On the contrary, EU is notoriously hard for the rich to lobby. It is also the primary motivation behind the super rich to be against EU since they too are having trouble to find someone in EU to solve their "problems". A famous anecdote is from Rupert Murdock who is able to influence UK poltics at whim but had no effect on EU: https://www.quora.com/When-I-go-into-Downing-Street-they-do-...

He was also a huge backer of Brexit.

On social media there's persistent and years long push to paint EU as anti-Business. They are pushing and pushing for de-regulations.

The Pfizergate is another great example of what happens when you have a centralized decision. That scandal only exist because of the Covid, an unprecedented situation where EU has to take quick actions and had to engage with companies directly. The scope of the scandal is also extremely benign compared to what you have in other places, it's essentially a transparency scandal. No one is even seriously accusing her of abuse of her position for personal enrichment when in a normal country this type of scandal is often about giving the contract to a relative of theirs or an election campaign donor.

Once the Ukraine war is over, I also expect to see other scandals to be unearthed as they were rushed to acquire weapons fast.

There are scandals like Qatar paying an MPs to push their agenda, but other than that EU is so much less corrupt than anything the local governments have. Those involved in the Qatar scandal went to prison, how many local politicians you have who go to prison for anything other than political reasons?

Have you noticed what has been happening in US since February for example? That one is extreme but all over EU the local governments have some sort of these scams and dealings. In countries like US all you have to do is to buy president's crypto coins or make a donation for his election campaigns. In EU, you simply can't do anything of this sort. That's why those who want influence actually pay social media influencers to push an agenda and this is considerably more expensive and hard compared to just establishing a relationship and paying up the president.

Many of EU's weaknesses are also it's strength since having full control and being able to move fast comes with its risks.

That's why across the EU the trust in EU and support for EU is way higher than any local governments. The worst is over %50 in favor of EU, when most of the governments consider themselves lucky if they are in the %30s.

> We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it.

Modern US variant: we will say whatever we must to amass donations to pay for the election campaign, but you'd be a fool to bet on our doing what we should once elected.

It was priceless when Farage explained this was just a campaign slogan.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/x0vicd/v...

It was intended as just an example of what one could do with all that delicious tax money.

Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit the European's attitudes towards their local police and governments(some small and cold countries tend to trust their local police and government more than the larger countries at sunny places) but here you can see that EU is consistency viewed more favorably than the local ones through the years:

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3372

What hassle? With a bit of organization there's no real hassle. My addresses are all in /etc/aliases on the mail server and have a time stamped comment in front of them naming the company / website.

I can easily take this "db" with me on my smartphone. Or could make it available with a simple interface. As we use Joplin already to share data between family members, that's the place the list of addresses lives for lookups from family members.

The benefit isn't primarily for deletion, which is a nice side effect, but to easily recognize phishing to the "wrong" email addresses. Certain deletions are done automatically for addresses where I put a timestamp in, e.g. me.dhl24c@example.com will be from the third quarter of 2024 and can be removed at the end of 2024.

Yes. BTW I still do that, but with a single address, username+myonlinebank@domain.com style. It was easier when I need to give them my email again on the phone or in other circumstances, they can see it's just the same with extra bits.

AFAIK network operators are no longer required to know their customer, but may still choose to do so. They're required to cooperate with law enforcement investigations. This doesn't seem like "cooperation" in this case, but rather "police just barge in and take all your stuff" and they probably could win a civil case against the police to get their equipment back or its monetary value, as well as lost revenue. Europe generally has higher rule of law than USA, so there's less chance a judge could say "your business sounds shady so you don't win this case."

The recent EU-wide Digital Services Act has generous liability protections for "mere conduits". A mere conduit is anyone who is just getting traffic from A to B, unless they are A or B themselves. Even though in this case their cellphone operator may think they are originators of traffic, if they are a relay business (and not spammers themselves) then they are mere conduits and protected from liability*. Of course they must still cooperate with law enforcement to track down the source of the spam, but they are not required to pre-emptively KYC. Having their office raided and all their equipment stolen doesn't sound like "cooperating" to me.

* their cellphone company probably has the right to terminate these SIM contracts, and may also sue for damages, but I suspect the damages would be something like the difference between their actual cost of SIM cards and the EU-prescribed maximum wholesale rate for sending texts, which is likely a negative number.