Last week I scribbled a wee piece about the EU flag.

Some of you had the temerity to disagree with me [Shock!  Horror!].

By sheer chance, I came across another item a couple of days later.  The EU is proposing to compel all sporting teams from the EU to display the EU flag at sporting events.

Again, some of you will throw your hands in the air and say ‘so what?’  I say ‘so everything’.

There is a technique much beloved by modern governments known as the ‘Nudge’ technique.  When they want a major shift in public opinion, they don’t just overnight legislate to force us into that opinion.  Oh no.  They employ the ‘Nudge’.  Nudging is a slow process.  It involves little steps where each step goes almost unnoticed.  Anyone who objects to the nudge will be told that it’s only a small thing and that they shouldn’t worry.

The Nudge has been very effectively employed in turning smokers into second class citizens.  We went through all the stages of Cancer, Second Hand Smoke, Third Hand Smoke and bans left right and centre.  If, in the early nineties the governments had brought in the laws we now have, there would have been an uproar abut civil liberties and bully states.  As it is, the bans are accepted because the sheeple have been nudged there.  The same is happening right now with drink and fast food.  The populace is being nudged in the direction of draconian measures that would be unthinkable today.

The flag is a classic example of the Nudge.  People will say it’s only a flag and won’t turn a hair.  But what comes next?  Will it be mandatory for all EU goods to display the flag?  Fill the EU flag get prominence over a national flag?

And once the sheeple have gotten used to seeing the EU flag everywhere, what comes next?  Your guess is as good as mine, but as I said before, it wouldn’t surprise me if people were Nudged into a common language.  It will be done in small discreet steps, so no one really notices any change.

One of these days, in the not too distant future, you will wake up and find that you are no longer Irish, British, French or German.  You will all be just plain European, with no other identity other than that which Brussels imposes.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned.