Voting TaKtiX

We all know that the EU exists solely to make life difficult for people by introducing new, pointless regulations. The very idea that it could make life easier by allowing us free travel, movement, standardising weights and measures and giving us rights if we choose to live or visit any other member state is complete anathema, right? James C. M.:

How DARE they give shoppers choice? How DARE they remove pointless domestic regulations that prevent pensioners and single people from being able to buy anything less than half a loaf when all they might want is a few slices

It’s terrible, isn’t it? Deregulate and allow consumers to choose, so that, for example, a single bloke living alone can buy small packets of stuff that goes off quickly so that he can eat it all before it goes off?

How awful…

D’you think there’s a chance that the Europhobic might, possible, acknowledge when the EU does something they’ve been asking for? A little internal consistency? Nah, silly question, I know.

Not so much an update as a plug for a very nice website serving to dispel some of the myths about Europe which our media so love to shout about.

The website is called Euromyths, and should provide a good laugh for anybody who remembers the stories a while back about straight bananas, fake chocolate and the general claims of over-harmonization that seem to crop up whenever some Eurosceptic hack cant be arsed to find a real story.

To give a little background, I stumbled across this site because I heard that awful line from UKIP on friday about

70% of british Law being made in the EU

Now I was basically searching around trying to prove or disprove this claim, but suffice to say the only, only reference I can find to it is on UKIP’s own website, and they, obviously don’t offer any evidence for this claim.

Thing is, it’s partly believable in that a lot of British laws are now made after consultation via the EU institutions. That’s not to say, as UKIP would have it, that those laws are imposed on us, but that as a member of the EU, we work within a certain framework. Sometimes that benefits us, sometimes it doesn’t. More often it does both, but our lovely reactionary media *cough* Daily Mail *cough* only pick up on the bad aspects. The laughable thing is that you can usually see straight through their reports, so it’s really the people that read the articles and take them at face value who are the people at fault.

Anyway, I may well email the keepers of the Euromyths website and see if they have the answer.

Oh, and another thing. During his speech to the Tory conference last week, Dr Liam Fox made reference to the need for Britain to avoid Europe’s ‘ever closer union’. I would like to correct Dr Fox here by pointing out that all reference to ‘ever closer union’ was dropped from the draft EU constitution as early as February 2003. I’m sure he’d like me to point that out; God forbid the Tories mislead the public over Europe or anything.

[Edit:Link fixed to what I think Paul meant, thanks to NM for pointing it out-MatGB]