Words, Words, Words

Donal Blaney, using very few words, explains in graphic terms, why the EU is so bureaucratic.

8 Sep 2011, 15:16

595_large The EU Flag
Lord's prayer: 66 words

Archimedes' Principle: 67 words

Ten Commandments: 179 words

Gettysburg address: 286 words

US Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words

US Constitution with all 27 Amendments: 7,818 words
 
EU regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words.

H/T Matthew Richardson
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This is of course both a rip-off, and Hoax that has been going around since perhaps 1941.

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp

Typical, I suppose of the originality and carefullness of Blaney's work.

08/09/2011 15:59
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This is just a repost of an old urban legend.

It has been debunked here

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp

Now you have been informed of this, will you update the article?

Thanks

08/09/2011 15:59
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"This is of course both a rip-off, and Hoax that has been going around since perhaps 1941."

nevertheless, it doesn't alter the fact that a majority of people in the UK, despise the EU and would vote to exit it if they were ever given a vote, which in this current dictatorship-style set up is not going to happen.
We still hate the EU though!

08/09/2011 16:25
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We voted to stay in the EU by a big majority in 1975. A Tory government took us in, and a Labour government supported it.

If you wanted to get out, you should have voted Labour in 1983.

The are in to stay now.

08/09/2011 16:35
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@Paul Halsall

Wrong. The EU didn't exist.

08/09/2011 17:58
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It was blindingly obviously a light-hearted post. Jesus, federasts. Relax!

08/09/2011 20:58
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Admittedly, my first response was that cabbages need to be mentioned in EU regulations whereas it is difficult to imagine circumstances under which Our Lord would have brought them up in the Pater Noster.

08/09/2011 21:44
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Light-hearted but facile and (much worse) intellectually lazy. Politicians are allowed to get away with such sins, the rest of us should be better than that.

The volume of theological commentary working out the application of "Thou shalt not kill" in various situations (death penalty, just war theory and the like)?

Number of words teasing out the meaning of the fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution alone?

The world is difficult and complicated. Short statements which purport to govern situations invariably leave too much unsaid to provide clear and unambiguous guidance in all of them.

09/09/2011 10:30
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Those who carp about this post overlook one very important fact that is a problem for the EU and it is entirely the EU's own dumb fault: Whilst not true, the above joke tells a truth. That the EU IS an over-bureaucratic bemoth.

11/09/2011 01:41

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Donal Blaney

Donal Blaney is senior partner with Griffin Law.

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