at the risk of sounding like an "ignorant American," which by the way I am not--well, not ignorant, anyway: how in the world do Europeans think they're going to create a "United States of Europe?" Am I misunderstanding what this EU consitution is actually trying to achieve? We can barely keep our country together, what with worshipping at the temple of "diversity," and we have lots of things in COMMON, like language, etc. How can Europe--where you can cross 3 national borders in a short drive and need to be able to speak 3 languages--EVER going to come together like the bureaucrats in Brussels envision? I just don't see how it can possibly work. OH, and that's a GOOD THING by the way.

the term "invincible ignorance," meaning that there are certain people who, no matter how much evidence is laid before them, are completely unable to grasp the reality

The above sentence appeared in an op-ed piece in our local newspaper. The writer was referring to the stubborn adherence to so many of the myths, long held dear, by the 'loony left', mainly with regard to GWB and the war in Iraq.

Reading your item it would seem that the same phrase could well be used when describing Blair, and most of his cronies. So narrow-minded and entrenched in the belief of their own infallibility, they just cannot see any alternative to the 'master plan'. Their edict of ,"Say it often enough, and it will be so!" has become so convincing to them that any hope of them actually recognising reality is, of itself, unreal, and lacking in reality.

When reality does eventually have to be acknowledged by the pro - Europe club, there will still be many who will not be able to believe that they were so very wrong, they will be seen wandering the streets, muttering to themselves, and shaking their heads. We should treat them with compassion and put them out of their misery, in short order.

Failure to do so will only result in them making some sort of recovery, and finding some bureaucratic sinecure, after the fashion of that prime example of solipsism, - Neil Kinnock, - the man still cannot believe that he actually lost one election, let alone three, and yes, he stills believes he was (is), right. Let them survive their dose of reality, and they will rise again to plague future generations with the 'united Europe' nonsense.

If communism can still find avid adherents, after the collapse of the USSR, then rest assured so will the followers of a disgraced Euro policy.

Richard Easbey: I think the federalists hope that national identities will eventually become quaint "regional customs", of no particular political significance.

Odd, "EU referendum blog" doesn't want to render in Mozilla FireFox. Konqueror can display it fine. I wonder if there's some hidden mesage in this? ;-P

Julian --

Mozella Firefox version 0.8 (out of the box, so to speak) works for me.

I don't know what going wrong with your setup but basic Firefox seems to have no problem at all.

I actually use CrazyBrowser (which needs work that it is not going to get) and IE 5.5 when Craze gives me fits.

This yank thinks the EU is simply designed to become a Franco-German empire.

The reason it is setup to run out of Belgium is because the French don't trust the Germans and the Germans don't trust the French and that some of the Belgians speak French and the rest speak Flemish=Dutch=German.