On Thu, 26 Dec 2002 09:48:42 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:


"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

priority to that it holds when they are full. The CAP was put into place
by a generation who had been hungry. It is being taken apart by baby
boomers who cannot even grasp the concept.

what a maroon


It is kept in place by those that rember those days of hunger. They may pinp
and pander to the public but they still haven't been completly brain washed
from the bloody past of the the last centry in the area. There are plenty of
things like the Serbs, IRA and Arab terror groups to remind them that they
are still not 100% safe.

They may look like dandy boys and drag queens but inspite of all the dumb
decisions that they have made they have made some good ones as well

The first attempt to take the CAP apart was Mansholt's 1968 proposal,
it would have meant over the period 1970/80 that CAP prices would have
been brought down to world market prices, while half of farmers being
in unviable small businesses would be helped to leave the land,
concurrent with huge spendings for development of rural
infrastructure and industry.

Mansholt was himself one of the originators of the CAP in 1957, and
not by any stretch a baby boomer, dandy boy or drag queen. His 1968
proposal for reform went so directly and viciously for the throat of
the CAP, that noone has been able to attack it more severely
since then.

What we have got to show -- Late sixties, subsidies for slaughtering
dairy cows in an effort to reduce milk lakes without reducing milk
prices. Late seventies, a renewed effort to avoid milk lakes, a levy
on milk overproduction, too small to be effective. Late eighties, a
ceiling put on quantity for which price support could be given but not
to be adhered to, and ineffective programs to reduce overproduction by
subsidising non-use of land or transfer of land to product in demand
by the market. 1992: The McSharry proposal, which we have been talking
about earlier on the thread -- and then entry of GATT/WTO policy, and
further on to Agenda 2000.