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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (6897)	3/26/2008 5:00:47 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 13056

Foolish European Union Regulations Two stories from the British press highlight regulatory excess from the Brussels bureaucracy. The Times reports that a winemaker is being harrassed because he is selling his wares in 37.5cl bottles instead of the 50cl or 35cl sizes allowed by European regulation: An award-winning winemaker whose wares are sold at the royal palaces is facing a £30,000 bill after European bureaucrats ruled that he was using the wrong-shaped bottles. Jerry Schooler, who sells 400,000 bottles of fruit wines and mead a year, has been threatened with prosecution over his determination to use traditional measurements. The proprietor of the Lurgashall Winery in West Sussex, has been told to halt the sale of beverages such as mead, silver birch wine and bramble liqueur in 75cl and 37.5cl bottles. If he continues to sell them, he could be taken to court under a new EU directive that permits the sale of such products in 70cl, 50cl or 35cl measures only. …Mr Schooler now faces costs of about £30,000 to change his production line. “We are going to have to change all our bottling, the labels, machinery, boxes and maybe the corks as well and it is going to cost me thousands to do it,” he said. …West Sussex County Council’s trading standards department said that the winery was bound by EU Directive 2007/45/EC, which was drawn up in September to “lay down rules on nominal quantities for prepacked products”. It said the directive meant that the use of 37.5cl bottles for liqueurs was illegal. The absurdity of this story makes one wonder how such a regulation came into existence. Did a bureaucrat wake up on the wrong side of the bed one day and decide that wine should only be sold in bottles of certain sizes? Is there some sort of crazy health or safety rationale for the regulation? Speaking of which, that’s the alleged reason for a regulation that is forcing English bus companies to make customers disembark in the middle of routes. This foolish regulation apparently is designed to prevent driver fatigue, but, as reported by the Sun, the practical effect is to make people waste their time: Thousands of passengers are being forced to hop off buses midway through journeys to comply with barmy EU laws. A Brussels ruling has banned local services longer than 30 miles to ensure drivers don’t spend too long at the wheel. As a result, drivers have to pull in as they hit that limit and order everyone off their bus. They then change the route number on the front and invite passengers to jump back on before resuming the trip. …Western Greyhound has split its Newquay to Plymouth route in three — even though it uses a single driver throughout. Passengers must buy three tickets and break their journey twice. Managing director Mark Howarth said: “It’s a farce. We have to kick customers off as soon as the driver hits the 30-mile limit. “Often it’s in the middle of nowhere. Passengers think we’re crazy.” cato-at-liberty.org Unfortunately, the EU Is What Many US Politicians Long to Emulate coyoteblog.com