LONDON –Like so many others in this fiercely independent island nation, Steve Baker, a dashing English engineer, is fed up with the long hand of the European Union in British life.Read the rest here.
The E.U., he said, has meddled for years in British legal affairs and labor laws. But now the 27-nation body had gone too far by interfering with his pride and joy: the retrofitted KTM 950 motorcycle he rides on the country lanes of Buckinghamshire. Proposed new pan-European rules would forbid motorcycle owners from doctoring bikes themselves, outraging tens of thousands of British bikers and becoming the latest symbol here of continental authority run amok.
Baker is also the wrong biker to mess with. An elected member of the British Parliament, he is part of a growing rank of furious politicians ratcheting up the pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a national referendum on a once unthinkable notion here: leaving the E.U.
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5 comments:
One of the most fascinating aspects of this issue, is it is a matter that unites an increasing number of Labour and Conservative MPs, against the leaders of both parties.
Personally, I'm not convinced that the UK would be better out of Europe. But that said, I'm not convinced that it would be worse, either.
I know when I was living in England, I was amazed that you had to have a contractor's license (which was about ₤200 a year) just to own virtually any power tool. Saws, routers, virtually anything. I was told it was a holdover from the trade union days when the idea was that only trade union people (and Do It Yourselfers) would and could fix houses and stuff. Then it basically became like any tax revenue in that the government couldn't bear to part with all that revenue.
What has effectively happened is that there is now an entire generation of people who have absolutely no idea how to do anything from changing a faucet to building a wall, unless they are trained, professional carpentars.
I happened to hear at dinner one night at the seminary I was at the principle talking to a few folks about a raised garden bed in the gardens that had rotted and had to be rebuilt. The principle was afraid of how much that would going to cost to get it fixed.
I said I could fix it if they could get me a saw, hammer, and lumber. I had to go all the way down to London to find lumber (they don't have Lowe's or Home Depot), and so I came back and started working on it, and student and people from all over were coming to marvel at me building this thing, though I was not a professional carpenter. You'd have thought I had gone out to the courtyard and was building a rocket to go to the moon or something.
I had invented the rectangle!
Excuse me, Principal not principle. Typo-my bad.
Archer: Wow, I had no idea. That sounds so absolutely crazy. My father would wither away if deprived of his tools and his workshop.
A nannt state is not what the EU is. Police state is more nearly accurate.
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