YOUR LETTERS

IT is encouraging to know that your correspondent Ray Fleming reads published letters in the Bulletin, having reacted in his Saturday's column to my critical points in a previous letter about the activities of EU offices in member state capitals. According to Mr Fleming, these outfits are barred from involvement in sovereign state elections and referenda, so the question is what do they do to merit their staffs' fat salaries funded by the taxpayer?

In London, the EU office has a head of media, and four, yes four, press officers. Not even the most successful of international companies would employ such a number at its headquarters, far less at an overseas subsidiary! So why so for the EU? It is because the EU seeks to apply as much spin as possible to the would-be benefits of the EU and to suppress the many disadvantages.

In a way, there is parallel with the admirable work of the Central Office of Information, the UK government's propaganda machine which promotes British interests and achievements worldwide. However, the EU's strategy is somewhat different and certainly far from admirable. It follows a much more soft sell approach, it uses devious and subliminal methods to influence young people in schools, undertakes spurious research on pointless European issues, and sets out to bend the minds of gullible journalists and opinion formers. Not exactly non interference.

So thank goodness for independently minded MEP's and journalists like Daniel Hannan who actively supported the Irish ‘No' vote. If the EU can pedal its wares, why not the individual?

It is a sad, blinkered soul who cannot recognise the insidious workings of a bloated EU bureaucracy which, sooner or later – with the Eurozone coming first – is bound to implode, just as happened to the Delian League 2500 years ago.

Yours faithfully

Andrew Ferguson