Foreign Secretary David Miliband has suggested the European Union should work towards including Russia, Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Then shoot him.

As it’s not April 1st today I assume that I have to believe this sorry story from the BBC. Seems like that bastion of financial accountability, the European Empire, has splashed out £12 million (yes you read that right) on a study into organic food and I quote:

Organic produce is better for you than ordinary food, a major European Union-funded study says.

See, leaving aside the 12 million and the four years they took to come up with this astonishing pronouncement, I have a problem with that one line. Organic produce is better for you than “ordinary food“? Organic produce IS bloody ordinary food! It’s all the rest, full of unpronounceable chemicals and sprayed with stuff that has a skull and crossbones on the label that isn’t “ordinary food“.

To just about anybody except brain-dead European bureaucrats and food technologists, it is fucking obvious that naturally grown food – the like of which has been growing without our help on this planet for millennia – has got to be healthier than stuff put together in a laboratory.

Now think of all the worthwhile things the 12 million could have been spent on.

From England Expects comes this tale of European democracy in action. Read it and weep:

“During voting on a report by Mr. Kaczmarek on “EU partnership in the Horn of Africa”, amendment No. 5 was declared “Rejected” by the chairman Vidal Quadras, having assessed the show of hands “for” and “against” the amendment. The call for an electronic check revealed that it had actually been APPROVED by no less than 567 votes to 17 (with 18 abstentions). He blamed the MEPs for “not holding their hands high enough”!

I’m not totally sure of the background to this story so I will have to rely on todays report at MacWorld UK for my facts – although it seems a strange place to find it.

The USA, as we all know, fast on it’s way to becoming a bit of a fascist state, is demanding that all airlines provide detailed passenger lists to their customs and security officials prior to a plane being granted permission to land. I do believe they actually demand this before a stateside flight takes off from it’s home country. The data demanded is more than just name and address – it includes, for example, credit card details. Any airline refusing to comply will have it’s landing rights revoked.

At the same time, any airline acquiescing to this demand is in breach of European law which can penalise them for sharing personal data with any country that has weaker data protection laws than Europe – and one such country is the USA. Quite a dilemma.

Two weeks ago, Europe’s highest court overturned an EU agreement to share such data with US authorities which leads us to a bit of an impasse and one which, personally, I totally agree with. If the good ol’ US of A doesn’t want anyone from Europe travelling there to do business and spend tourist money then so be it. Let’s all go someplace else more friendly. I can suggest many such destinations.

But now, in an act so underhand that undermines any pretense that the EU is a democratic organisation, the European Commission has proposed a new law ‘that uses different legal grounds to have the same effect’. And the ‘new procedure’ excludes the European Parliament from the decision-making process thus ensuring that America get’s what it wants and the democratically elected representatives of Europe, and thus the people of Europe, do not.

Why do we continue with this charade?

I’ll say now that I am not a big fan of the European experiment. My main problem with it is not political or even economic – it is cultural. It’s a great idea but I just don’t think that any of us are really ready to call ourselves ‘Europeans’. I don’t think that many even want to. National boundaries and cultures are the individual fabric of each member state with none wanting to have cultural change imposed from a neighbour.

Having said that, politically it’s not any better. Each state is out to look after their own at the expense of the rest. But even worse than that, to me, are the inequalities. For many years now I have had the feeling that us Brits take the EU seriously and follow all the rules like the good European citizens our politicians want us to be. And at the same time, some of our closer neighbours seem to pick and choose the bits they want and discard the rest. This was confirmed for me yesterday with some examples posted in an EU Referendum item entitled ‘You can’t fault the logic‘.

An EU commission report comparing national penalties found that:

…the average fine being levied against individuals guilty of forging EU fisheries control documents varied from about £90,000 in the UK to £3,000 in Spain – and just £180 in France. National sanctions for failing to comply with EU laws banning dangerous chemical discharges into rivers were equally varied: the UK maximum penalty is five years in prison, compared with two years in France, while Greece has introduced no measures at all.

Did you catch that bit? A £90,000 fine in the UK equals a fine in France of just £180.