Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 1 -- Czech EU Council Presidency Honchos 0 (nil)


UPDATE: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 3 -- Czech EU Council Presidency Honchos 0 (nil), 6.2 (07.01) and 6.3 (08.01) have yet to arrive in my mailbox either.


So here we stand, mile pratele: two full days -- count 'em -- into our glorious Council Presidency (the promise of a new generation of Czechs) and something has already gone awry.

To summarize, on January 7, 2009, a detailed forensic check of my Inbox revealed I received two dispatches from Council Presidency Ground Zero:

At 09:10am, the inaugural "Czech Presidency Newsletter 6.1" arrives. Within its pixellated folds is the usual slew of link puffery which accompanies any of the various EU nations' Council Presidency dispatches. (I read them all, knowing full well what this might be saying about Yours Truly). Of course, the maiden voyage of 6.1 regrettably doesn't have any clickable links! Punch, cajole, massage, and depress as hard as I'd like, none of them lead me to a reliable website destination!

Whereupon...

At 10:04am, I receive the ceremoniously entitled "UPDATE - Czech Presidency Newsletter 6.1" which indeed has the previously-desired clickable links, though only almost an hour later when I've likely moved onto other writing tasks and assorted other morning responsibilities.

Let's think of the timings here, mily pratele (if you're Prague, we say it like this)...

I'm a journalist covering the new Czech Presidency.

I work for some French rag and I'm entrusted with the job of reporting back to my nation about the bona fides of our European post-Communist confreres, and their ability to competently helm of one of the most vital managerial responsibilities of the EU braintrust.

I notice the e-out is of shoddy quality, and this is only the first one, I might add, in what I trust will be many. What do you think I'm going to write?

Does this not make our job all the harder to convince our French and other naysaying friends that we know what we're doing? Mr. Scrunchy Face, any ideas?

Sure, sure, it's only a newsletter, calm down and knock back a few Becherovkas, pane Mezei. All of this will be worked out in due time.

But as I hammer back my second shot of the evening, tovarish, I'm left to think about Slovenia.

Two-tenths the population size of sweet Cesko, but boy did those pesky Slovenes have their stuff together! Email archives reveal that the office of the Council Presidency for Slovenia already had three copies of their inaugural newsletter -- in English, French, and the little-used Slovenian -- in my box by January 4, 2008.

Fancy that, eh...