Richard Litttlejohn on Brussels' tentacles interfering in every aspect of our lives and some of the big stories of the week - more Elf N Safety madness; pathetic Labour MPs attacking David Cameron for saying "bunch of migrants" during PMQs; the pro-EU campaign group Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE); capsizing yachts; police helicopters; and inflatable dolls.
We'll import paper boys from Lithuania next... As EU meddlers target teenagers' jobs, RICHARD LITTLEJOHN on Brussels' tentacles interfering in every aspect of our lives
By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail
29 January 2016
Daily Mail
While Call Me Dave steps up his dishonest, intelligence-insulting charade of pretending to renegotiate Britain's membership of the European Union, back in the real world the madness gathers pace inexorably.
The latest target of the meddling eurocrats is the good old British paper boy. Brussels has just announced that allowing children to deliver newspapers before school is a violation of their fundamental rights.
It is a breach of the European Social Charter and could harm their education because it affects their 'attendance, receptiveness and homework'. Furthermore, the EU wants to limit the ability of children to work during school holidays, claiming it puts their 'health, moral welfare and development' at risk.
The latest target of the meddling eurocrats is the good old British paper boy. Brussels has just announced that allowing children to deliver newspapers before school is a violation of their fundamental rights
Where do they find these people? It's none of their damn business if British children want to earn some pocket money by delivering morning newspapers or working in a coffee bar at half-term.
That should be a matter for their parents and, if there are to be regulations governing the hours children should work, for elected British politicians — not faceless, unelected foreign commissars.
As it happens, the eurocrats couldn't be more wrong about the alleged detrimental impact of youngsters taking part-time jobs. Far from undermining 'health, moral welfare and development', it has the diametric opposite effect. Show me a kid who has done a paper round or a Saturday job in a coffee bar and I'll show you a model citizen in the making.
You won't find many of them growing up into the kind of adult happy to lie in bed all day, claiming benefits, while the rest of the world goes out to earn an honest living.
What could be healthier than turning out every morning to deliver papers, feeling the fresh breeze in your face? I speak from experience.
My first step on the career path which led to this column was getting a paper round at the age of 11. Cycling at least five miles every day to houses in outlying villages and on new estates, I've probably never been healthier.
It not only taught me the discipline of having to report for work, on time, but also the satisfaction of earning my own money. OK, so I may have spent most of my wages on sweets, cigarettes and comics in the newsagent's shop I was working for, but that's not the point.
What could be healthier than turning out every morning to deliver papers, feeling the fresh breeze in your face?
If I was late for school, it was only because I spent more time reading the papers than it should have taken to deliver them.
Many's the time an irate customer looked out of his window to see me sitting on the front wall scouring the sports pages of his Daily Wossname.
When I was a young teenager, living in Peterborough, pretty much every kid I knew had some kind of job — milk round, grocery round, Saturday girl at the hair salon.
In the summer, I worked as a temporary car park attendant at the local agricultural showground, or distributed leaflets to earn a few quid. Some of my friends went fruit-picking in the Fens, although that source of employment has long since been snaffled by Eastern European immigrants — another triumph for the EU.
No wonder East Anglian towns such as Boston and Wisbech are now officially the most segregated in the country.
Soon, if Brussels has it way, we'll be importing paper boys from Lithuania and Latvia, too.
This may seem like small beer to Dave and the 'deal at any price' brigade, but it gets to the heart of what's wrong with Britain's disastrous European adventure.
While the politicians squabble about the semantics of 'ever closer union', the reality is that we are no longer the masters of our own destiny. What should be purely domestic matters, such as whether kids are able to become paper boys, are dictated by the EU. The tentacles of Brussels interfere in virtually every single aspect of our everyday lives.
Recently, I drew your attention to the absurd ban on inshore bass sports angling around our coast — while foreign trawlers are permitted to carry on depleting stocks by the tonne.
Why should the EU decide how many fish we are allowed to catch on Britain's beaches?
The same goes for business regulation, which is suffocating small companies. While multi-nationals are content to go along with Brussels directives for the sake of the single market, 95 per cent of businesses in Britain have no dealings with Europe.
Yet they are all still expected to comply with every costly cough and spit of EU legislation.
The self-serving political class may be desperate not to be excluded from the lobster supper circuit or lose 'influence', but the rest of us have to put up with the unnecessary excesses of perverse European lawmakers daily extending their powers.
The 'Common Market' we thought we were joining 40-odd years ago has morphed into an anti-democratic behemoth dedicated to wiping out all vestiges of national sovereignty.
As the Tory MP Peter Bone has noted: 'The founders of the Council of Europe did not have in mind paper rounds when talking about human rights.'
They do now. But Dave's not even attempting to repatriate any of the powers successive governments have so carelessly given away.
And if that's not a good reason to vote 'Leave' I don't what is.
Feeding off the success of Strictly, ballroom dancing has enjoyed a strong revival. It's particularly popular among people of a certain age, who not only remember the heyday of the local Palais but find tripping the light fantastic a far more agreeable way to keep fit than pumping iron.
Naturally, this has not gone unnoticed in elf'n'safety circles. Those who dedicate their lives to saving us from ourselves have been quick to identify the inherent risks to life and limb posed by the tango and the peppermint twist.
A couple of years ago, I brought you news that Blackpool Council had ordered 16 wooden dance-floors at centres used by pensioners to be carpeted over. There were fears that they could fall and hurt themselves.
Now we learn that in some areas, ballroom dancing is being banned altogether. For the past eight years, Saturday night hops have been held at the Trinity Centre, in Llandudno, regularly attracting up to 40 dancers aged between 60 and 85.
But permission for the dances has just been withdrawn. The management was concerned that the floor was becoming too slippery because some people were using accelerant on the soles of their shoes.
I have visions of ultra-competitive dancers spraying their pumps with WD40 to gain an advantage in the fandango, only to find themselves slip-slidin' away like Bambi on ice and causing motorway-style multiple pile-ups.
Dance organisers Ted and Doris Harding, from Colwyn Bay, say if the floor is dangerous it is only because the centre is using the wrong kind of polish. Accidents do happen, admittedly. My mate Charlie once ended up in A&E after breaking his ankle while foolishly attempting the jitterbug at an over-65s singles night. But that's still no reason to ban it.
The next time elf'n'safety tries to stop you doing the Wall Street Shuffle, just tell them to foxtrot oscar.
Posturing Pixie and the Calais wild bunch
The ghastly Pixie Balls-Cooper was indignant. Point of order, Mr Speaker. How dare Call Me Dave describe the invading army of military-age men in Calais trying to gatecrash Britain as a 'bunch of migrants'?
Chuka Umunna, Labour's self-styled 'Britain's Obama', accused Cameron of using 'dehumanising language'. Oh, for heaven's sake. Grow up.
If you ask me, Dave was being polite. I can think of plenty of ways of describing the lawless rabble of violent, would-be illegal immigrants massed on the French coast. And 'bunch' would be the least offensive, believe me.
Chuka Umunna, Labour's self-styled 'Britain's Obama', accused Cameron of using 'dehumanising language'. Oh, for heaven's sake. Grow up
This pathetic, confected outrage proves yet again how out of touch the modern Labour Party is with the people it purports to represent.
And, as for Pixie, her hypocrisy stinks. She's demanding Britain does more for migrants, but has yet to make good on her promise to house a Syrian family in one of her own two beautiful homes.
Perhaps we'll take her more seriously when we see her on the doorstep, arm round her new lodgers, singing:
'I've got a luvverly bunch of immigrants . . .'
"During the war...": Only Fools and Horses' Albert Trotter
Two septuagenarian yachtsmen have just been rescued for the ninth time in seven months after their boat capsized in a Cornish harbour.
One of them, Albert Trotter, from Peckham, told BBC Radio Cornwall: 'During the war...'
A very nasty case of BSE
The abbreviation of the fanatically pro-EU group Britain Stronger in Europe is BSE, which just happens to be the acronym of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, aka Mad Cow Disease.
BSE attacks the brain and causes a lack of co-ordination, detachment from reality and increased aggression. There is no known cure.
Victims also start to harbour a belief that they can jump over the moon. Eventually, they collapse under their own body weight because they don't have a leg to stand on.
We can only hope.
The first police helicopter story of the year comes from Bristol, where the airborne division responded to reports of a 'woman in distress' in the Avon Gorge. When they got there, they found . . . a goat bleating.
Meanwhile, down the coast in Newquay, the RNLI launched a lifeboat to rescue another woman seen floating in the water. The lifeless body turned out to be a deflated sex doll.
At least it wasn't a blow-up goat.
We'll import paper boys from Lithuania next... As EU meddlers target teenagers' jobs, RICHARD LITTLEJOHN on Brussels' tentacles interfering in every aspect of our lives
By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail
29 January 2016
Daily Mail
While Call Me Dave steps up his dishonest, intelligence-insulting charade of pretending to renegotiate Britain's membership of the European Union, back in the real world the madness gathers pace inexorably.
The latest target of the meddling eurocrats is the good old British paper boy. Brussels has just announced that allowing children to deliver newspapers before school is a violation of their fundamental rights.
It is a breach of the European Social Charter and could harm their education because it affects their 'attendance, receptiveness and homework'. Furthermore, the EU wants to limit the ability of children to work during school holidays, claiming it puts their 'health, moral welfare and development' at risk.
The latest target of the meddling eurocrats is the good old British paper boy. Brussels has just announced that allowing children to deliver newspapers before school is a violation of their fundamental rights
Where do they find these people? It's none of their damn business if British children want to earn some pocket money by delivering morning newspapers or working in a coffee bar at half-term.
That should be a matter for their parents and, if there are to be regulations governing the hours children should work, for elected British politicians — not faceless, unelected foreign commissars.
As it happens, the eurocrats couldn't be more wrong about the alleged detrimental impact of youngsters taking part-time jobs. Far from undermining 'health, moral welfare and development', it has the diametric opposite effect. Show me a kid who has done a paper round or a Saturday job in a coffee bar and I'll show you a model citizen in the making.
You won't find many of them growing up into the kind of adult happy to lie in bed all day, claiming benefits, while the rest of the world goes out to earn an honest living.
What could be healthier than turning out every morning to deliver papers, feeling the fresh breeze in your face? I speak from experience.
My first step on the career path which led to this column was getting a paper round at the age of 11. Cycling at least five miles every day to houses in outlying villages and on new estates, I've probably never been healthier.
It not only taught me the discipline of having to report for work, on time, but also the satisfaction of earning my own money. OK, so I may have spent most of my wages on sweets, cigarettes and comics in the newsagent's shop I was working for, but that's not the point.
What could be healthier than turning out every morning to deliver papers, feeling the fresh breeze in your face?
If I was late for school, it was only because I spent more time reading the papers than it should have taken to deliver them.
Many's the time an irate customer looked out of his window to see me sitting on the front wall scouring the sports pages of his Daily Wossname.
When I was a young teenager, living in Peterborough, pretty much every kid I knew had some kind of job — milk round, grocery round, Saturday girl at the hair salon.
In the summer, I worked as a temporary car park attendant at the local agricultural showground, or distributed leaflets to earn a few quid. Some of my friends went fruit-picking in the Fens, although that source of employment has long since been snaffled by Eastern European immigrants — another triumph for the EU.
No wonder East Anglian towns such as Boston and Wisbech are now officially the most segregated in the country.
Soon, if Brussels has it way, we'll be importing paper boys from Lithuania and Latvia, too.
This may seem like small beer to Dave and the 'deal at any price' brigade, but it gets to the heart of what's wrong with Britain's disastrous European adventure.
While the politicians squabble about the semantics of 'ever closer union', the reality is that we are no longer the masters of our own destiny. What should be purely domestic matters, such as whether kids are able to become paper boys, are dictated by the EU. The tentacles of Brussels interfere in virtually every single aspect of our everyday lives.
Recently, I drew your attention to the absurd ban on inshore bass sports angling around our coast — while foreign trawlers are permitted to carry on depleting stocks by the tonne.
Why should the EU decide how many fish we are allowed to catch on Britain's beaches?
The same goes for business regulation, which is suffocating small companies. While multi-nationals are content to go along with Brussels directives for the sake of the single market, 95 per cent of businesses in Britain have no dealings with Europe.
Yet they are all still expected to comply with every costly cough and spit of EU legislation.
The self-serving political class may be desperate not to be excluded from the lobster supper circuit or lose 'influence', but the rest of us have to put up with the unnecessary excesses of perverse European lawmakers daily extending their powers.
The 'Common Market' we thought we were joining 40-odd years ago has morphed into an anti-democratic behemoth dedicated to wiping out all vestiges of national sovereignty.
As the Tory MP Peter Bone has noted: 'The founders of the Council of Europe did not have in mind paper rounds when talking about human rights.'
They do now. But Dave's not even attempting to repatriate any of the powers successive governments have so carelessly given away.
And if that's not a good reason to vote 'Leave' I don't what is.
Feeding off the success of Strictly, ballroom dancing has enjoyed a strong revival. It's particularly popular among people of a certain age, who not only remember the heyday of the local Palais but find tripping the light fantastic a far more agreeable way to keep fit than pumping iron.
Naturally, this has not gone unnoticed in elf'n'safety circles. Those who dedicate their lives to saving us from ourselves have been quick to identify the inherent risks to life and limb posed by the tango and the peppermint twist.
A couple of years ago, I brought you news that Blackpool Council had ordered 16 wooden dance-floors at centres used by pensioners to be carpeted over. There were fears that they could fall and hurt themselves.
Now we learn that in some areas, ballroom dancing is being banned altogether. For the past eight years, Saturday night hops have been held at the Trinity Centre, in Llandudno, regularly attracting up to 40 dancers aged between 60 and 85.
But permission for the dances has just been withdrawn. The management was concerned that the floor was becoming too slippery because some people were using accelerant on the soles of their shoes.
I have visions of ultra-competitive dancers spraying their pumps with WD40 to gain an advantage in the fandango, only to find themselves slip-slidin' away like Bambi on ice and causing motorway-style multiple pile-ups.
Dance organisers Ted and Doris Harding, from Colwyn Bay, say if the floor is dangerous it is only because the centre is using the wrong kind of polish. Accidents do happen, admittedly. My mate Charlie once ended up in A&E after breaking his ankle while foolishly attempting the jitterbug at an over-65s singles night. But that's still no reason to ban it.
The next time elf'n'safety tries to stop you doing the Wall Street Shuffle, just tell them to foxtrot oscar.
Posturing Pixie and the Calais wild bunch
The ghastly Pixie Balls-Cooper was indignant. Point of order, Mr Speaker. How dare Call Me Dave describe the invading army of military-age men in Calais trying to gatecrash Britain as a 'bunch of migrants'?
Chuka Umunna, Labour's self-styled 'Britain's Obama', accused Cameron of using 'dehumanising language'. Oh, for heaven's sake. Grow up.
If you ask me, Dave was being polite. I can think of plenty of ways of describing the lawless rabble of violent, would-be illegal immigrants massed on the French coast. And 'bunch' would be the least offensive, believe me.
Chuka Umunna, Labour's self-styled 'Britain's Obama', accused Cameron of using 'dehumanising language'. Oh, for heaven's sake. Grow up
This pathetic, confected outrage proves yet again how out of touch the modern Labour Party is with the people it purports to represent.
And, as for Pixie, her hypocrisy stinks. She's demanding Britain does more for migrants, but has yet to make good on her promise to house a Syrian family in one of her own two beautiful homes.
Perhaps we'll take her more seriously when we see her on the doorstep, arm round her new lodgers, singing:
'I've got a luvverly bunch of immigrants . . .'
"During the war...": Only Fools and Horses' Albert Trotter
Two septuagenarian yachtsmen have just been rescued for the ninth time in seven months after their boat capsized in a Cornish harbour.
One of them, Albert Trotter, from Peckham, told BBC Radio Cornwall: 'During the war...'
A very nasty case of BSE
The abbreviation of the fanatically pro-EU group Britain Stronger in Europe is BSE, which just happens to be the acronym of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, aka Mad Cow Disease.
BSE attacks the brain and causes a lack of co-ordination, detachment from reality and increased aggression. There is no known cure.
Victims also start to harbour a belief that they can jump over the moon. Eventually, they collapse under their own body weight because they don't have a leg to stand on.
We can only hope.
The first police helicopter story of the year comes from Bristol, where the airborne division responded to reports of a 'woman in distress' in the Avon Gorge. When they got there, they found . . . a goat bleating.
Meanwhile, down the coast in Newquay, the RNLI launched a lifeboat to rescue another woman seen floating in the water. The lifeless body turned out to be a deflated sex doll.
At least it wasn't a blow-up goat.
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