A total waste of money

I sat and watched Cecilia Malmström being grilled today by the EU parliament. She spoke rather eloquently in English after having made an opening statement in Swedish, presumably to make a point. I think she rather made the wrong point.

My main objection to the way the EU currently operates is that it is an unwieldy bureaucracy which is addicted to spending money and not altogether wisely. Paying for the staff needed to translate her opening statement into the other EU languages was an utterly unnecessary waste of money. I wish I could have staff to help me make silly gestures whenever I felt the need.

In case anyone queries my motivation for this post, I hope its clear from the very existence of this blog that I rather like the Swedish language, though don't claim to a Moberg! However, I don't think the existence of the Swedish language would have been threatened by Cecilia using only English today.

BTW, the translation service costs the EU 1 billion Euros a year.

I was going to write this blog entry in Swedish but it somehow seemed more appropriate to use English.