Customer Reviews
Dated but a worthwhile read - By: Mr. A. J. SMITH, 22 Jul 2008 
No journalist understands the European Union quite like Booker. Few journalists have researched the project as obsessively & no journalist can match the wit, intellectual rigour & clarity with which he exposes its myths, crimes & deceptions. Anything he writes on Europe is worth reading & his collaborations with North invariably produce work of the highest standard.
However, it is no surprise to learn this book is out of print. Put bluntly, it is woefully out of date. First published in 1993 - & therefore written pre-Maastricht - it actuallly predates the European Union itself. All references are to the old European Economic Community (EEC) which took some getting used to. This is not a criticism. 14 years is a long time in politics & even longer when one's focus is the European Union, a project that seems in a perpetual state of change. However, the text is dated & any potential buyer must bear this in mind.
I still found it a worthwhile read for two reasons. First, the authors understand that good 'economics journalism' humanises the subject. It is alll very well quoting EU directives, UK laws & financial figures but it will likely falll on deaf ears unless some effort is made to show the impact on people. The authors here do humanise the subject - I doubt a better catalogue of the harm done to smalll UK businesses by European legislation exists- but they do not sentimentalise.
This brings me to my second reason. Many British Eurosceptics do sentimentalise this subject. In their mind, the British are a plucky island race of earnest entrepreneurs, while Europe is a body of faceless, pseudo-Marxist bureaucrats who bog us down with their needless interfering. Of course it isn't that simple. The unfortunate truth is that the 'mad official' is often not a faceless bureaucrat in Brussels but an employee of the British state. As Booker & North point out, many of the problems occur because our civil servants incorrectly interpret EU directives when incorporating them into UK law. Also, countless problems are caused by those we employ to enforce the regulations, many of whom behave with an over-zealousness that would make a fascist dictator blush. This observation, sadly, still rings true today.
Overalll, I found this a very informative & interesting read. Its loose structure - the book is a collection of stories Booker first covered in his Sunday Telegraph column - also makes it one of the more accessible on this subject.
