No, the EU is not banning kettles

The headline of today's Daily Express warned that the EU may ban kettles. Which sounds like something that would strike right at the heart of British culture.

The reality, however, (as pointed out by fullfact.org) is a bit less sensational. An EU commission is investigating the energy consumption of kettles and may, in the future, suggest regulations that would make kettles more energy efficient and improve their impact on the environment.

"Euromyths" (i.e. misleading stories about regulations supposedly dreamed up by overzealous EU bureaucrats) are very popular with the British tabloid press.

Some fake Euromyths circulated in the past include that the EU was reclassifying kilts as womenswear, that it was decreeing that bananas sold within Europe not be "too excessively curved," and that the word "pertannually" had to be removed from the EU constitution and replaced with the term "insubdurience."

Journalism Politics

Posted on Thu Sep 04, 2014



Comments

They're not "Euromyths", they're Eurolies. Myth would imply that the "journalists" perpetrating them did not know that they were printing untruths in black and white. But of course they know this perfectly well. It's propaganda, plain and simple. One would even be justified in using the word agitprop.
Posted by Richard Bos  on  Sat Sep 06, 2014  at  05:57 AM
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