So says Tony Bleugghh.
Well let me tell you something Tone. As far as I'm concerned staying out of Europe has fuck all to do with patriotism and more to do with the survival of freedom of choice. The reason most British people do not want to irrevocably mire themselves deeper into Europe is because we value economic survival over your prevaricating, one-sided, I-need-a-job-when-I'm-pensioned-off "opinion". We also value having a say in how our own country is run and having the opportunity to vote incompetent MPs and governments out of office if they can't do the job right. We have already seen what the Maastricht Treaty did for our fishing industry and what the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is still doing to our farmers and food production industry. And how could any of us fail to notice the long knives going in over the second UN resolution. Are all these mere tasters of what we can expect once we give up our rule to a remote centralised government?
FACT: German unemployment and failing economy are not helped, and were mostly caused, by signing up to the Euro and Social Charter.
FACT: If it wasn't in France's political and economic interests there wouldn't be an EU. CAP, which regulates the production of food and livestock, keeps prices artifically high and is riddled with corruption, is the most obscene scam ever played on British farmers. If British farmers do not toe the European line they are heavily penalised. Not so French farmers who seem to do as they please with the benign consent of their government.
FACT: Although Spain was our ally in Tone's War on Terror it didn't stop their legal plundering of our fish stocks and subsequent destruction of our fishing industry when the EU declared increasingly smaller fishing quotas that deprived thousands of families of their livelihood.
FACT: Despite Gordon Brown's best efforts, Britain still has one of the lowest taxation rates in the Eurozone. If Tone has his way be prepared for a nasty shock.
Call me cynical but with our failing schools, health service, infrastructure, the asylum crisis, the pensions scandal and the internecine strife of Judiciary versus Government that has left our society paralysed with despair and disbelief, I can't help thinking these disasters are Tone's subtle way of softening us up for what is to come. By comparison perhaps he expects us to find being fully integrated with Europe a doddle.
Now he's saying that he's winning the argument on Europe which negates a referendum on the future of this country. Since the constituency of Cloud Cuckooland doesn't inhabit this dimension I can only assume that Tone is once again speaking out of his lying (or at least seriously deluded) arse. Didn't he insist that Iraq was a dire threat to the civilised world and that we had to attack as soon as possible to relieve a pariah state of weapons of mass destruction? And are we at all surprised at the lies and half-truths that have since been revealed? Would you place your future into the hands of a man who so blatantly misleads those he purports to represent and who dodges or twists unpalatable (to him) truths to his own political ends and who has an arguably loose grip on veritas?
Me neither.
Editor's note: Now come on...be honest...you just don't want to be forced by EU legislation into eating that watered-down crappy frog chocolate do you?
