Nigel's gravy train

[Flashman]

His wife is paid well below the average of £60k and nothing in that article indicates he is doing anything wrong.. and all from an accuser who is facing charges already. I can't believe they have dedicated this much space to this rubbish.

Yup. It's pretty common practice amongst our own MP's. A non-story.

Its just the Tory press putting out their daily anti-UKIP story. All part of the run up to the May elections.

[DodgyAgent]

And a specific example that is relevant to recent events:

As Richard North and Christopher Booker were the first to note, these floods were the result of deliberate policy created by environmental activists within the EU who put wildlife before humans. These EU green diktats - such as the Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive - are the reason why, for example, the Environment Agency decided to abandon the longstanding practice of dredging the rivers in the Somerset Levels, thus allowing the area to flood.
At least as damaging as the EU's environmental directives are its policies regarding waste disposal, as introduced to UK law under the Waste Management Regulation of 1994. Where before, the silt dredged from our rivers could be freely dispersed on farmland as fertiliser, it must now be disposed of at great expense in licensed waste dumps. This is the primary reason why the costs of dredging our rivers have become so prohibitively high. And this applies not just to rivers like the ones in the Somerset Levels but also to our biggest river - the Thames - which is now only dredged occasionally to improve navigation, but not to improve water flow generally. Hence the current disastrous flooding in the Thames valley

[Mich the Tester]

The problem is its very difficult to say exactly what the proportion of EU Law to National Law actually is. The EU and National Governments have some many inter-connections now it is almost impossible to separate the two.

You're right. I can't really prove it but I get a feeling that both EU and national governments have been subjecting us all to a constant stream of regulation, much of it knee-jerk and ill advised, for decades now. Again, though, it's just a feeling. I don't know but I think the EU regulation of things is perhaps a symptom of a wider political or cultural malaise and just reflects what's going on in national parliaments. For example, this week the Dutch government announced that people with so-called 'level 4' qualifications, HND/professional qualifications, instead of 'level 5' or degrees, will no longer be allowed to teach in trade schools, (to raise educational standards supposedly) effectively ensuring that if your kid wants to become an electrician or a mechanic, instead of taking lessons from an experienced and qualified electrician or mechanic, he'll have to take lessons from somebody with a teaching degree whose knowledge of the subject might be inferior. This isn't the EU at work; it's busybodying national politicians whose only agenda is to get re-elected by spouting slogans regardless of the effects of those slogans and then 'taking action' to look like they're fulfilling their useless promises. I suspect the EU's problems are symptoms of this nonsense, not the cause.

But of course we only have lots of regulation because lots of people ask for lots of regulation; we seem to have a culture where everybody asks for something that somebody else does to be banned, taxed or regulated, and then everyone's surprised that pretty much everything's banned, taxed or regulated. I think it's a culture problem that runs deeper than politics or than quasi-permanent, but ultimately passing, institutions like the EU.

[Mich the Tester]

Here is 100 of them

http://www.openeurope.org.uk/Content...egulations.pdf

They're proposals for reducing EU regulation.

[Mich the Tester]

And a specific example that is relevant to recent events:

As Richard North and Christopher Booker were the first to note, these floods were the result of deliberate policy created by environmental activists within the EU who put wildlife before humans. These EU green diktats - such as the Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive - are the reason why, for example, the Environment Agency decided to abandon the longstanding practice of dredging the rivers in the Somerset Levels, thus allowing the area to flood.
At least as damaging as the EU's environmental directives are its policies regarding waste disposal, as introduced to UK law under the Waste Management Regulation of 1994. Where before, the silt dredged from our rivers could be freely dispersed on farmland as fertiliser, it must now be disposed of at great expense in licensed waste dumps. This is the primary reason why the costs of dredging our rivers have become so prohibitively high. And this applies not just to rivers like the ones in the Somerset Levels but also to our biggest river - the Thames - which is now only dredged occasionally to improve navigation, but not to improve water flow generally. Hence the current disastrous flooding in the Thames valley

As I asked earlier, do you think the Dutch blindly follow EU regulations when managing water?

[DodgyAgent]

here's another one:

Britain must succumb to EU's new olive oil diktat, say officials - Telegraph

May I suggest that from now you lot get yourselves some simple basic IT skills and run searches on something called "Google" (for the technical ones amongst you it can be found at: Google ) and search the words "EU" and "diktat"

[Mich the Tester]

here's another one:

Britain must succumb to EU's new olive oil diktat, say officials - Telegraph

May I suggest that from now you lot get yourselves some simple basic IT skills and run searches on something called "Google" (for the technical ones amongst you it can be found at: Google ) and search the words "EU" and "diktat"

EU drops olive oil jug ban after public outcry - Telegraph

Basically this was laughed out of parliament in Britain, NL and Germany. I distinctly rememeber the Dutch prime minister literally describing this as ´stupid´ and saying it would not be enforced in NL whatever the EU parliament thinks; it was very quickly dumped. An object lesson in how to deal with 'EU diktats' you don't like.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Speaking of the accuser ..... would, etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nicole_Sinclaire.JPG






Yes I do know about that, and I've seen the crying game.

[Mich the Tester]

Speaking of the accuser ..... would, etc

File:Nicole Sinclaire.JPG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia






Yes I do know about that, and I've seen the crying game.

Get stuffed!

[Mich the Tester]

And a specific example that is relevant to recent events:

As Richard North and Christopher Booker were the first to note, these floods were the result of deliberate policy created by environmental activists within the EU who put wildlife before humans. These EU green diktats - such as the Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive - are the reason why, for example, the Environment Agency decided to abandon the longstanding practice of dredging the rivers in the Somerset Levels, thus allowing the area to flood.
At least as damaging as the EU's environmental directives are its policies regarding waste disposal, as introduced to UK law under the Waste Management Regulation of 1994. Where before, the silt dredged from our rivers could be freely dispersed on farmland as fertiliser, it must now be disposed of at great expense in licensed waste dumps. This is the primary reason why the costs of dredging our rivers have become so prohibitively high. And this applies not just to rivers like the ones in the Somerset Levels but also to our biggest river - the Thames - which is now only dredged occasionally to improve navigation, but not to improve water flow generally. Hence the current disastrous flooding in the Thames valley

What, precisely, would happen to the UK's government if it were to say 'get stuffed, we are going to run our water defences as we see fit, just as the Dutch do, why don't you try stopping us'?

I'll tell you what would happen to them; fook all.