The EU is to allow bent cucumbers, so news reports say, and this is seen as the EU cutting through red tape. This is a good proposal (especially in these times of growing food prices), but let's not forget the EU is not to blame for the bent bananas stories all these years.
Euro sceptics like to use the regulation on bent cucumbers as a means of bashing the EU. the truth is though that the EU (or EEC as it was) had no policy on cucumber shapes and sizes and instead adopted the British system that we already had in place before we joined the EEC.
So in may ways this is a victory for common sense over UK red tape.
I am not the world biggest fan of the EU, indeed there are many Lib Dems who will not be including me in Iain Dale's list of top bloggers because I dare to criticise the EU and the Lib Dems policy towards it, but I have always been annoyed that Euro sceptics base a lot of their anti EU rhetoric on untruths and the cucumber argument has been one of these for many years.
Euro sceptics like to use the regulation on bent cucumbers as a means of bashing the EU. the truth is though that the EU (or EEC as it was) had no policy on cucumber shapes and sizes and instead adopted the British system that we already had in place before we joined the EEC.
So in may ways this is a victory for common sense over UK red tape.
I am not the world biggest fan of the EU, indeed there are many Lib Dems who will not be including me in Iain Dale's list of top bloggers because I dare to criticise the EU and the Lib Dems policy towards it, but I have always been annoyed that Euro sceptics base a lot of their anti EU rhetoric on untruths and the cucumber argument has been one of these for many years.
7 comments:
I never understood why lots of time and energy was spent exposing this as a Euro-myth and very little challenging the need for government rules (at any tier) on the size and shape of the vegetables I cut into bits to put in a curry!
What about the scandal of the too small Kiwi fruit that had to be trashed?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1029715/EU-forces-market-trader-pulp-thousands-kiwi-fruit-theyre-ONE-MILLIMETRE-small.html#
Your naughtiest post yet, Nich.
Gallimaufry - Was it the EU or UK officials ? After all, the EU does not have inspectors who go around the UK doing thesxe things. It's some over officious UK employee who did it.
Also, take anything you read in the Mail with a large pinch of salt. The Daily Scum does not really report news and concentrates on blaming the ills of the world on immigrants, the EU and Labour.
indeed there are many Lib Dems who will not be including me in Iain Dale's list of top bloggers because I dare to...
Never mind. I voted for you.
So you got at least one more vote than Gordon Brown's blog.
See this BBC report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7474722.stm
And where do the regulations come from? Very odd to blame public servants working for the Rural Payments Agency for doing their jobs.
Apart from getting Peter Mandelson out of the country what has the EU done that this contry couldn't do on its own?
Benedict Brogan appears to be fair on Gordon Brown in this recent article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038130/Abroad-Brown-proven-formidable-leader--goes-wrong-gets-Britain.html
I have to admit I read it with the same scepticism I reserve for the Independent and Guardian and Times and Telegraph.
And this has come from a Liberal -Mariann Fischer Boel
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