Missing the Obvious

 Jonathan Reynolds said "the argument on food and agriculture products is this: do you want lower standards than the European Union?  If you don’t want lower standards, surely we remove pragmatically some of those checks and balances to make sure we can have as close a relationship as is possible."

No, surely what we do is maintain or raise our own standards, and don't deal with others who don't meet them when trading with us.

Labour and the EU

 Matthew Lesh, Director of Public Policy and Communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:

“This Labour manifesto commitment is a big deal for the future trajectory of UK-EU relations. It is difficult to imagine the UK getting a veterinary agreement with the EU without a commitment to ‘dynamic alignment’ with the EU’s regulations on animal health, food safety, and plants. This would turn the UK into a rule-taker, limiting our ability to embrace new technologies and sign trade deals. It would be handing significant powers back to the EU, with the UK expected to adopt rules and decisions without any input from Parliament.”

https://order-order.com/2024/06/13/labour-manifesto-reveals-rejoin-eu-plan/ 

Words of wisdom - from Boris

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9337911/Dithering-Europe-is-heading-for-the-democratic-dark-ages.html

. If things go on as they are, we will see more misery, more resentment, and an ever greater chance that the whole damn kebab van will go up in flames. Greece will one day be free again – in the sense that I still think it marginally more likely than not that whoever takes charge in Athens will eventually find a way to restore competitiveness through devaluation and leaving the euro – for this simple reason: that market confidence in Greek membership is like a burst paper bag of rice – hard to restore.

Without a resolution, without clarity, I am afraid the suffering will go on. The best way forward would be an orderly bisection into an old eurozone and a New Eurozone for the periphery. With every month of dither, we delay the prospect of a global recovery; while the approved solution – fiscal and political union – will consign the continent to a democratic dark ages.

Are Greek euros safe?

£1 now buys you €1.25 - that is the most since October 2008 and 10 per cent more than this time last year.

But every silver lining has to have a grey cloud, and some of the wilder speculation right now involves the suggestion that holidaymakers should be worried about holding Greek euros.

That's because, while the Eurocrats would have you believe that every euro note is equal, there is one tiny crucial difference. 

The little-known way to spot where they come from is a letter in front of the serial number, pictured above. We explain here how to spot a German X from a Greek Y.

EC needs new agency for three-headed security database - But don't give it to Interpol, warns data supervisor

EC needs new agency for three-headed security database

By Joe Fay •

Posted in Government, 9th December 2009 13:47 GMT

The European Data Protection Supervisor has called for a new agency to be set up to oversee the massive three-horned citizen watching database proposed by Brussels earlier this year.

The Commission in June proposed an agency - "responsible for the long-term operational management of the second-generation Schengen Information System (SIS II), Visa Information System (VIS) and EURODAC.

New DNA Rules - The Register

New DNA rules may still breach human rights

Council of Europe unsatisfied