Trumpeter 4 Europe

If you say something often enough, chances are eventually you’ll find someone to carry a torch for your claim – however crazy. Here’s an imaginary example: Tell your friends that the languages of Europe – from Estonian to Portuguese, from Irish to Czech –

all sprung up independently on a certain day 6000 years ago. If you say it often enough for a sufficiently long period of time, then eventually you will gather around you a foolish group who believe you. They become language-creationists who discard the facts

and evidence of etymology, in support of your claim. They will say that there was no gentle development of people and their habits and expressions, to the forms of words we use today. Let’s develop the example: take ‘lord’ – more English than which, no finer

word. A linguist will tell you that the word comes from the Anglo-Saxon words hlaf and ord meaning loaf and guardian. Say hlaf ord quickly for a few hundred years, and it becomes ‘lord’. The origin informs our understanding among other things of the early

function of ‘lordship’ (he was the man who ensured you got enough to eat), the importance of bread in the diet, and the settlement of people from the north German town of Anglia into the country we now call England. But if you keep saying that the word was

miraculously invented one magic day in 4000 B C, eventually a group will form to support your nonsensical thesis. In the same vein, UKIP said that ‘75% of our laws are made in the EU’. They were questioned on behalf of a listener by the BBC Radio 4

programme ‘More or Less’ on 15 August 2009. The UKIP chairman said that the source of the 75% figure was no less than the President of the European Parliament and his official translators. Well, here are the Parliamentary President’s actual words in

official translation: "Today approximately 75 per cent of the European Union legislation is decided by the European Parliament together with the Council of Ministers”. He makes no reference to the laws passed in Britain i e UKIP’s ‘our laws’. Rather, he is

saying that the European Parliament is playing an increasing part in the EU legislative process; the democratically elected arm of the EU is thus increasing its role. The UKIP man on the radio said that he was concerned that sovereignty is being switched to an

unelected EU Commission. But the authority he ‘quotes’ for this is saying – on the contrary – that there is a preponderance of influence by elected representatives. There is no suggection whatsoever by his quoted source, that 75% of British law is made in

the EU. But the UKIP man on the radio bashed on to quote other figures including the sceptical thinktank Open Europe. Open Europe however demolished the UKIP figure as another misquote and misapplied statistic. Well, blustered the UKIP man, ‘that

needs to be looked into’. The BBC’s ‘More or Less’ continued its exploration of UKIP’s figures to suggest a more likely range of 9 to 15% of UK legislation being of EU origin. That was August 2009. You might imagine that having been exposed as misusing

statistics and accused of selectively editing quotations out-of-context, UKIP would improve their presentation. Far from it. Flash forward now to the position today,a few weeks before our General Election. The UKIP brochure currently circulated starts off with

the same ludicrous claim: “With 75% of UK laws coming from Brussels….”. It proves our opening paragraph; UKIP just keep saying something in the proven confidence that someone, somewhere will believe them - regardless of fact. Elsewhere on ‘Trumpeter’

we show that the British citizen’s cost for belonging to the EU is equivalent to that of half a daily 2nd-class stamp rather than UKIP's brochure claim of £873. It is a similarly gross distortion that three-quarters of UK law originates in Brussels. Happily the

topsy-turvy language-creationist introduced at the start of this note was fictitious, but UKIP is a grim reality albeit living in a fantasy world. This tale has served to illustrate UKIP’s brazen techniques. Deny the development of hlafs and ords? Good lord.

 Lawrence Brewer of The Midlands European Movement