get to speak about it as an MEP,
6. if you are on a commitee but dont attend it you will go to the bottom of the speaking list.
7. as MEP need to be seen to be asking questions what they often do is when a debate is over and eveyone is leaving they will satnd up and ask a question (even though it has no influence and no one is listening and the debate is over) This way the MEP can "honestly" get reported in their home country newspaper the fact that they have asked a question in the EU parliment.
8. all the advisers of the NI and Irish political partys were very good friends there were lots of bar b ques and socialising among them.

At the time we went there was a debate on the cost of returning asalym seekers to their country of origin. One of the women who was with us worked in a hostel with alot of asylum seekers.She was interested to find out a man had been deported from Dublin to Africa at a cost of Euro's 90,000 as they had to charter a plane for him to go there as there were no direct flights. Do you ever think the world has gone mad?

So when you are looking at those smiling faces on the glossy brouchures pushed through your letter box remember to use your democratic right. I like the way some of them actually have different languages on them, have they really cottoned on to the fact that everyone does not have English as a first. I also not some have flicker ,twitter ( not twit) accounts, maybe they are linking into the 21st century after all.