Previously, on my blog (here and here to be exact) I have mentioned a couple of examples of journalists or newspapers caught in the act of fabricating totally untrue stories intended to make the EU look bad.

The latest paper caught out is the Daily Mail. Not so long ago they pictured a queue outside the British visa office in Sofia, Bulgaria. At the time I can remember thinking that it was a pretty short queue, certainly a lot shorter than anything you would expect to find at the British passport office, or at any pub in the country on a Friday. However, with trademark scaremongering the intrepid Mail journalists managed to whip up a front page story out of it.

Now though, Peter Preston, writing for the Guardian, reveals the picture was taken the day after a UK bank holiday, meaning the office was processing twice as many visas than on an ordinary day. So despite the queue already being pretty small, had the picture represented a normal day there will probably been fewer than ten people applying for a visa, which isn’t really worthy of an inch in a newspaper let alone a front page.

Preston also wonders why we aren’t welcoming Bulgaria and Romania with open arms. After all, less than 20 years ago they remained communist states devoid of democracy. Had someone said in 1986 these staunchly communist states – Romania run by Ceauşescu and Bulgaria a loyal Soviet satellite state – would be embracing democracy, freedom and working together with their western European neighbours it would have been cause for celebration.

As I mentioned in my blog in Lithuania, some times it is easy to forget just what the EU represents in terms of democracy, stability and prosperity to nations that have been less fortunate than the UK.