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Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Children should be taught the "benefits" of the EU

Geoff Hoon, Minister for Europe, has decided that what we really need to teach our children to give them the best possible start in life is the benefits of membership of the EU. Not the facts, you'll notice, but the benefits.

Unless you are a corrupt EU bureaucrat with immunity from prosecution or a member of some taxpayer-funder regional quango answering to the EU, I really don't know what these benefits are. Perhaps we should all be given lessons on the benefits of the EU? I mean, the down-side of EU membership is obvious - economic protectionism, weak single currency, primacy of EU laws, over 50% of our statute books having originated from the EU, massive net "contributions" to the EU budget, loss of fishing rights, alienation from former allies and friends, virtual abolition of preferential trade agreements with the rest of the world, regionalisation, federalism, bureaucray, the introduction of Napoleonic Law, European arrest warrant, fraud, corruption, ... sorry, I got a bit carried away there.