Just wondering can I dismiss Rune’s plainly “anti-Euro” whining in the same way he dismisses “anti-American” whining.
Couple the smoking with an atrocious (but delicious :)) diet and you have a recipe for disaster.
Sorry if I took a jab at the Danes (one of which I married), but I come from a country that exports tobacco but is, ironically, heavily anti-smoking. Smoking is considered very rude ot others and downright disgusting. Something akin to going around farting on people’s faces. My own culture coloures my view of the matter.
I still don’t believe that 72 Million Euros, even if spent in Denmark along will make a full dozen Danes quit smoking. 
I still don’t believe that 72 Million Euros, even if spent in Denmark alone, will make a full dozen Danes quit smoking.
Damn butter fingers.
You mean with my gifted insights, eloquent writing style, great wit and brilliant argumentation. No I don’t think you’re up to it. But go ahead and give it a go.
Just a small point of clarification. The EU sugar regime does not directly subsidise sugar beet farmers. Instead it artificially sets the minimum price of sugar available to the consumer. In the UK, at about 55p a bag. In this sense it is not a direct subsidy as in other areas of the CAP. Also, it should be pointed out, sugar and agricultural support in Europe is mirrored in the US. None of this detracts from the general point that subsidising agriculture is an affront to free markets and penalises most heavily third world countries. In and of itself, however, it does not seem to me to be a valid criticism of the EU, so much as its constituent members.
I have given it a go. I’ve dismissed your arguments on the basis that politically I don’t agree with you.
Just learning from a master at these sort of things. 
Agreed. Let’s make it a more democratic parliament, such that I can vote for a President or ruling party of Europe. That way, we can vote directly for what anti-smoking measures are enacted Europe-wide ourselves.
Well I’m not whining for pro-smoking, just against farm subsidies and the costly practise of the left hand not know what the right one is doing. Even so, I admit it was weak. The evil EU doesn’t suck my pockets for anywhere near the amount the evil and demented Danish state does.
I don’t smoke, can’t stand the habit, but other people can do what they bloody well want. And if those measly two extra years between not-quite-dead-just-looking-and-feeling-it and no-not-dead-yet-just-wishing-so is the bonus you reap for anal-retentive restrictive policies and obsessive nanny state interferences, I think I’ll give it a pass.
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Oh I don’t know about that. I think you can find 12 people in Denmark willing to give up smoking for 6 million Euros. Give me just one and I’ll start and quit again. Heck! I’ll even throw in my two girls as well. Have them chain-smoking in a week. We’ll all go on a month long smoking binge and stop for a million euro. …come to think of it. There was a campaign here in Copenhagen a few years back with a lottery where you could win a price if you quit smoking. Turned out, a number of participants started smoking just to be in the lottery. Recon a number didn’t quit afterwards.
Well I don’t see any insinuation that dirty liberals eat innocent babies while engaging in satanic rituals, so it can’t be me you learned it from.
Thanks for the clarifications - I tend to get a bit ranty where protectionism is concerned. Nonetheless, the effect of price setting and import tariffs is pretty much the same as direct subsidy, in the end - poorer and more efficient sugar producers lose access to our markets, and indeed find our excess taxpayer-funded sugar dumped on theirs, to add insult to injury. Unlike the new “de-coupled incentives”, price-fixing and import tariffs directly encourage overproduction of goods we’re not suited to producing, which is the harmful thing.
Oh, I know the US subsidises like hell, too - no moral high ground in this argument.
I do disagree that the EU can not be criticised for the CAP, however - I think it’s partly the weird mixture of economic cartel and political club that has caused the CAP to drag on so long. The lock-in effect of having one of the key members (France) utterly opposed to CAP reform has meant that to remove them would have triggered a crisis in the entire body. It’s only since Germany backed away from wholeheartedly supporting them over the CAP that any sort of reform has been achieved. Certainly, individual member states (coughFrancecough) bear the brunt of the blame, but it’s pretty easy to argue that the subsidies wouldn’t have reached the level they have as a result of individual state action, and that they’d be a lot more easily dismantled if France weren’t able to hold a sword over the entire EU whenever CAP reform comes to the table.
Well, those measly two extra years, as you put it, of course hide other things. Life expectancy, being a statistical measure, doesn’t say that I will live two more years than you do. They say that the average will be two years lower, and to end up with that, you have a significantly larger amount of people kicking the bucket at 52 or 39 from heart decease or cancer, costing the *welfare/i] state of Denmark an obscene amount of money with the “free” health care.
I do agree that there’s a lot of hipocracy going on. The EU admins want to slam tobacco, but there’s precious little tobacco farming going on within the memeber countries. However, the alcohol industry is incredibly strong and there is a lot of that., which arguably poses an equal health problem as does smoking. No movement to get at that consumption is to be seen.
Oh, and please quit the clichéed stupidity about “nanny state” - apart from smoking and drinking, the Danes are more heavily regulated than any other Scandinavian country. I know that the Danish media has been harping on and on about the Swedish nanny state and the freedom in Denmark for decades, but it’s an UL and has been debunked a long time ago.
Though I would agree that France has the most vocal farming lobby, I would not underestimate the power of the farming lobbies in the UK and Germany, for example. I have seen some of the manoeuvrings made in the UK with respect to combating reform of the sugar regime. To an extent it relies on sitting on French coat-tails, but do not confuse this with impotence. I think any swift removal of agricultural support would be political dynamite. The most anti European parties, at least in the UK, tend to be on the right of the political spectrum. These parties also tend to have the most vocal farming support.
And this is what’s so strange - the most vocal anti EU parties in Sweden are on the far left.
In Ireland, the parties most critical of (not really anti) the EU are on the left.