Roger Gambba-Jones

That's how I feel everytime I read yet another report of some individual, business or organisation being trampled by bureaucracy.  The metric martyrs, Post Offices and the RNLI to name but three!

Many people of importance and who actually know what they're talking about, are equally angered by such things and yet nothing changes - so what chance do I stand! 

The link below gives details of how our own government and its ever increasing army of petty and small minded bureaucrats, who love to gold plate every rule, continues to work so hard to bury this country under an avalanche of EU legislation.  The level playing field that is supposed to be the bedrock of European unity, appears to be anything but.  This island of ours is tilting towards Europe both physically and mentally!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/09/do0906.xml

Even if you don't read it all, read the horror story about the used oil recycling company that is being strangled by our lunatic interpretation of the EU regs.  

You don't need to have real knowledge of the EU and its mountain of rules and regs, to see the difference between us and them - them being the rest of Europe.  Visit any of our European ‘partners' and you will see glaring examples of them doing their own thing and more often than not, in a way that the citizens of England have been told is no longer allowed.

Not long ago I was visiting Holland and was taken to a brand new shopping centre.  It was so new that it wasn't actually finished.  It was so not finished, that the car park everybody was using had piles of builder's stuff everywhere.  Also, the stairs out of it to the shops were rough concrete, without handrails and a 15 foot (sorry it couldn't be feet could it, it's all metric over there) a 5 metre drop either side.  Could you imagine our health and safety police allowing that to happen here?

Bottom line is, that as the credit crunch turns in to a recession, this English fixation with ‘the rules' is going to title the playing field even more!

God only knows how we are going to gloss over the farce of the recycling targets everybody is forced to chase, now that nobody actually wants to buy the stuff.  One things for sure, nobody in this government will have the balls to tell the EU where to stick their landfill taxes, even when they have to start paying 10's of thousands a day of our money to store the mountains of unwanted stuff.