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Godfrey Bloom: Welcome to the mad, mad world of the EU
THE European Union's penchant for the micro-management of our lives would appear to know no bounds. We have just been told by the establishment here in the "Parliament" that the use of gender-specific titles is against a code of conduct.
No more Madame or Mademoiselle, Seora or Senorita, Mr, Mrs or Miss, Frau, Frauline or, indeed, gndige Frau, a life-saving form of address when we had just flattened a German barn in my old Army days. Political correctness gone mad.
I have not spoken to any women who want this. People prefer the social nuance bestowed by an accurate title. Especially the French who like to assign genders even to their furniture. Had this nonsense appeared on April Fool's Day, no-one would have believed it.
In recent years, I have sat through votes on the standardisation of spirit bottles, tail-lights and tractor seats. Bendy banana regulation is not a myth, as some Europhiles would have you believe, but all too real
(EU Directive 2257/94).
Up until a few years ago, Middle England found all this terribly funny. We, as a nation, are renowned for our sense of humour. Rightly so.
But now 75 per cent of our laws are made in Brussels, confirmed by Hans Gert Pottering, EU President, only two weeks ago in the parliamentary chamber in response to the Czech president's excellent and thoughtful address.
Yet the joke is beginning to pall.
What is tittered at with indulgent amusement by the liberal middle-class dinner party political elite is in deadly earnest for the small businessman or woman struggling
to make ends meet across the kingdom.
Only five years ago, I could expect just a few letters a week from constituents concerned that a new EU directive would harm their businesses. Now there is an avalanche. Twenty to 30 a day.
Of course, my "parliament" is quite bogus. It is simply an amending chamber. The laws are made by unelected, bureaucratic, commission committees. We change a word or full-stop here or there. We do not even have access to their minutes. We are faced with a "done deal".
At the plenary sessions, we pass a few amendments at break-neck speed; nobody has a clue what is going on. Of course, they will not admit it.
Two thousand laws are passed to the UK every year – with no debate at Westminster or cost-benefit analysis. We have had more laws passed from 1997 to date than the entire period from the Bill of Rights 1688 to 1997. The prescriptive legislation of Corpus Juris, or Napoleonic Code, has superseded our own Common and Statute Law, making our entire legal system inflexible. Important to understand, we are now told what we can do, not what we cannot.
No better example could be found than the ludicrous Human Rights Act foisted on us by the EU. Talk of reform is dishonest. Nothing is ever rescinded. The ratchet clicks on with the nation on the rack. Breaking point is close.
Employment law is controlled entirely from Brussels, as is immigration and trade policy. It begs the question, what do they actually do in Westminster to justify their significant stipends?
One of the most heartbreaking lobbies I face, now on a weekly basis, are victims of the EU environment agreements. Yet the Europhile apoligistas of all the main parties, when forced to concede that most of the European Union is corrupt, inefficient and, indeed, absurd, claim – at least on the environment – that it is our saviour. It is no such thing.
This maniacal organisation is insisting that 20 per cent of our energy requirement is sourced from so-called renewables.
Heart-broken rural folk are having their lives blighted by wind turbines, or the threat of wind turbines. To meet the requirement, we need 35,000 of them. They are bigger
than jumbo jets; it will be the biggest despoilment of the landscape since the Industrial Revolution.
Thousands of acres are set aside for growing bio fuel, an unbelievably expensive and inefficient way of providing electricity, never mind the effect on food prices.
Land-fill directives now ensure that industrial waste, laughingly called compost, is simply thrown on the land. The long-term effects of this are yet to be calculated. Common agricultural, fishing and food-labelling policy absurdities need no expansion here.
Worse, we have lost world influence. We no longer have a seat at the World Trade Organisation – it is occupied by the EU. They are desperate for our place on the UN Security Council and IMF Council. It has already been mooted.
You could, of course, write to complain, but to whom? And where would you buy a stamp? The EU postal services directives (97/67/EC and 2002/39/EC) ensured the closure of your local post office.
The cost of this sorry nightmare to the UK? 30m per day in membership fees alone.
Godfrey Bloom, from the United Kingdom Independence Party, is one of the MEPs for Yorkshire and the Humber.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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