It\u2019s a general truth that the more complex an organization, the more regulations it needs to be able to function. This is particularly true of the EU. Amid all the Brussels sprouting and to-ing and fro-ing, there are loads of bizarre European laws and guidelines sitting on our books which will need to be cleared out. Provided the UK continues to try to leave the EC before we all die of old age, we will as a nation be able to get rid of them after March 2019, but I mention them here as a useful reminder of the absurdity of Euro bureaucracy\u2026<\/p>\n
Vacuum Cleaners Suck: Except, following recent European legislation, most now don\u2019t. As from last month, you can\u2019t buy anything over 900 watts which (in extraction terms) is equivalent to an asthmatic wheeze rather than a full-blooded sucking (if you\u2019ll forgive the phrase!). This means that either British floors are dirtier than French or German ones and need more cleaning, or Health & Safety has decided that too many UK hamsters are inhaled by over powerful machines which obviously need to be less dangerous. This same energy saving scheme is also due to be applied to hair dryers, electric kettles and even lawn mowers. The idea is to use less energy and therefore be kinder to the environment, but it also shows that European legislators don\u2019t understand basic Physics. If I want to boil a kettle, I\u2019ll just have to wait a bit longer for my coffee but it\u2019ll still consume the same amount of electricity!<\/p>\n
Soapy Yellow Marigolds: There\u2019s a proposed European \u2018Personal Protective Equipment Regulation\u2019 that requires makers of rubber washing-up gloves to prove that they can withstand detergent. Of course, if you\u2019re going to try and wash up the dinner plates without using any Fairy Liquid or soap, it doesn\u2019t work very well. You\u2019ll also use up so much more hot water that the energy you\u2019ve saved using your low powered hair dryer (see above) would be cancelled out. That\u2019s Euro progress for you.<\/p>\n
Kinky Bananas: Euro regulations dictate that bananas must not be too bendy. A slight angle\u2019s OK, but\u2014according to the Brussels rule book\u2014grade one bananas \u201c\u2026must be free of abnormal curvature.\u201d Yes, seriously! If it\u2019s too kinky, it\u2019s relegated to grade 2 or 3. Also, the same rule was to have applied to cucumbers which should be \u201cpractically straight\u201d (i.e. bent by a gradient of no more than 10%) but luckily the cucumber law was repealed in 2008 owing to a rare outbreak of common sense.<\/p>\n
So Hungry, I Could Eat a Horse: While Euro laws say it\u2019s quite OK to eat horse meat (no doubt a result of French lobbying), it\u2019s apparently illegal to eat your horse if it\u2019s a pet. I don\u2019t know about you, but I wasn\u2019t aiming to eat a Misty the Mustang steak today, regardless of whether I knew its name. Obviously, it\u2019s inadvisable to pat your meat and talk to it and give it a sugar lump before you put it on your plate and consume it\u2026<\/p>\n
Balloon Horror: Children under 8 cannot blow up balloons in the EU without adult supervision. Hopefully this won\u2019t be a problem at our forthcoming kids\u2019 party when I rely entirely on young Billy (aged 7) to blow up my party balloons. I can\u2019t do it because I get all faint and fall over, but Billy\u2019s a champion blower. Perhaps I could hire him to do my hoovering? Worse than that, those squeaky party horns which expel long paper tongues when you blow into them (see picture) have now been classified in Europe as unsafe for all children under 14. This is an extraordinary piece of European Health & Safety rubbish. In Germany and Austria, it\u2019s legally OK to have sex at 14, but you\u2019re not allowed to blow on a whistle!<\/p>\n
And there are so many more regulations covering things like jams and marmalades (preserves must contain at least 60% sugar to be officially titled \u201cjam\u201d) and the labelling of light bulbs (100 watt bulbs are banned unless they\u2019re LED because they\u2019re only 16 watts or rather 1600 lumens which is utterly confusing).<\/p>\n
My favourite Euro conservation law concerns fossils and the environment. You\u2019re not allowed to remove ammonites from any rock if the little spirally creatures are less than 12 millimetres in diameter. This is to allow time for the smallest fossils to breed and create more baby ammonites which will help conserve stocks for sixty million years from now. Well\u2026 OK, I admit it. I made this one up \u2013 but all the others are 100% true. I think it\u2019s quite an attractive new law and is easily daft enough to be quietly squeezed under the door as current genuine European legislation. I\u2019m not sure that Brussels would notice the difference\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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