Save us from Euro carve-up

7:52am Friday 25th April 2008

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DO YOU ever feel you've woken up in a parallel universe where it's April Fool's Day every day? It seemed like that on Wednesday, St George's Day, when I opened my super soaraway Sun to read that those irritating Europeans had split the country into three Euro territories.

It's a bit of a shock to wake up in Huddersfield, say, and find out that you've been forcibly twinned with Helsinki ("Herring for breakfast again, father?"). But that's what's happened.

The entire eastern side of Britain has been annexed to parts of the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden in an arbitrary grouping called the North Sea Region. Similarly, a chunk of southern England has been linked to northern France and Belgium (the TransManche Region) while the west of Britain, from the tip of Scotland down to Land's End, has been lumped in with Ireland and coastal areas of France, Spain and Portugal to form the Atlantic Region. It's all quite barking.

The "stated strategic objectives" of this underhand integration are to "support the emergence of a common space of citizenship, a sense of belonging to a cross border area with a unique identity".

Well I'm sorry, but I don't share a "common space of citizenship" with a fisherman in a Portuguese village. I don't even share a "common space of citizenship" with a Glaswegian Mars Bar-fryer, a Welsh benefits fiddler or a Tarmac-laying tinker.

Bribery is at work here. Each region has millions of Euros to spend on indoctrination, and grants will be available to organisations willing to stage a pro-EU publicity campaign and promise to fly the EU flag for at least a week.

Didn't they used to call people who sold out their country for 30 pieces of silver "Quislings"?

* WE THEN adjourned to Holyhead magistrates' court and a man who posed as Darth Vader to attack a Star Wars fan who had founded his own Jedi church. No, really.

Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, from Holyhead, admitted assaulting Barney Jones and cousin Michael with a metal crutch. They suffered minor injuries. Hughes, who was drunk and dressed in a black bin bag, shouted "Darth Vader!", jumped over a wall and attacked the cousins, who were filming themselves playing with light sabres in the garden.

Mr Hughes apparently has a chronic alcohol problem and had drunk the best part of a ten-litre box of wine. He could not remember the incident and only realised what had happened when he read about it in local newspapers. The judge warned Hughes that jail remained a possibility before adjourning for reports.

So it's all right to bandy light sabres about in public and to worship craven idols, but not all right for a man who's had a swig of pop or two to remonstrate with the non-believers? The mind boggles.

* WEDNESDAY didn't get any better, with another daft story dropping out of the internet ether claiming that a toy manufacturer in the Ukraine is to sell dolls of the former German dictator Adolf Hitler. The 16in figurine - complete with moveable arms to reproduce that infamous salute - will first go on sale in the capital Kiev.

It seems lucky owners will be able to choose to dress their mini-Fuhrer from a selection of outfits including "early days Adolf" (brown shirts and jodhpurs) and "wartime Adolf" (a grey double-breasted tunic, black trousers and simple Iron Cross medal).

The appearance of a plastic Adolph in the playroom raises some interesting issues. Barbie should be okay, being the sort of Aryan superdoll of which he approved, but those mixed-race Bratz will be heading to the dungeons of the toy fort before you can say "ethnic cleansing".

Fireman Sam will come in handy in case of another pesky blaze at the Reichstag and it will be interesting to see which side the Airfix air force comes down on.

* AND THE madness continues. Which is the next story of the day that's too stupid to be true? The priest who floated off into the skies over Brazil attached to a thousand helium balloons? The trainers that can grow a full size at the turn of a button? The Bruce Oldfield designer uniforms for McDonald's staff? Or the drought in Turkey that is causing a nationwide shortage of that tea break essential, the fig roll?

I just head back to bed, hoping that tomorrow will be a more sensible day.