IT seems we’re in the grip of déjà vu.

For the past few weeks men and women all over the UK and across the Continent have been getting more and more excited.

Wall charts, banners, crates of beer, time off work... all have been carefully sourced in preparation for the thrills and spills of Euro 2016.

And yet again, we have found ourselves facing an all too familiar scene: barely had a football even been kicked than fans were kicking each other.

Perpetuated by a Neanderthal few, the violent clashes in France were shocking and shameful. It can come as no surprise that UEFA has threatened to expel England and Russia from the tournament if the trouble continues.

But that would be punishing the legions of well-behaved, decent fans who haven’t thumped seven shades of you-know-what out of anyone and would quite like to continuing supporting their team in peace, thank you very much.

I can see where UEFA is coming from – such behaviour must not be tolerated – but I feel that expulsion of the teams shows a certain lack of imagination. The powers that be should be more inventive in their approach.

They should start by rounding up each and every thug and deporting them via ship on a particularly rough Channel crossing. Meanwhile, the authorities back in England would refuse to accept them back into the country for, say... the length of the Euros.

Aboard their rocky ship, there would be no television or radio, no access to papers and no way of knowing even the smallest detail of the tournament. There would also be nothing but prunes and cabbages to eat and an alarming lack of toilet paper. Anyone who so much as raises their voice, let alone their fists, would be chucked overboard and left to make their own way home in a lifeboat.

Then mid-July, long after the final and when all of England’s celebrations (we can dream) have died down, the ship’s guards could judge who had behaved well enough to be let back into the UK and who hadn’t.

Those allowed home would have their passports stamped with a lifelong football ban so they can never, ever trespass abroad and cause untold misery to other fans, tourists and locals.

Those who didn’t pass muster would be sent to the immigration camps in Calais and forced to give up their places in the UK to a matching number of immigrants.

The immigrants, I’m sure, would be extremely grateful to be allowed into the UK to work and finally have a roof over their heads and lead a normal, decent, human life.

Meanwhile, the thugs would have to put up with the squalid, depressing conditions in the camps. Then maybe they’d appreciate what a great place to live Britain is and maybe, just maybe, they’d finally feel some remorse for bringing shame on their nation.

  • LOCAL clever clogs Sir James Dyson, he of the vacuum cleaner empire, reckons we should quit the EU.

The billionaire entrepreneur, who set up shop in Malmesbury 23 years ago, believes Britain would gain more than it would lose were it to wave a cheery au revoir to our pals on the Continent.

“When the Remain campaign tells us no one will trade with us if we leave the EU, sorry, it’s absolute cobblers,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

Mincez pas your words, Sir James.

Then – and this is the bit I really wasn’t expecting – then, he said that the single market didn’t work because of companies like his having to adapt their wares for different languages and different types of plugs.

Run that by me again. We’re being outfoxed by plugs, you say? Let’s leave Europe because their plugs aren’t like our plugs?

Does this mean that if we pull out of the EU, Dyson will stop selling products to all non-English speaking countries and all those with anything other than the Type G plug?

“You’d like to import 2,000 vacuum cleaners? What do your plugs look like? Sorry, no can do...”

So the plan is to have English vacuum cleaners for English people – and a lucky few in places such as Cyprus, Malta, Malaysia and Singapore that use the correct, British plug.

Now admittedly, Sir James is a billionaire and I’m very much not so he may well be a step ahead of me on this.

But it really doesn’t sound like being better off out of the EU to me.

  • MY favourite moment of the past week was at the Old Town Festival in the Lawns on Sunday.

I volunteer for Swindon Talking News, a charity which provides blind and visually-impaired people with a free audio weekly news and information service.

We had a stall at the festival and enjoyed the day as families had a go on the tombola and hungry passers by indulged in our delicious homemade cakes.

A couple of us wore fluorescent bibs labelled ‘Swindon Talking Newspaper for the Blind’ so people could easily see who we were representing.

Which made it a bit embarrassing when a chap came up to ask us if we knew where he could learn sign language. Erm. Not much use to blind people, sadly, sir.

Well, it gave us a laugh at least. We raised just short of £140, by the way, so thank you to everyone who supported us. See you on June 26 at the Coate Water dragon boat racing!