On Mar 27, 10:04=A0am, Norbert Liecfeldt wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:44:36 +0000, Les Invalides wrote:
> > judith posted
> >>None of this says that cucumbers or bananas must be straight.
>
> > Of course not. But neither did the newspapers claim that it did; just
> > that there was a new European law that was going to be a bloody nuisance=
> > to retailers by imposing stupid rules on the straightness or curvature
> > of bananas etc. As Gaz has already said, many of the newspapers reported=
> > it unfairly; but in essence the story was true. The EC *did* impose such=
> > regulations.
>
> That's the essence of the free market. If you want to avoid unfair
> competition, e.g. allow the Dutch to market their inferior cucumbers as
> "extra-class" in the UK when UK producers might have to follow the more
> stringent UK regulations (whatever they might have been) and Class
> equivalent cucumbers as Class 2, then you need a EU wide regulation.
> Unless you want to bring everything down to the lowest common
> denominator, which would be an alternative. Or stop the free flow of
> goods, which would be another alternative.
Alternatively, you could let the producers and buyers of cucumbers
come of with their own classification without EU intervention, but
that would not be the Brussles way and would not help keep eurocrats
in their jobs.
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