You couldn't make it up!
HOSPITAL BEDS:
Hungary learns to cut back, the EU way
The European Union is a wonderful thing. It endeavours to provide a level playing field for all its member states, as Hungary has just discovered.
Hungary is one of the newer members of the EU – it joined in 2004 – and it has been told it must phase out 9,000 hospital beds in order to be in line with the EU average.
Hungary currently supplies 780 hospital beds per 100,000 people compared with the EU average of 640 per 100,000. This restructuring will cost Hungary around £72m (US$140m).
Lajos Molnar, Hungary’s health minister, describes his country’s health service as “excessively wasteful”.
Too right, make ‘em wait like they have to in the rest of Europe.
(Source: British Medical Journal, 333: 1140).
A GREAT CHANCELLOR?
Is our Prime Minister the phenominal economist his spin doctors say he is? You might enjoy reading Vernon Coleman's new book "Gordon is a Moron" an analysis of Brown's Chancellorship. Price £9.99 + 99p post and packing from June Press, PO Box 119, Totnes, Devon, TQ9 7WA. or web sales at http://www.junepress.com
IS YOUR POST OFFICE CLOSING?
Post Offices in your area having to be closed? Due to EU rules, the British Government no longer has the right to provide the traditional £150M Social Network Payment which has kept small local Post Offices in business. Around 2500 Post Office closures are required under this EU imposition during 2007.
Under Article 88 of the Treaty of Amsterdam, signed by this Labour Government, the payment will have to cease, throwing thousands of Post Office staff out of work.
Incidentally, the new confusing regulations on sizes and weights of letters and packages are directly imposed under the EU Postal Directive (97/67/EC). which also forces postal services into greater competition with firms such as the German state-owned DHL. Yet Tony Blair, whose government allowed this to happen, blamed postal workers themselves for failing to attract greater business, all the time themselves taking more and more services away from the Post Office. Conservative and Lib-Dem politicians shout about this, but won't admit that they too would be powerless under the EU rules.
WINE WHINE!
"The trouble is that Europe is producing far too much wine, and, in the EU at least, they seem to think they have a right to do so. The absurd and wasteful agricultural subsidy which sloshes in waves from Brussels to all the wine regions of the EU must stop. It is our money, our billions, that are being wasted. We want to spend our money on wine we like, and our taxes on something more worthwhile than subsidising more than a million hectares of substandard European vineyards". [Oz Clarke. Introduction to his book "OZ Clarke's Wine Buying Guide 2007] And by the way, much of the EU wine production is reduced to biofuel. Probably dont have to do much to some of the rougher wines.
THE BBC (BRUSSELS BROADCASTING CORPORATION)
Following recent receipt of loans of over £50 Millions, the BBC, with its coffers already stuffed by the licence-payer, is out to borrow a further £75 Millions. From where? From the European Investment Bank. What's that? "an autonomous body set up to finance capital investment furthering European integration by promoting EU policies". so that explains a lot, doesn't it?
TAKE A LOOK AT:-
http://www.democracymovement.org.uk
http;//www.letsgovernourselves.com
WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS EU ANYWAY?
"We must have a European legal system, a European appeal court, a common currency, the same weights and measures, the same laws." Napoleon, around 1805 to Joseph Fouche.(Fouche II/114)
DID YOU NOTICE?
If you are British, the recent register of electors from the local council showed your nationality as British Commonwealth/Irish. Yet another EU Directive that slipped through the net unannounced.
GERMANS NOT IN WW2
"The re-writing of history is essential to protect the eyes of EU citizens. The First World War was a civil war, and the Germans were not in the Second. This point was contested by Polish MEPs, who were told 'No, they were Nazis'"! (Recorded by Mike Nattrass FRICS. MEP UKIP) .
WHAT'S IT FOR?
"What I found horrified and mystified me.... It became intolerable to work within what had come to seem like a bureaucratic nightmare. The crisis into which the EU has fallen since the French and Dutch referendums is not new. The Union and the Commission in particular have been in permanent crisis for at least 10 years... It is not just that the Commission fails to explain what the EU is for - difficult enough in the absence of a shared view, its modus operandi displays an outrageous lack of common sense." [Jim Dougal, EU bureau chief in Belfast 1997-2002 and head of UK representation 2002-2004. in Financial Times]
DEMOCRACY, OR WHAT?
The UK government is advertising in the EU house magazine for companies interested in running the new Identity Card system in the UK. Well, it hasn't been approved by Parliament, but, never mind, that can be arranged, no doubt. Not advertising in The Guardian?
WET AND DRY? OR HIGH AND DRY?
They have no coastline. No international mariners ply their non-existant waters.You might be excused for thinking that landlocked Hungary and Slovakia would not be required to enact EU regulations on safety at sea. Never underestimate the Brussels bureaucracy.
The Hungarian government has apparently failed to respect EU laws on the "availability of port facilities for ship-generated waste". Of course, Hungary has no visiting ships, no ports, and therefore no need for facilities in which to store this waste. But that is not the point, according to the EU Commission as "Transposition of the Directive by Hungary is needed in view of the obligation on masters of ships". Well, fancy that!
GOVERNMENT MEDICAL SPIN
If you are one of the millions who suspect the veracity of medical information issued by governments and the EU, help is at hand at
FUNNY, THAT