Three days on from the attempt by a variety of Euro-hating newspapers, with the Mail On Sunday in the vanguard, to try and fool the public into believing that the EU was about to ban sales of eggs by the dozen (or half dozen, or whatever number), the record has at last been put straight. The EU’s press office – which needs to sharpen up its act, if this kind of response is typical – has moved to confirm what most folks already knew: the story was totally untrue.
But one question has not been answered: where did the original tall tale originate? The MoS, Screws and Sunday Times all carried the story on June 27. So was anyone pitching it earlier? Well, yes they were: step forward Adam Leyland, editor of the Grocer magazine, who penned an editorial dated June 26, in which he states “The EU wants to outlaw the sale of goods as measured in units”.
Just in case we didn’t get that the first time round, he stresses “A dozen eggs ... set to become illegal”. To reinforce the message, suitably pejorative keywords are also deployed, such as “mad”, “bonkers”, “scary”, “monster”, with the inevitable “You couldn’t make this up” to round things off.
But the giveaway comes in Leyland’s very last sentence, where he muses “The Daily Mail is going to have a field day”.
You don’t say, Adam. Wonder how he’d know?
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