OUR relationship with Europe has always been a little strained. For years, it was somewhere the average Essex bloke would go to spill blood rather than wine.

From the Essex 44th Regiment of Foot capturing the French Imperial Eagle at the Battle of Salamanca in 1812, to Clacton suffering the first English civilian casualties of the Second World War when a bomber crashed on to the town, for centuries Europe was somewhere that represented to the working man a potential prisoner of war camp rather than a holiday one.

However, although the guns have fallen silent and just a few miles of muddy water separate us from our Euro “amis”, and talk of “Johnny Foreigner and his garlic eating habits” is completely non-PC, there is still a wide divide between us.

Take, for example, the European Union.

Some countries cannot wait to join, while in large parts of the UK it is treated with as much suspicion as a teenger standing on a Colchester street corner wearing a hoodie with a pit bull terrier on a leash.

It is difficult for us to know what it actually does, because the mainstream media just tells us the EU is obsessed with banning bendy bananas and is more corrupt than the court of Caligula, except in EU land they eat horses rather than marry them.

It is difficult to know where the truth lies, there is so little apparent balance.

Politicians of all parties tend to tip-toe round the subject with all the sensitivity of a councillor talking about the VAF, which is not surprising if right-wing reports are correct that 85 per cent of our laws are actually laid down by the EU.

This week, the EU hit Essex headlines with the news Colchester’s Bob Russell and other local MPs had vowed to fight a working time directive which threatens the vital role retained firefighters and others play in supporting our emergency services.

To cut a long story short, it appears the “Brussels bureaucrats” (to borrow a tabloid phrase) say people can only work so many hours a week.

The proposed end of the current opt-out means the working week will include official voluntary part-time duties.

This apparently threatens the retained firefighter system and others, like mountain rescue teams and parts of the RNLI.

On one hand, some see this as protecting workers’ rights.

On the other hand, it is an imposition on people who want to volunteer and work whatever hours they like.

In parts of the mainstream press, of course, we are told volunteer firefighters are winning the battle against the flames enveloping Frinton beach huts when suddenly they turn their pumps off and start to go home because they have fallen foul of working time directive #74986.

One hopes such an absurd scenario would never take place, but that’s the trouble, it is difficult in this country to get a balanced picture of what the EU stands for.

As another example, only yesterday radio reports were suggesting that 60 per cent of all fish caught in EU waters is having to be thrown back, dead, in order for fishing fleets to avoid going over their quotas.

There may be a good reason for such a policy but no-one ever seems to explain what it is.

If the EU has as much control over life in Essex as its detractors suggest, it is time many of us started to pay more of an interest.

For example, can you name your Euro MPs? Do you know who the president is, or do you even know where it is based?

There are a host of websites and books both pro and anti EU and it is worth perusing them.

You can also share your thoughts, and insult the author, on our website at gazette-news.co.uk/ features/my_view/ Until then, Au Revoir, as they say in France, and after dinner parties in better-heeled Essex homes!