Gilligan in The Sunday Telegraph today demonstrates all the worst characteristics of the chattering classes with a profoundly misjudged piece headed "The EU: so where did it all go wrong?".

The problem with the piece is that it starts with the premise that a "cautiously enthusiastic Britain joined the Common Market" forty years ago. And, because today few are celebrating, that is somehow a "bad thing".

Represented here is the classic myth, that the "Common Market" was a good thing, yet this brave venture into Continental free trade took a "decisive wrong turn" and became something alien, which could not longer be supported.

View full article here

Classic, one-way "communication". They talk - you listen. Know your place, serf.

It helps to rehearse the arguments here ... we will need them as the "debate" hots up. With people like Gilligan around, though, we have our work cut out.

I think a people would read it and think it was a balanced point of view, even if it deals in personal impressions. I would have thought that Gilligan would probe a little more before churning out such a lazy piece. I wonder if he was told to produce something vaguely in support of the reform line? I can't say I've noticed anything else he's written on the EU, but I don't particularly notice his articles.

A lot of people are persisting with the line that we signed up to a free trade agreement, then the bureaucrats hijacked it and it morphed into the political EU, so it needs to be turned back into what we signed up for. It's a difficult one to shift but it's one of the driving forces behind the reform nonsense.

My impression of the boring Gilligan piece was that there was astonishingly little in it that was current. I began to wonder if lawyers had vetoed something more interesting on a different topic and he had hurriedly been required to fill a page.

I thought that everybody knew that there were no Italian or French restaurants in the United Kingdom before 1973. Do we really need reminding by Mr Gilligan?

China trades quite a lot with the EU. Does it have any say or "input" in how the EU is governed, or do the poor old Chinese just have put with all those EU regulations while having no say in their devising? It would be outrageous if it were the latter.

There's a rumour that when we sell cars to the USA we have to put the steering wheels on the wrong side. Can you believe it? Outrageous interference!

I'm waiting for China to join the EU so that I can go to a Chinese restaurant in England.

Aiming to keep things simple I left out of my comments above the other article in the Telegraph that was poor, the one James 102 refers to, (post #8). It's on the front page of the Business section with the title -

Banks fear 'risk to City' of EU exit

Here there's an attempt at balance, but not much. As we have all noticed before 'they' are getting rattled so it's scare tactics all the way now.

There is a lot at stake and they have effectively limitless funds.

As In2minds indicates, "Older folk, (that's you and me Richard!) do seem to have a different take on this subject compared to younger people.

So yes Gilligan is, in my opinion, not only sensible but bright too. So I think we should ponder the great weight of propaganda this age group has to sift through to get to the truth. If Gilligan can get this wrong just imagine the scale of the task of explaining things to the less enthusiastic" (In2minds).
Yes, indeed! we do well to take an interest in a major obstacle to our cause: our brainwashed young are a special product of the eu's placemen.
I trust, then, that I'm not misreading the following as irony:

For methinks that the euSSR's measurements are the incomprehensible, alien, nasty pieces of work. The USA's doing a good job of preserving our own system on that... long may they continue. Meanwhile, I've just received some recipes from England, and I'll have to convert the half of them that are in the foreign lingo.

[To be a bit sarky mesen] ...As to the extraordinary concept that Britain should imagine any possibility of being independent of the mighty superiors who dwell on the glorious continent ...[sark off] I can only point to the fact that the end of the Younger Dryas took care of separation for us; and that the Pontic Peoples (our Celtic ancestors), who found their way here not too long afterwards, obviously wanted to get as far away from europe as they could. That took quite a bit of independence, after all. Then there's the little matter of how hard we've fought to stay independent ever since -- though, having brought things like flax and linseed oil, we continued to take and develop whatever we needed culturally. Indeed, we preserved a good bit and returned it to euroland after the Viking depredations (e.g. the literacy that Aelfric provided for Charley boy). Of course, we can't do that this time if we let the corrupted version take over and thrive in our places, as it does when we engage frogs to re-landscape our English parks. Similarly, I'm sad to have heard a recording of organ music produced by one of our great institutions recently.... and it's a terrible noise of that comes from our wonderful place. The featured composers are nearly all obscure euros, and the product approximates what postmoderns have put in place of music. So I say we need OUR young people to learn about OUR culture, and OUR traditions of preservation, invention, and adaptation. Best do it before Camoron has us all dispatched for "Senile Dementia," though.

Edited by user 31 December 2012 04:10:46(UTC)  | Reason: split infinitive