We have good reason to stand up to bullies

WHILE on holiday in Sicily recently a group of us shared a meal with a French family in a busy restaurant.

Unaware that one of our group had a reasonable grasp of French, one member said to another in a disdainful way: “You know the Irish are like the Scottish — they have their own language but they refuse to speak it.”

Thinking about this afterwards in the context of the EU superpowers’ criticism of our rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, I realised there was a connection between the two situations.