Why should we listen to these people?

The EU is saying it has reduced your roaming charges. Europhiles crow like this is a crowning achievement. For starters it's a little patronising to think we would gladly give up our status as a nation state in exchange for cheaper overseas phonecalls (the main beneficiary of which are MEPs) - but actually it's another example of the EU obscuring the international stage from view. Here we have Safaricom doing exactly the same, almost a year ahead of the EU - and here we find China following suit along with the Gulf States. Now why do you suppose that is? It's almost like the EU doesn't make the rules it implements!

Well, again, it doesn't. This is very much a global convention being put into practice, devised by the OECD and ITU. It could have happened a lot sooner were it not for the delays introduced by the EU.

As with the legislation on plastic carrier bags, the EU has proven it is well behind the curve in implementing global agreements and we could get the benefits of them much sooner while having a much greater say at the global level were we not in the EU.

Again we note that most MEPs are unaware of the global aspect, just as we noted yesterday that our own MPs remain clueless. As we have outlined many times, the EU is a redundant middleman that slows down global progress - and it even has the nerve to even take credit for such achievements. Meanwhile, our elected representatives who genuinely know nothing about it have the audacity to tell us where Britain's interests lie.