How you are paying for the Irish 'yes' campaign

Apparently the Young European Federalists are launching yet another 'yes' campaign to urge Ireland to adopt the Lisbon Treaty.

They write:

“The absence of a strong No side demonstrates that there are no real arguments to reject this treaty.”

Or maybe it’s more to do with the fact that there’s no public money being pumped into the ‘No’ side. The YEF, on the other hand, enjoys funding from the EU Commission in order to promote European integration, as we pointed out in our December publication, 'The Hard Sell'.

The group received a rather sizeable €132,927 from the EU between January 2005 and October 2007.

But don't take our word for it - check out the YEF's own website, where they proudly show off their EU funding.

Turn up the sound and click here for an example of the sort of stuff this group is spending your money on to get you to support EU federalism (warning - it's possibly the cringiest thing on the internet).

As regards the Lisbon Treaty, they believe it "is crucial to put the EU back on track on the road to unification".

One proposal they've put forward recently is for a single EU Olympic Team, an idea they came up with when Britain was doing well winning medals last year in Beijing. After the idea was covered in the newspapers in the UK, Toni Giugliano , the Vice-President of the group issued this extraordinary statement. Here's an extract:

“It’s great to see that the British press have reacted so passionately to the proposed European Olympic Team, especially since this is the year that team GB finally showed the continent and the world that Britain is not only the heart disease, cancer and diabetes capital of the world, nor the couch potato Rupert Murdoch reading state that everyone makes it out to be. No! Brits really do love playing sports, and winning at them too!... It may be the case that team GB did better than usual in these Olympics. Perhaps they fed their athletes with Special K instead of the usual fried chips ‘n egg. Mmmm, they’re learning.”

Quite why taxpayers should be paying for this kind of amateur rubbish is beyond us.