Another day of twitter fighting and it seems like you’re getting the hang of this. Just one more day of tweeting and you’ve broken the EU Working Time Directive (so get a long weekend off until Monday’s semi-finals). But as with every QMV vote, there are winners and losers. Read on dear EU Twitter Fighters to find out who has made it into the elite sub-committee of eight.
Oh yeah and we got an endorsement from fake Jean-Claude Juncker, so that was cool. I suspect that won’t be the last we hear of him….
While in no way understanding what is happening, I heartily endorse #TFC14.
(2) @jonworth 63% 0 votes
****(1) @hughbs 37% 2 votes
In a major shock to EU Twitter Fight Club the number 1 seed fails to carry any of the judges’ votes in his first #TFC14 battle. Despite being the popular favourite this time around, @jonworth fails to progress into the L8 and @hughbs becomes the man to beat….
Judge: @mikakosinska
winner @hughbs. A very well-matched fight, with two heavyweights meeting this early in the game it was gripping stuff if not a little disappointing that they met in a preliminary round. Battle-scarred already from their frequent TFC bouts of Twitter banter, @hughbs came out fighting forcing @jonworth into a powerful defensive strategy. Although I thought @hughbs had went down early in the day with a misguided punt towards suicide bombers he came back with sheer dogged persistence and ultimately not just his grammar pedantry but also a closing Shakespeare reference gets him my vote. Despite his repeated unconvincing insistence that he is keen leave the field, my money is on him making it all the way to the final.
Judge: @alexekkelenkamp
Desperation is so TFC14, according to everyone’s favourite eurogrump @hughbs, as he yet again refused to butter up the judges. But we do have a soft spot for him, AND he promised us multi-part tweets from different accounts- a tweasure hunt he calls it. His collage of incriminating @jonworth photos was also promising, although perhaps not as effective as he might have hoped in getting the EPP voter base to move on this issue:
Visual content was also provided by his aforementioned opponent, as he scoured the streets of Brussels for #EP2014 election posters. Highly appreciated!
In a slightly less successful attempt to start a more intelligent debate on euro- vs EUscepticism, he lost us at antineofunctionalist- or was it antitechnocentralist? (ed note: see the storify of the debate here.) Also, no bribes were received. And so, in a surprising turn of events, outspoken non-butter-upper @hughbs gets the vote.
(2) @dicknieuwenhuis 30% 1 vote
****(1) @BrusselsGeek 70% 1 vote
The judges are split but @BrusselsGeek storms through with 70% of the vote! (helped along by bribes)
Judge: @alexekkelenkamp
With this fight, the judge found herself torn between 2 worthy causes: sympathetic fellow Dutchy, Amsterdammer @dicknieuwenhuis (who knows what it’s like to be Dutch in Brussels), or hashtag-dominating, “charming tech-tastic Irish redhead horse” (dixit @FMR_Brussels) and all-round power woman @BrusselsGeek. Despite boarding flights and losing connections, they treated the audience to frequent, enjoyable and snarky banter- just how we like it. Not to mention some serious last-minute bribing action.
.@alexekkelenkamp big mention on #EUtweets Good Bad and the Ugly tomorrow? 😉 #TFC14bribe
Torn between national pride (and two!!! lunch offers) on one hand, and feelings of female solidarity (read: fear of backlash from #teamwoman) on the other, I eventually decided to go for @BrusselsGeek- it would be fun to see her (possibly) face-off against @hughbs in the next round as she clearly knows how to tell him to “feic off”. Naturally, that offer of a spot on #EUtweets had nothing to do with it…
***(1) @kosmopolit 89% 1 vote
(2) @Vpertusot 11% 0 vote (1 abstain)
@kosmopolit proves why he’s ranked number 4 in the competition with a domineering win over @Vpertusot.
@ShearmanM @kosmopolit @captain_europe @Christina_D_S Roaming charges still existing in EU,my participation will be limited today I’m afraid
Although according to some TFC14 participants, the EU would not be what it is without it. Either way, at least @kosmopolit did not hide his reluctance to do battle- or was this a ruse?
(2) @captain_europe 63% 0 votes
****(1) @Christina_D_S 37% 2 votes
@Christina_D_S wins by two votes and one Swedish endorsement.
Judge: @mikakosinska
@BrusselsGeek It’s a date, Miss Lane 😉
****(1) @ktowens 60% 1 vote
In a close fight @ktowens comes out on top with a bit of help from a fake EU Commission President candidate.
Judge: @ganemmaha
@ktowens wasn’t really present today too bad.. so my vote goes to @eurocrat even if he did not use #TFC14…
Judge: @shearmanm
@Ktowens carried this fight with @eurocrat tweeting well below the average for the round (hashtagging properly or not!) Essentially she won the fight by rising to my challenge to plant a question on #TFC14 to Juncker during his press conference (ok it was a tweet, but a sorta risky one?)
What came of it was the fake Juncker twitter account. I haven’t worked out whether @Ktowens is also @Juncker_JC yet – but if #TFC14 is spawning proxy accounts then someone, somewhere is playing it right! @ktowens – for your sake in the next round – lets hope you’ve got that proxy under control!
***(1) @MissMillicent 85% 2 votes
(2) @huettemann 15% 0 votes
After a strong start @huettemann’s title challenge runs out of steam. MissMillicent storms to a dominant victory.
Judge: @ganemmaha
@MissMillicent vs @huetteman also hard but I vote for @MissMillicent they both had a great battle, they are wonderful #TFC 14 contenders but @MissMillicent was better with sense of humour and pics!
Judge: @shearmanm
So full disclosure – i recently had a beer with @MissMillicent and @jonworth in Berlin (yeah, i’m name dropping now…) – both were lovely and helped get people interested in #TFC14. @huettemann is a new follow and will become a permanent follow without a doubt. Throughout the whole day Millicent was tweetign interesting bits and only made one slip up in this ->
Millicent @MissMillicent
Instead of fighting between ourselves why not work together the best we can for the greater good of all? #Simples pic.twitter.com/VJPB3fPNSD
@huettemann was good as well – but wasn’t convincing when challenging the UK/Berlin/EU bubble thing:
#EUfoam: I still dont understand how somebody in Westminster bubble can understand the Brussels & Berlin bubble well #TC14 @MissMillicent
This could have stood, if he hadn’t come super late to the came to the Farage / employing his German wife story! I vote: @MissMillicent
(2) @euonymblog 26% 0 votes
****(1) @Usherwood 57% 2 votes
(3) @tom_wein 17% 0 votes
After a 48 hour tweeting marathon @Usherwood comes out on top, defeating @tom_wein and @euonymblog in both the judges’ and popular vote.
Judge: @ganemmaha
Judge: @shearmanm
So after yesterday’s shock draw – i didn’t want to judge this fight – it’s far too much like hard work from two fighters that really do care about this competition and now with @euonymblog – a personal twitter favourite – thrown into the mix! But alas, when duty calls….
Lets deal with @euonymblog first. Despite being on holiday and on flights, she made a respectable twitter fight club debut. Tweeting early (from an earlier timezone) she landed a few interesting articles early on and was well engaged throughout the day. Considering the circumstances she did amazingly well and on a different day – she’d get my vote. I liked that she posted this useful guide to voting in the UK:
But she was always going to be disadvantaged and as EU Twitter fight club has already demonstrated, it takes no prisoners:
So I’m on the other side of the world, have a four hour flight and am up against two opponents?! #doesntseemfair #TFC14
Yup. Twitter fight club isn’t fair. So moving on….. In my ruling yesterday i highlighted that Tom wanted it more than Simon, but Simon had done better at tweeting on the EU. I also promised i’d factor in @euonymblog‘s views and she signalled she’d support @usherwood for being more aligned with her.
Tom started the day with some excellent tweets of EU foreign relations. I was genuinely interested to hear that:
I’m pleased to discover the EU has had a delegation in Papua New Guinea since 1977 http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/papua_new_guinea/about_us/welcome/index_en.htm … #TFC14
He also followed up with some decent photoshopping:
Tom, always attentive to judges’ engagement had @usherwood clearly in the passenger seat up to lunch. But then after my quick walk around outside something went horribly wrong for @tom_wein. Was it post-lunch tiredness (image from @usherwood)?
A routine tweet on some vintage EU footage turned into a twitter storm. You can see the storyfied disassembling of @Tom_Wein here, not by the judges, but by fellow twitter fighters as @Tom_Wein mixed up Adenauer and Churchill. Small point you say – but you don’t want me to let both of them through again do you?
Tom_Wein’s afternoon tweeting was largely focussed on lists of defence policy thoughts (his specialist subject) – major respect for getting engagement with@keohanedan but i’d already felt the tide had started to turn by that point. This seemed like it might be a side-battle for you and i didn’t see them endorse you. In contrast @Usherwood was eclectic but always interesting.
And just as I was leaving my twitter account for the day @usherwood pulled the ace out of his sleeve:
A day early, but my blog on facts and emotions in debating the EU: http://blogs.surrey.ac.uk/politics/2014/04/23/do-facts-matter-when-discussing-the-eu/ … #TFC14
Simon’s blog post asks ‘Do facts matter when discussing the EU?‘ – the answer is, right now in #TFC14, no. My vote does. And you just won it @usherwood. In many ways you were lucky i saw your tweet at the right time and had just enough belief to think your style of tweeting may prove formidable against the Berlay Monster. In my mind, you are both already EU Twitter Fight Club legends. So Tom, same time next year?
*****(1) @berlaymonster 72% 2 votes
(2) @CraigWinneker 28%
@CraigWinneker plays the role of a valiant St George, but fails to slay the monster.
Judge: @ganemmaha
So Tonight my votes go to @Berlaymonster: I love the jokes but he also gave a lot of info @Craigwinneker rts too much 
Judge: @shearmanm
If there’s anything i’ve gained from #TFC14 its @CraigWinneker as a permanent follow. Clever, interesting and with a humour to challenge any EU twitterer. He tripped up though during the day and a joke back fired when he was called out by FT Bureau Chief Peter Spiegel.
Peter Spiegel @SpiegelPeter@CraigWinneker You used this joke when we were in Capitol elevator together in 1993! Tourist asked how many people worked in Congress…
Is 1993 old enough to be retro? Probably not. But lets be honest here – @berlayMonster is one of my favourite people to follow and Usherwood neatly summed up the challenge facing Craig when he offered to take on Berlay monster right then alongside his own competitor @tom_wein. Craig was left stranded:
Poor Craig! You fought a noble fight. A respectable fight and in any other match, i probably would have had you into the last eight as the cool outsider. But today BerlayMonster also deserved it. He provided this awesome gif and jpg combo:
And had my favourite tweet of the day. Realising that the Americans and US Twitter Fighters were waking up (I’m referring to your trolling @trnels) – Berlay delivered this beauty:
Hey, Euro- #TFC14-ers. The ‘murcans are awake and watching us. (like they were earlier, only now it’s above board).
Take that original (US) #TFC14 – So yep – Craig you were noble throughout and you recognised the challenge ahead:
Craig Winneker#TFC14 #protip: you can vote for the heavy underdog in this round, because everyone else will vote for @Berlaymonster eutwitterfightclub.wordpress.com
But the monster lives…
And thats that. Bring on the Quarter finals…..
Twitter Fight Club-EU 
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