I read a lot of newspapers. Staying in touch with the UK and particularly Yorkshire and the Humber is an important part of my job. Every MEP worth their salt does the same.

You put up with the fact that many papers are right leaning and you even get used to reading the outrageous Euromyths conjured from the darkest recesses of a journalist’s imagination.

But sometimes, not often, but sometimes you read an article that is so dispiriting you despair.

The cause for my ire today is an unsavoury column by Bill Carmichael that tells us of his travails in getting a passport for his children.

He writes: “Naturally the passport office rejected our application… You have to laugh. Is this the same country where any terrorist, rapist, child abuser, or killer who has jumped off the back of a lorry five minutes ago is immediately offered a national insurance number, a council house and benefits beyond the dreams of avarice?”

The reason his application was rejected, he admits, was because the photos he provided were signed by a neighbour rather than a person of standing in the community.

Yet the quote reproduced above is clearly implying that too many passports and national insurances numbers are given out, so why the diatribe when passport officials do their jobs properly?