Tim Worstall

Rule that hasn’t changed
- The bend of a banana must be “the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicular to the longitudinal axis, must be at a minimum of 27mm(1.06ins).
Source: European Commission
Yup, even they admit that it is still a criminal offence to sell [...]

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Curly cucumbers and knobbly carrots are to return to shop shelves in a move that promises to cut the price of some fresh produce by up to 40per cent.
An EU ban on the sale of wonky fruit and veg which did not meet the ‘beauty pageant’ standards set by Brussels is to be axed.
Stores claim [...]

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Tim Garton Ash tells us all that Ireland should vote yes for the grandeur of the project and also for the sake of Iran.
One response:
I’m hoping my feisty fellow Irish will follow up the NO vote they gave last time around with “What part of NO didn’t ye understand?”
Quite. No does mean no, doesn’t it?

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Come in, sit down, have a glass of wine. Mmmmm, yum – Chateau So Light 2009. You’ll be delighted to hear that it has a much reduced alcohol content, which will be highly beneficial to your general health, your social behaviour and to society at large.
No? [...]

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A European Commission spokesman last night insisted the Government agreed to every word in the directive.
He added: “If someone thinks we don’t understand the British mentality then neither does the UK Government.”

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Without a shred of legitimacy, the drive towards a United States of Europe is relentless. The only way any country can regain its independence is by leaving the EU. Renegotiations, opt-outs and protocols are all useless in the face of this sinister bureaucracy bent on absolute control.

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Whoo, boy, this is a strong piece. And no, I don’t disagree with a word of it.
Lord Mandelson is destroying Labour for the sake of the EU. He is determined to prop up Gordon Brown until after the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, whatever the cost to his [...]

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“I don’t see how we can repatriate a few powers here and there unless we are prepared to use the nuclear option which is to say ‘if you don’t allow us to have these powers back we are going to leave the EU altogether’. That is [...]

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Last year, Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty which would extend the EU’s powers. It has demanded legally-binding amendments before the treaty is put to the people again in a second referendum this autumn. Irish approval is the last major obstacle to the treaty’s enactment.
But EU governments had hoped to add Irish sweeteners to the treaty [...]

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The Prime Minister of Finland speaks out:
The overall tax rate will have to rise as well over the longer term. In some areas that can be done without much consultation between the countries. For example, property taxes or inheritance taxes can largely be determined at the national level without adverse economic consequences. But such taxes [...]

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Owes the taxpayer £538,290.
And my, isn’t he struggling hard to not have to pay it back.

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GORDON Brown is in line to become the EU’s first president, it emerged last night.
He probably would do absolutely anything to stop Blair getting the job.

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This is a nice example of troughing:
Dozens of MEPs, including Britons, are taking legal action to try to block reforms of their second pensions which are intended to cut the controversial scheme’s cost to Europe’s taxpayers.
Not so much that they are attempting to defend their legal rights (which is the actual situation). But that they’re [...]

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Oh, boy, this is going to be great.
No, really, just superb.
We’re going to have a new version of “Ode to Joy” that we can all use as our referral for the upcoming European Union anthem. Should be a corker.
The unlikely sound of ukuleles will take over one of Britain’s largest classical musical festivals this summer, [...]

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"Cameron’s campaign has been to take his party back to the centre in every policy area with one major exception: Europe," said EPP leader Wilfried Martens, a former Belgian prime minister. "I can’t understand his tactics. [Angela] Merkel and [Nicolas] Sarkozy will never accept his Euroscepticism."

If we the people of Britain are eurosceptic (which we [...]

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So I’m actually fairly hopeful about Britain; right now, the fact that it’s not on the euro is serving it well.

Quite.

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Very disturbing to my worldview:

After half a century of almost continuously declining fish stocks, especially of iconic species such as North Sea cod, the symptoms and diagnosis of this crisis are familiar. Too many boats are chasing too few fish. What is new about the Green Paper launched yesterday by Joe Borg, the EU Fisheries [...]

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The Sunday Times investigates Google’s tax arrangements in the UK. Well, actually, they have Richard Murphy read the accounts for them.
In a nutshell when you buy an ad from Google you do so from Google Ireland rather than Google UK. Thus tax on any profits ends up in the Irish Treasury rather than the UK [...]

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Having spent so much of my adult life amongst Johnny Foreigner I’m something of a lover of the way in which newspapers supposedly written in English aren’t in fact written in it. Technically correct, but just not quite right.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is hoping to convince young people to say "No" to abstinence.

The Commission is [...]

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Dan Hannan’s right here:

Labour official resigns over email scandal, but the Brussels email scandal remains unreported

But, umm, isn’t it a bit rich that a complaint about a story not being reported is coming from a columnist and leader writer for one of the major newspapers in the land?
Couldn’t we have a little physician heal thyself [...]

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