Referendum booklet pictures can paint a thousand biased words

HAVE you checked your post yet? By now the first Referendum Commission booklet on the Nice Referendum, The EU and How It Works, will have arrived.

And you won't believe what's in it.

There's a cartoon depicting the EU as a big sow surrounded by lots of piglets, some of them sucking away merrily. But she's devouring one of them, called Slovenia. Or is it Slovakia? Then there's another picture showing the accession of different countries to the EU. Nation states are featured as people walking downwards along a plank, before disappearing into a big black hole, labelled United States of Europe.