That list

Many people have attacked the Independent's fairly pathetic list of reasons for the EU (headed, of cause, by the peace myth) by fisking the entire thing. I'm going to concentrate on just a couple points.

These two points are basically the same thing phrased differently:

44. European immigration has boosted the British economy
...
48. Total mobility for career professionals in Europe

They are a good thing, but why limit a good immigration policy to just Honkies Europeans? What about Africans? Or Latin Americans (and not just to give the Police something for target practice)? Or Asians? Or Orientals? Or Polynesians? Or maybe even some of those North American people? Not being in the EU does not mean that we are forced to close our borders to anybody. Just as a country being in the EU does not mean that their borders will be open to you, as people from the eastern European states found out when only the UK and Ireland where willing to let them in and work. A good immigration policy does not need a massive supranational organisation, as has been proven by the EU not being able to make France have one, it does not even require a bilateral agreement. Like with free trade we could simply swing the doors open and shout "We love you!" to the world if we wanted to (we'd have to get rid of the Welfare State first, but that is a good thing in itself).

Europeans are increasingly multilingual - except Britons, who are less so

I prefer not to use personal anecdotes, but this time it is useful as it really shows the point. When I was 6 I lived in Sweden and went to Swedish school for a couple of months. Everybody there spoke English, very good English. Even at 6. This was nothing to do with the EU, as Sweden was not yet part of the EU. Nor was it even due to the Swedish school system, they did not start learning English in school for another 2 years. It was because of Television.

At that time there was not that much Swedish language TV, but there was a lot of American exports that had been subtitled. I can remember sitting in the basement rooms (all middle class swedish homes seemed to have them) with some Swedish children watching the Lone Ranger till 1AM while my parents where upstairs being feed every alcoholic beverage known to man. It was fun, and it was not unusual Swedish children grew up spending hours each day watching, and enjoying, all of these programmes in English together with a Swedish translation. The perfect way to learn a new language. I would expect that you could find this kind of eeeeevil yankee cultural imperialism enriching the lives of children all over the continent, and it also explains why this effect is not felt in the UK since we already speak the language of American TV. Like with the peace myth this one smacks of Ameri-phobes desperately trying to get hold of something, anything, that will mean that they do not have to acknowledge that the USA might have done something good in the world.