The regions have legal status and Manche has a budget of £261million between 2007 and 2013, Atlantic £127million and North Sea £219million.

EU's FOLLY AND FRAUD
The inhabitants of Sussex can forget about flying the St George's flag on the saint's day next year because, according to Brussels, they are no longer part of England, but citizens of the Manche Region of the United States of Europe.

It would be almost funny if this latest assault on our national identity wasn't backed by a £261million budget for the 'region', administered from France.

And this on the day after Euro MPs kept secret a report into what one MEP - who has seen it - called the 'criminal abuse' of their £100million expenses fund.

Advocates for the EU complain that it is denigrated as corrupt and obsessed with creating a European superstate. Sadly, with every passing day it's clearer that this so-called 'caricature' is only too true.

Having disposed of all those nasty chemicals, might not the colleauges be swayed by the GM lobby (and some nice Nu Labour style backhanders) to push for GM crops to replace all the 'traditionally reared' crops lost. All to save the planet of course.

With food shortages, inflation and the dire effect of the biofuels policy very much in the news, the EU is in the process of taking another massive step which will, over time, exacerbate the food shortages which are plaguing the global economy.

This is the framework directive on the sustainable use of pesticides, replacing and adding to the existing pesticide law, Directive 91/414/EEC, to which we have not given anything like enough attention (or any).

View full article here

Georgina Downs, a young singer who, as I reported last July, has fought a fearless campaign to expose the startling gap in the law which deprives members of the public of any protection from damage by toxic crop-sprays. She and her parents suffered severe health problems from repeated exposure to pesticides drifting over their Sussex home and garden from the fields next door. Georgina was amazed to discover that, under EU law, the public have no right to any warning from farmers when such poisonous chemicals are used, or even to know which chemicals they have been exposed to. When Georgina recently had a meeting with the farm minister, Lord Whitty, and his colleague Michael Meacher, she showed them a video of what her family must put up with. When asked whether he would personally find it acceptable, Whitty weakly agreed it could be "inconvenient and annoying". The ministers promised to consider changing the law. But the fact is, as Georgina learned last year after showing her video to the Pesticides Advisory Committee, unless Brussels agrees, that there will be nothing British ministers can do about it . (Daily Telegraph C. Booker 23 March 2003 )

But Georgina Downs, who runs the UK Pesticides Campaign, accused the agriculture industry of trying to scare people.

"Unfortunately they seem to be more concerned with food and prices when the priority should be human health and the environment.

They argue that yields will drop and prices will rise if they are now allowed to use pesticides when there is clear evidence that yields can be increased through the use of non-chemical and organic methods," she said.

"The EU has made clear that long term exposure to pesticides can lead to serious disturbances to the immune system, sexual disorders, cancers, sterility, and result in birth defects. That is why these chemicals should be banned."