30 Mar 2017

And Then, A Shock...

I was greatly shocked this morning to discover that we’re still in that EU thingy even though we did the 50 yesterday. Apparently it’s going to take two years, at a minimum, to actually leave owing to the complexities of the leaving negotiations. Do you think those ‘up there’ are aware that ol’ Mao managed to march his men through five thousand miles plus of inhospitable Chinese terrain, during the Long March, in only one year? All done without computers, smartphones and, as hard as it is to believe, without Twitter.

Surely someone in government or a civil serpent has been keeping records, firstly on paper and later digitised to a really big, searchable spreadsheet? You know, with columns an’ such, marked something along the lines of,  What the EU Demand - with two tickable columns next to it marked Done and Not Done. What the EU Would Like Us To Do – Did & Didn’t. What We/They Have Asked For As A Special Favour – Granted or Refused. And so on. Oh, and if you lot want to buy any stuff we make, drop the manufacturer a line and I’m sure they’ll get it to you and we’ll do the same from our end; just like going to the shops really, okay?

Do the same with all their regulations that have been foisted upon us. Again, there must be a check-list. Mustn’t there? Tick the ones we want to keep, assuming there are some good ones, and cross out the bad ones. There HAS to be a basic, simple check-list as nobody is going to wade through things such as that below. Is it genuine or a spoof? I have no idea but it makes me smile.

The Ground Nuts Order of 1972: In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground).

Having typed all the above and reading, again, the Ground Nuts Order and assuming it’s genuine and the civil serpents are going to ‘negotiate’ every such regulation, two years suddenly does, indeed, seem a tad tight. Alternatively, as we’re no longer members of that club, we could just run all the membership paperwork through a shredder and we’d be back to ground zero. However, it may well take two years plus to shred it all...

Quote;  G. K. Chesterton.

“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.”

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