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One of the impacts of insisting that the working time directive is imposed upon the UK is going to be about medical training.
Laparoscopic surgery has been shown to reduce recovery time, hospital stays, infection rates and post-operative pain.
But the US study of 4,702 prostate cancer patients showed that it was harder to master than open surgery.
Surgeons had to perform around 750 keyhole operations before they achieved the same low level of disease recurrence as their traditional colleagues achieved after 250 procedures.
If you are, like most trainee surgeons, working a 60-70 hour week then you can get to your 750 operations target, the one where you are actually skilled and fully trained, a lot faster than you can if you´re forced into a chorter working week.
And it applies not just to prostate surgery of course, it applies to all. In the name of Europe we´re all to be operated on by half trained surgeons. Not quite what we want, eh?
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As the Daily Express points out:
The CAP costs British taxpayers £10.3billion-a-year and researchers claim it has made food here a fifth more expensive. It also gives our farmers a raw deal compared to the French, Germans and Italians.
Brussels bureaucrats have bound the agricultural industry in red tape and doled out millions of pounds in subsidies to wealthy landowners, claims the report Food For Thought, compiled by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
And as Nigel points out:
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the solution was to get out of Europe.
“Every British Prime Minister and opposition leader has promised at every single election that they will reform the CAP but they have not,” he said. “We will never reform the CAP because the French won’t let it happen. We’re paying a fortune for our food to subsidise rich landowners.”
It’s not possible to refom it from within. Simply not politically possible. So the only thing we can do is leave and be free of the entire nonsense.
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OIf course, the big news this morning is that Stuart Wheeler has come aboard. Here’s the piece he did for the Sunday Times explaining his decision:
This country has not been successfully invaded since William the Conqueror in 1066, yet most of our laws are now made in Brussels by unelected commissioners, who impoverish the people of the EU, while making fortunes for themselves. At the same time the Hungarians threaten that five million unemployed migrants will head West unless we bail them out. How much do they want? About £160 billion!
What is wrong with the EU and why is it so important? Above all – cost – it is astronomic. The chief difficulty for those who want to draw attention to it is that the figures are so awful that people think they cannot be true.
The well known economist Patrick Minford and the merchant banker Ian Milne put the cost at about £1,000 per annum for every man, woman, child and baby in this country.
Others think it is far more. Let us stick with £1,000 i.e. £4,000 for a typical family of four which, if it has only one breadwinner, has to live on an average of about £17,000 a year after tax.
How can this conceivably be worth it? What are the colossal benefits which could justify the enormous cost even in normal times, let alone in the worst recession for a very long time?
Remarkably the answer is that we get nothing we could not get by normal agreements and cooperation with the other members or with the EU itself. Ask a Europhile what the advantages are. You will get general waffle as an answer. Insist on specifics.
Pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?
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Now no, I´m no more enamoured of Le Pen than you are however, this is typical of the way that teh whole EU project works.
The prospect of Jean-Marie Le Pen becoming the father of the European Parliament led MEPs yesterday to start a frantic attempt to change their own rules to stop the far-right French politician from presiding over the new chamber.
Under the Parliament’s rules its inaugural session must be overseen by its doyen - the oldest MEP - which will be Mr Le Pen, 81, if he is re-elected for the French National Front in the elections in June.
Members who have just realised this are making a last-minute effort to block him, perhaps to give the honour of running the inaugural session on July 14 to the youngest member of the new Parliament.
Just let me make this clear again. No, I don´t think that giving Le Pen a platform for his grandstanding is a good idea.
However, as I say, this is typical of the way that the whole EU project works.
There are a set of rules. If the outcome of following those rules is something unliked then they change the rules. They´ve done this when having votes on the Constitution, the Lisbon Treaty, Maastricht and all of the rest.
That´s just not the right way, is it? Once the rules have been set then we play the game within them, not pick up our ball and go home if we don´t get our own way.
Or is this another one of those things that we British haven´t quite yet educated the world about?
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From the Financial Times:
Is it not time for the European Union to have a permanent president - as foreseen under its Lisbon treaty? The rotating presidency, under which each country, big or small, puts on its make-up and appears on stage for six months before making way for the next act, appears anachronistic.
You see, there’s this pesky thing called “the law” that stands in the way. It is indeed true that the Lisbon Treaty forsees a permanent President.
So, before we have a permanent President the Lisbon Treaty needs to come into effect. You don’t get to just bring in things without passing the law that allows such things to happen….
Ah, forgive me, I forgot, of course, we’re talking about the European Union here, aren’t we? The law, as with the voice of the people, is something to ignore not obey, isn’t it?
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Is that said foreigners don’t in fact speak the same language that we do.
“No”, for example, clearly means in eurospeak that you’ve given the wrong answer and must be asked again until you say “Yes”.
Another example might be the propaganda advertising for the upcoming euro-elections. We’ve just seen the pens and the buttons and you can see the website here.
The slogan is
“European Elections, it’s your choice”.
Anyone see the problem with that? Yes, you at the back there?
Well done, award yourself lashings of ginger beer.
If “European elections” is plural, the second part should read “they’re your choice”. If the second part is to be singular, then the first must read “European election”.
So, we can show that these people ruling us simply don’t speak the same language we do. Which really isn’t all that encouraging, is it?
The only alternative is that they’re illiterate, which isn’t any better.
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To be honest, this list of things that cannot be carried as hand baggage on an airplane because they could be used as weapons isn’t all that strange:
baseball bats, clubs or batons, cricket bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, kayak and canoe paddles, skateboards, snooker cues, fishing rods, martial arts equipment.
They all can indede be used as weapons.
But where we get the true lunacy, so symptomatic of the entire EU project, is here.
The European Commission has been forced to reveal the contents of the confidential memo to airlines outlining which everyday objects were considered a potential terrorist threat.
Security staff have used the list to stop passengers carrying skateboards, fishing roads and canoe paddles from taking them on-board – despite not being told they were banned.
Yopu see, the Commission’s position was “Yes, there is a law, but we’re not going to tell you what it is”.
That’s really not the way to run a continent, is it?
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Gisela Stuart may be a Labour MP (not the most popular of things to be right now) but she’s quite right here.
Just how difficult it is to work out what line they will take once elected is best illustrated by the fact that Conservative MEPs will sit and vote with the European People’s Party – the most federalist and integrationist group in Brussels.
Rather puts all of Cameron’s posturing over Europe into perspective, doesn’t it?
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As we know, the happy clappy idea of “Europe” is that if we all just talk to each other, cooperate, then everything will be just dandy. For example:
But common ground must be found, and soon, because the EU cannot afford countries to go bust, and it cannot afford disunity while negotiating with the US and China over the future of the global economy.
Whether or not you think it’s a lovely idea is one thing. But another, and a much more important thing it is too, is the question of whether there actually is common ground? If there isn’t, then no amount of talking and that happy clappy optimism about “Europe” will help.
And yes, I do think that in a number of areas there really is not common ground. Which is something of a problem for the very idea of the grand project, isn’t it?
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Simon Heffer on the near inevitable break up of the euro zone…he’s very good on this today. I particularly liked the last lines:
As for the rest of Europe, it must choose either to devalue and end the pretence of economic strength, or persist and risk the breakdown of individual governments. Either way, it is never glad confident morning again for the EU and its bastard currency. Milton was right.
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