THE UNION THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME.

CONCORDE - ANGLO-FRENCH-EU ALLIANCE

This archive from 2004 reports early attempts to curb Internet Porn - The Curse of Spam  - E-Mail taking 20 minutes to download - and, most relevant today - whether the European Union has improved our lives. 

This essay below, tells it like it was - BB  - (Before Brussels). 

Do you still want to BREXIT?

http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/newsarchivefeb04_dec04.htm

In and Out of Europe? – Tuesday 22^nd June 2004.

I am as xenophobic as the next man; particularly in this season of Euro-Football (England miraculously beat Croatia last night 4 goals to 2 – Hurrah!), and I may be more for independence than most; my slogan is Home-Rule-For-Brookside; the 24 houses cul-de-sac where I live. But two days ago, 20th June 2004, the newly enlarged European Union, which signed its first 25 member constitution, triggering every fear, in every European country, that has ever been conceived, concerning loss of sovereignty, loss of independence, loss of Home-Rule, loss of budgetary control, loss of self Defence, premature balding and etc. I have revisited my memories of Europe, before the Union was effective, to see if a return to the good old days would be welcome.

Before Brussels Bureaucrats, in 1969, my young family and I travelled many times by car across France. Most roads were in holes – so we bought a Renault 8, with sponge rubber suspension. There were few if any Auto-routes. We had to telephone to Manchester, England; which took two hours to connect and was routed via New York – and cost a fortune.  

There was little if any roadside food or water on sale and lavatories required gymnastic and logistical skills involving two, urine flushed, porcelain footplates, gathering all loose clothing with one hand while beating away flies with the other, squatting and aiming into a stinking communal collection pot. 

In Germany, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War divided East from West and all Europeans expected nuclear war any day. Children were advised, if they heard the nuclear bomb warnings, to put a paper bag over their heads and sit in a doorway. Italy had few functioning banks, requiring most transactions to be cash – which we Brits were not allowed by Exchange Controls to carry.

To cross Europe or conduct any business required five or six currencies, hedging in US dollars, borders, passport controls and endless queues and paperwork. 

Spain lived with 30% unemployment and around 40% illiteracy among women. Portugal was chronically poor; as was Ireland. France was under attack by Algerian terrorists, Spain by the Basques, Britain by the Irish Republicans and Italy and Germany by the Red Brigade. 

Brits bathed only once a week, if that, and suspected deodorants would change their gender. Pregnant girls were locked away in terminal shame in convents, ruined for life, and the only available contraception, as recommended by Pius the Twelfth, was either Coitus Interruptus or the Rhythm Method, both of which added the spice of uncertainty to all in-depth relationships. Homosexuals were routinely beaten up, arrested, imprisoned and ruined.

As late as 1985, prior to EU Commissioner Martin Bangemann’s promotion of the  European Information Society, it was difficult to telephone from Stockholm or  Aberdeen to Rome or Madrid. Nokia did not make telephones.

For the paranoid, it was a great time. We could, with official approval, hate all foreigners, queers, coloureds and communists. 

We yearned for the coming Apocalypse and Armageddon to punish the ungodly and feared Flying Saucers, Alien Invasions, The Yellow Peril and the Red Revolution. 

We waited five months to be allowed to buy a telephone.  

Do I want to go back to the good old days when Britain was Britain – Wooden Ships and Iron Men: when mad old Generals sent millions of young men to be slaughtered in European Wars, when we could choose the colour of our ration-books, pay The City whatever charges they imposed on a captive island population, save up for ten years to get married, live with our parents and eventually buy a washing machine, and tug our forelocks at the passing gentry – “God Bless you kind Sirs” - as they tossed a half-penny into our begging bowls? 

I think not. I think - thanks all the same for the opportunity to revert - that I will go with the Union. That's the 550 million free-market European Union, promoted by Churchill since 1945 as The United States of Europe. 

VOTE REMAIN ON 23rd May 2019 - in the MEP, EU elections. 

(UK-Porn-bans are coming again on 23rd July 2019, when Onanistic users will have to be publicly listed - by the Porn Merchants, who promise not to blackmail anyone - Scouts' Honour).