From 2011
North’s law of bureaucracy is simple to state: “Eventually, some bureaucrat will follow the rules exactly and do something incomparably silly.”
A fine example of this law is a regulation from the European Union’s bureaucrats that sellers of bottled water are not allowed to claim that their products, made of 100% water, reduce dehydration.
De-hydration = removal of water. Are we agreed? So, if you replace the missing water with water, you reverse de-hydration. Right? Not in Europe. Not any longer. That was then. This is now. We read in the London Telegraph:
EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.
Margaret Thatcher in 1988 warned her countrymen not to go into the EU. She lost her position as Prime Minister because of this in 1990. She was right. They were wrong.
The EU is about to tighten its grip on national finances. There will probably be a revision of the EU treaties that authorizes the EU to impose sanctions on countries that do not meet the EU’s deficit standards. The European Central Bank will be authorized to buy government bonds of PIIGS nations.
Why? Because the Eurocrats designed a monetary system that has led Europe to the abyss of bad debt. Solution: more bad debt. Big government rewards those who make bad decisions.
If you want to know what’s coming, have a glass of water when you are thirsty. Then consider the fact that European bottled water does not reverse dehydration.
And never forget: EVIAN spelled backwards is naive.
Continue reading on telegraph.co.uk.
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Published on November 18, 2011. The original is here.
Great Britain's departure from the EU on January 1 of this year has not led to the catastrophes the Remainers insisted would take place. Thatcher was right in 1988.
Klaus Schwab's great re-set would place these EU bureaucrats in charge of the European economy. They would share responsibility for the world's economy with similar bureaucrats all over the world.
It is not going to happen. China and India will not join. I doubt that Great Britain will join. I don't think the USA will join.
Thatcher put the choice starkly in 1988.
My first guiding principle is this: willing and active cooperation between independent sovereign states is the best way to build a successful European Community.To try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the centre of a European conglomerate would be highly damaging and would jeopardise the objectives we seek to achieve.
Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.
Some of the founding fathers of the Community thought that the United States of America might be its model.
But the whole history of America is quite different from Europe.
People went there to get away from the intolerance and constraints of life in Europe.
They sought liberty and opportunity; and their strong sense of purpose has, over two centuries, helped to create a new unity and pride in being American, just as our pride lies in being British or Belgian or Dutch or German.
I am the first to say that on many great issues the countries of Europe should try to speak with a single voice.
I want to see us work more closely on the things we can do better together than alone.
Europe is stronger when we do so, whether it be in trade, in defence or in our relations with the rest of the world.
But working more closely together does not require power to be centralised in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy.
Indeed, it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction.
We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
Certainly we want to see Europe more united and with a greater sense of common purpose.
But it must be in a way which preserves the different traditions, parliamentary powers and sense of national pride in one's own country; for these have been the source of Europe's vitality through the centuries.
A majority of British voters in 2016 voted to pull out. It took over four years to achieve this. Better late than never.
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