BBC News reports on the launch of a new site for the European Parliament. With the intention of putting a ‘friendlier face’ to a parliamentary body who has historically felt very distant to most, if not all, European citizens, you would have thought that only good things can come from this.

But oh dear. With the whole of Europe to pick from, the European Parliament has somehow managed to get a site built by people who don’t know how to build web sites. Who’da thunk it?

I wish this came as a surprise and a shock, resulting is slack-jawed gasps from all corners of a continent, but truthfully this is something that has come to be expected. If multinationals are characterised by their total disregard for any kind of standards, governing bodies are characterised by a token nod to what they should be doing, followed by blatant flouting of the rules of the DOCTYPE they’ve so diligently declared.

There’s a turnout for the books – politicians saying one thing and then doing another.