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Re: The EU rule
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_han ... _after_all
There were in fact rules on Bananas, as the recent lifting shows, they were also routinely denied, and used as a way to mock those who werent quite sure the EU was worth its costs.
Hence the BBC article someone mentioned
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_han ... _after_all
Hang on: I thought it was all meant to be a scare story. Whenever Euro-enthusiasts found themselves losing an argument, they would say, "You're making all this up: it's a tabloid Euro-myth, like bent bananas".
Too bent? Too straight? All a load of nonsense
"Bent bananas" became a kind of Europhile recognition code. In the mouths (figuratively) of Euro-enthusiasts "bent bananas" were a short-hand for "every untrue allegation ever levelled by sceptics". Geoffrey Martin, who was for a long time the European Commission's senior representative in the UK, used to publish newsletters in which he rebutted these supposed fantasies, these false creations proceeding from the heat-oppressed brains of bigoted journalists. His collective name for the phenomenon was "bent banana syndrome".
Yet it now turns out that, by the EU's own admission, there were rules specifying the maximum permitted curvature of bananas. Now, Commission Regulation Number 2257/94, which lays down that bananas must be "free from abnormal curvature of the fingers", is to be scrapped.
How confusing it must all be for British Europhiles, trying to keep up with the party line. Having spent the past two decades denying the existence of these regulations, they are now congratulating the EU for having abolished them. The Young European Federalists, whose website yesterday was still pouring scorn on this absurd "Euro-myth" will doubtless be telling us that its repeal only goes to show how responsive Brussels is to public opinion.
It's like that eerie scene in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four where, during a rally against Eurasia, it is suddenly announced out that the alliances have shifted, and that Eurasia is now an ally:
"Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot."
The case against the EU never rested on bent bananas, square strawberries or curvy cucumbers, for Heaven's sake. It rested - and rests - on democracy. The EU is run by and for officials who are invulnerable to public opinion. It habitually disregards the wishes of its national electorates. It has become a self-serving racket, a handy way to make a living.
Bent bananas were cited less often by sceptics than by 'philes, who sought by implication to discredit all criticism of their project. The very ludicrousness of the regulation was what made it so very useful, for people were prepared, on this issue, to give Brussels the benefit of the doubt. If souverainistes were prepared to make up stories about bent bananas, ran the reasoning, why listen to their criticisms of, say, the Common Fisheries Policy or the fraudulent EU budget, or the European Constitution.
Here, for example, is the Labour MEP, Richard Corbett:
"From silly stories (such as the EP legislating that all bananas be straight) to more sinister ones (that ratifying the Lisbon Treaty would lead to armed foreign police patrolling British streets), no opportunity, no matter how far-fetched, is missed to portray the EU as an 'evil Empire'."
I don't want to be curmudgeonly. The repeal of any EU regulation is a rare and laudable event. At a time when food prices are high, and may be about to rise higher thanks to the EU's proposed rules on pesticides, it was scandalous to be discarding edible food on aesthetic grounds. Brussels has, on this occasion, done the right thing.
Still, the episode serves to remind us that even the most implausible-sounding criticisms of the EU often turn out to be true. Did you know that the European Parliament has three permanent seats, and oscillates to and fro like a mediaeval royal court? Or that Brussels is subsidising the building of fishing boats in Spain decommisioning British trawlers? Or that it is paying for tobacco to be grown in Greece while cracking down on smoking in the EU. Euro-myths? Yeah, right: like those bent bananas.
There were in fact rules on Bananas, as the recent lifting shows, they were also routinely denied, and used as a way to mock those who werent quite sure the EU was worth its costs.
Hence the BBC article someone mentioned
I'm a realist, not a hippie