Emma Suddaby writes: It annoys me to have to listen to politicians, newsreaders and various others who consider themselves well-informed while they explain over and again that the striking steel workers in Lincolnshire, and the satellite strikers they inspired, were wrong to feel hard done by. 

They explain that Italian workers who are currently on the controversial job, at Lindsey Oil Refinery, are there only because they work for the firm that won the contract – a contract that British firms also had the chance to win. 

They say that no redundancies were made as a result of the Italian workers being on the job and that just because a British company didn’t win this contract, doesn’t mean they won’t win the next.  And most of all, they say that this is what the European Union is all about – freedom to work across borders. 

You, they say, could just as freely go to Italy and get a job there!

And, you know, in different, more prosperous, less shaky economic times I might well fancy doing just that. 

But right now, with the weight of my financial worries bearing down on me, the very last thing I’m likely to do is take myself off on a little old jaunt across Europe to see what the living’s like over there! 

And what annoys me most is the massive elephant in the room that everyone seems keen to avoid mentioning.  

The elephant, on this occasion being that we all know the strikes aren’t really about the Italians in Lincolnshire . . . they have merely become the unknowing symbols of the problem to a nation sick of being force-fed a system they didn’t want or ask for. 

Or even, lest we forget, agree to.

And OK, yes it’s fair that they can work here and we can work there but you can be darned sure that their country is looking after its own people in these troubled times, well before allowing foreign workers to move in and take jobs.

So the steel strikes really came down to being anti-EU strikes – wildcat strikes were a sympathetic reaction of support from a railroaded nation, seizing on the moment to add their voices to the growing clamour asking where our government is when we need it, and how it could possibly have let it come about that some guy in Brussels is now in charge of our destiny.

But then, you knew that anyway…