... bananas to EU ...
I belong to a group where I can practice public speaking. I decided to talk about Europe - and I tried to explain that I felt that being part of the EU was having an enhanced nationalist - ie I'm English first - but with the addition of being European. This is different to say most Americans - who are generally American - but a few from places such as Texas or New Yorker - may think of themselves as Texans or New Yorkers first - American second.
I illustrated my talk with a banana - scenes of the non-existent battle between Britain and Germany over the shape of banana - as letters in the Mail stated - we didn't fight a war so that the Germans can tell us what shape our bananas are - and I heartily agree - none of my history text books mention the banana as even a minor cause of the conflict.
So I pointed out that the conflict - was in fact a negotiation - where the civil servant in charge of bananas - discussed, chatted and argues - at great expense to the EU taxpayers - the shape and import regulations and quotas concerning bananas - and the great EU Banana Strategy was developed. The Germans ending up straight bananas and the British with their more curved variety.
Then I described the 'Great Banana Trade War' where America - who doesn't grow commercially any bananas was attacking the EU - who don't grow commercially bananas - because the guy who had all the banana concessions in South America paid considerable amounts of money into the Democrat and Republican parties - so we had a feud that threatened a blockade of French cheese and Scottish knitwear being imported into the US or having massive import taxes put onto them. This was eventually resolved by the World Trade Organisation.
Then in Britain we had the 'Metric Martyrs' - some jobsworth in the Trading Standards department decided to prosecute a market stall holder for selling bananas by the pound. This is just an example of bad implementation of EU law. Nobody buys bananas by weight - you buy by the hand - and how the stall holder works out the price is his business. I believe there should be a conversion table set up on a noticeboard in every marketplace so that buyers can convert.
I illustrated my talk with a banana - scenes of the non-existent battle between Britain and Germany over the shape of banana - as letters in the Mail stated - we didn't fight a war so that the Germans can tell us what shape our bananas are - and I heartily agree - none of my history text books mention the banana as even a minor cause of the conflict.
So I pointed out that the conflict - was in fact a negotiation - where the civil servant in charge of bananas - discussed, chatted and argues - at great expense to the EU taxpayers - the shape and import regulations and quotas concerning bananas - and the great EU Banana Strategy was developed. The Germans ending up straight bananas and the British with their more curved variety.
Then I described the 'Great Banana Trade War' where America - who doesn't grow commercially any bananas was attacking the EU - who don't grow commercially bananas - because the guy who had all the banana concessions in South America paid considerable amounts of money into the Democrat and Republican parties - so we had a feud that threatened a blockade of French cheese and Scottish knitwear being imported into the US or having massive import taxes put onto them. This was eventually resolved by the World Trade Organisation.
Then in Britain we had the 'Metric Martyrs' - some jobsworth in the Trading Standards department decided to prosecute a market stall holder for selling bananas by the pound. This is just an example of bad implementation of EU law. Nobody buys bananas by weight - you buy by the hand - and how the stall holder works out the price is his business. I believe there should be a conversion table set up on a noticeboard in every marketplace so that buyers can convert.
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