Mind your language

Was it strong language or shocking language the iPlayer helpfully asked if I was ok about before I clicked download?  I can’t remember.  But the script of The Great European Disaster Movie (BBC) was more comedy than anything else.  Not so much offensive in a swearing sort of way, more offensive in its patronising tone.  The EU is right and you’re a bigot / racist / insert your own word if you think there is the tiniest thing wrong with the great god of European union.

Which is fine if you watch a programme like this without engaging your critical faculties.  But those who prefer dialogue rather than diatribe will have been disappointed.  Rather than a reasoned and critical examination of the real issues, it dared to suggest that civilisation itself would virtually fall apart if the UK exited the Europe Union.  Which of course is utterly fanciful for surely even the most committed EU enthusiast.  Yes, there would be issues that needed to be resolved.  That is clear.  But we have heard these gloom merchants before.  The UK will be a backwater if it doesn’t join the European Single Currency.  Oh yes?  Who’s laughing now?  Although it’s no laughing matter that most of Europe is still living in the aftermath of the crash while the rest of the developed world, the UK included, and interestingly all European Free Trade Association Nations, whose members top the global league tables on wealth and quality of life, and whose peoples have made up their minds against EU membership, are all slowly but surely getting on their feet again.  Sustainably.

Of course, the last thing the Euro-zealots want is to compare the merits of their bloc – the euro, the tax harmonisation, the Common Agricultural Policy, the swatting aside of national referendums – with prosperous and happy EFTA nations.  Hence their near-hysterical insistence that the only alternative is economic collapse.

And that is the problem with zealots.  They only see things from their angle, refusing to acknowledge that anyone else may have a point of view.  And we all know where that sort of talk leads.