The EU Legislative Process

Here we are standing at the donkey pogo-stick recycling centre, set up under the new EU regulations that requires all domesticated and semi-domesticated animals to have their toys, playthings and other accessories all made fully recyclable.

No, I don’t know why either.

 

The recent law outlawing the keeping of budgies in Wales that are not fully bi-lingual inn English and Welsh, the Scottish law protecting wild Haggi from being discriminated against when they apply for jobs as assistant lighthouse keepers, and other such strange ‘Equality’ Legislation has been emerging from the EU at an ever-increasing rate. This turn of events, it has always been assumed, is due to the commissioners, civil servants and MEPS in the European parliament spending a little too much time making laws in the afternoons after some long, and mainly liquid-based, lunches.

However, some have begun to question this theory, especially since the recent laws forcing Spanish badgers to sit mandatory accounting qualifications and the rule that makes all Germans not engaged in essential trout diversity-awareness training to learn to whistle Abba’s Greatest Hits whilst engaged in any act of sexual self-stimulation. Some commentators have decided a more plausible

Explanation is what they call the Release Brian Effect. As one political journalist covering the European Parliament explained:

Making laws is actually a very dull job and politicians, especially in the European Parliament, soon get very bored with it all. As we have seen with the Labour government in Britain if you give people the power to make laws then they will make laws, no matter how stupid, pointless, absurd or contradictory. The problem in the case of the UK is those in the Labour party spent far too long in opposition theorising about how to make the world a better place to fit their prejudices. Hence, the swift descent into authoritarianism and tight social control when the world in reality does not fit their pre-conceived theories and outright prejudices.

Here in the EU, though, it is different. For most of the politicians here, it is a bit like a holiday; they are away from home and have loads of spending money through lavish expenses which they only have to turn up to claim. Inevitably, after a bit though even that starts to wear a bit thin. So we think that, like the crowd haranguing the Roman governor in the Life of Brian film, coming up with even more names for him to make himself look foolish, these politicians are coming up with more and more absurd laws, just… well, basically, just to see what happens, see what they can get away with. And then the British government and its agencies, all full of people who pride themselves on having no imagination, sense of humour, or even common sense, have a sort of orgasmic delight in enforcing laws, the more absurd the law the more they enjoy enforcing it. So, in a way it becomes a bit of a contest, with the EU coming up with more absurd laws, daring the bureaucracies to enforce them and the bureaucracies, topping that by enforcing these stupid laws. Eventually, we hope one side will give up when they realise a law is just too stupid or absurd to be enforced, even by the British jobsworths. Although, admittedly, that could take some time.