A while back the EU Commission began their counter-attack against all our nasty tabloids who'd been making up stories about petty directives emanating from Brussels.
You might recall the headlines regarding Cucumber Curvature Directives and Bendy Banana Legislation. Well the Commission wasn't going to stand for this ridicule any longer and spent time and money issuing FAQ documents with titles like "Europe - The 10 biggest myths" to organisations such as Britain In Europe. They stated categorically that that there was no such thing as banana legislation being drafted and that we're all just being very silly. For a while the battle was beginning to be won and those of us who continued to bleat about excessive bureaucracy started to look a bit reactionary. "Check your facts next time!" was what we'd hear as we droned on about the pointy-headed drones in Brussels.
Funny then, hilarious in fact, that I've just found this document on Defra's own website. EU Directive 1677/88, clearly states that the maximum curvature of a class 1 cucumber must be no more than 10mm for each 10cm of length. In other words - cucumbers, like Italian Ministers, are allowed to be 10% bent. Those of us with a penchant for bananas should be glad to know that we're taken care of under EU Directive 2557/94, ruling that bananas may not be of "excessive curvature"
Surprised? As you splutter into your beer down at the Dog and Duck tonight you might also reflect on the old fallacy that the British pint itself would be outlawed and re-christened '0.57 of a litre'. The original author of the article in the Daily Telegraph, Daniel Hannan MEP received a terse call from an official at the UK Office of the Commission. "Of course it won't be illegal to sell pints" he was told. "Just as long as it isn't called a pint."
Whatever the case for or against Britain moving towards ever closer union, we should all reflect on the utter waste that is involved in drafting a 4 page directive on banana curvature and tranlating it into 25 languages. The mind boggles at the tens of thousands of Euros of taxpayers money being spent on this endless stream of nonsense.
Have a look at some of the other docs on the same Defra page. Jams and jellies is a good one. That's where they define carrots as fruit.
I've got several pieces on the subject on my blog. Researching one of them (and a TCS piece) I phoned the Ministry to find out what was the penalty for breaching such regulations. 3 months pokey and a 5,000 quid fine. Although they did point out that there were only 4 prosecutions last year.
Posted by: Tim Worstall | Monday, June 21, 2004 at 08:40 AM