Double standards

Easy to see why this google alert for "Lisbon Treaty" went into my junk mail this morning - European Voice runs a story with the headline:

"People of Ireland, vote 'Yes' for sex with Eastern Europeans".

Sketch-writer Nick McGinley has apparently written a book "100 reasons to vote yes to Lisbon II", which includes such reasons as:

“Carla [Bruni] wants us to. And what Carla wants, Carla gets” and “it encourages a wider gene pool”.

It goes on:

"Voting yes for Lisbon... is the only act of patriotism left: if we want our sons and daughters to have green eyes, cheekbones you could skin a cat with, long legs and a musculature that's fit and svelte with bizarrely little need for exercise, then we have to do everything in our power to encourage more eastern Europeans to dull, grey Irish towns. The only thing to do in these places, during a recession, when it rains, on a Sunday is to engage in copious amounts of Irish-Latvian, Irish-Polish, Irish-Lithuanian, Irish-Hungarian, Irish-Czech Republican sexual activity leading to planned, unplanned, phantom and glorious new Euro-pregnancies.”

Obv this is all pretty tongue-in-cheek and designed to raise a laugh. Fair enough. (And we're all in favour of encouraging EU enlargement and free movement of EU citizens throughout Europe.)

But, it does make us wonder - how come, when people say bonkers things in favour of EU integration (remember that ridiculous "50 reasons to love the EU" from the Independent, which included things like "Britons now feel a lot less insular" and "British restaurants now much more cosmopolitan"), they are comedians, but when people say mad things that are in any way critical or against integration, they're just, well, bonkers? Or maybe even xenophobic, anti-European and all those other unsavoury words people like Denis MacShane like to use.

Somehow I doubt if "100 reasons to vote no to Lisbon II" (or '50 reasons to hate the EU', for that matter), whoever wrote it, would prompt light-hearted newspaper coverage like this.