Fresh from the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" Department:A new atlas intended for schools downgrades the sea dividing Britain and France to a “small internal waterway”.
The move is part of a revived masterplan to build a European superstate — and is being backed by £1.1 million of UK taxpayers’ money. Eurocrats are trying to break down national boundaries by creating new trans-frontier EU regions. Under the new plan, huge swathes of southern England will join northern France as a new zone called “TransManche”.
Taxpayers are now being forced to dig deep to fund the new map of the region, which stretches from Cornwall to Kent and across Northern France from Nantes to Lille.
MPs were stunned to see drafts of the “Transmanche Atlas” and find the Channel had been renamed “small inland sea, the Franco-English Pond”.
Last night furious critics urged schools to refuse to accept any new maps based on the atlas...
Tories last night accused the government of erasing another bit of Britain’s proud history and tradition. Shadow communities secretary Caroline Spelman said: “Labour ministers have already sought to replace England and its shires with government office regions.
“Now British taxpayers’ money is being used literally to wipe our nation off the map, erase a thousand years of history and downgrade the English Channel to the insulting status of a pond.
“Hard-working families and pensioners will be outraged. A Conservative government will scrap these Euro plans and save the English Channel.”
The map — part-funded by the British government — is part of an initiative to create a Euro region across south England, northern France and Belgium. The project, part of the EU’s INTERREG programme of merging member states, boasts that the idea is to promote a “shared space”.
But Mats Persson, director of the Open Europe think tank, declared: “The whole exercise is ridiculous.”
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “These atlases show what a threat the European Union is to the UK and taxpayers will be outraged their money is being used to promote EU propaganda.”
(David Wooding, "Change Channel," News of the World)
