Cadbury's Dairy Milk and The Absurdity Of European Rules

Apparently, Cadbury's Dairy Milk will no longer be able to use the slogan "a glass and a half of milk in every bar" on its wrappers.  





EU rules apparently mean that Cadbury's will, instead, have to use the slogan, "the equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate."  Not quite as catchy is it?


Isn't this just petty and nonsensical?  Is there any wonder that ordinary people across Europe are becoming increasingly detached by the unelected, meddling monolith that is the EU?


It's a shame that Cadbury's didn't decide to hold on to its heritage, rather than caving in to the bureaucratic nonsense of EU rules.

Who Does This European Commissioner Think She Is?

This is Viviane Redding.


She is a European Commissioner.


Nobody, of course, elected her to that position.  And the people certainly cannot remove her from that position. Despite this, she has more power than most elected politicians in Europe.  That, to most people who love democracy, is a pretty unacceptable situation.


On Tuesday, this lady took it upon herself to lecture a national Government in the most remarkable terms, describe the French policy regarding the Roma as both a "disgrace" and "shocking".  She then went on to compare Sarkozy's policy with the atrocities of the 1930s.   She said, "this is a situation I would have thought Europe would not have to witness again."


The response of the French Minister for Europe was pretty damning:


"France is a big sovereign country, we're not at school."


This whole things just sums up what is wrong with the EU at present.  An unelected, all powerful Commissioner lecturing elected national politicians in the most remarkable terms.  The EU must learn to respect democracy or it will continue to drift further and further from the people of Europe.

The 'Eurobarometer' Shows How Out Of Touch the EU Is

Every year, the EU spend more of our money in a survey of European public opinion called the 'Eurobarometer'.   It shows quite how out of touch and distant European elites have grown from ordinary people.  Of course, we didn't need an expensive piece of taxpayer funded market research to tell us that.  The casually ignored French, Irish and Dutch referenda all made that quite clear.  Nevertheless, there is plenty in the Eurobarometer report to have the bureaucrats of Brussels sobbing into their beer.  Here are the 'highlights':

A minority of Europeans now believe that EU membership is a 'good thing'

Despite the fact that we are always told that Euroscepticism is a 'little Englander' idea, it also seems to have a fairly strong following throughout the EU.  Only 49% of people regard EU membership as a 'good thing'.  The % of people who regard it as a 'bad thing' is at a record high.  Public opinion has turned against the EU in all but four member states.

More Europeans do not trust the EU than trust it.  Only 20% of people in Britain trust the EU


47% of people surveyed do not trust the EU.  Only 42% say that they trust it.

And in the UK, trust in the EU stands at a miserly 20% (hats off to my fellow countrymen).  Check out the chart below, which has a country by country breakdown (hat tip EU Referendum blog):



The only surprising thing is that 20% seems a bit high!.

British people associate the EU with 'bureaucracy' and 'waste of money'.  The Greeks associate it with unemployment.


The pollsters gave a series of nice, benign words like 'peace' and 'prosperity' for people to choose from when answering the question, 'what do you most associate with the EU'.  To this, 28% of Brits said 'waste of money' and 26% said bureaucracy.  27% of Greeks associate the EU primarily with unemployment, 28% of Portugese and 46% of Cypriots associate it primarily with unemployment (not massively surprising given the EU sponsored deflation happening in Greece and Portugal).

This annual report is useful to highlight quite how out of touch the EU is with the citizens of Europe.  They will, of course, continue to ignore the people and continue to impose top down political integration on a hostile citizenry.