In article ,
K writes:
| David in Normandy writes
|
| People such as me who live in France will need to have
| "Plant Passports" certified by DEFRA saying that any plants
| I bring over to the UK are approved for transfer. Have the
| EU bureaucrats gone mad?

Are you sure that it is the EU that have gone mad, and that isn't
Whitehall again? Where did you read that article? And is France
introducing the same rules?

| With the Harlequin Ladybird threatening to wipe out some of our native
| species, Himalayan Balsam taking over our stream edges and crowding out
| native plants, Azolla clogging our ponds, you could argue that it's
| already too late. But if you have any belief that we shouldn't allow
| further damage, what alternative measures would you suggest?

I am afraid that you are being seriously misleading: despite the
fuss, the UK is perhaps the least vulnerable country in the world
to such things; in one case (Azolla), I would guess that fertiliser
abuse was at least as important; in at least two of those cases,
the cause is not their introduction but global warming; and the
evidence of harm from the third one (Himalyan balsam) seems to be
purely anecdotal.

While there are grounds for some restrictions, and there are a FEW
plants that are having undesirable consequences, there are no good
grounds for the current lunacies. For example, the hysteria over
giant hogweed is simply that. In fact, the only two plants that I
have seen good evidence of serious ecological harm in the UK are
Rhododendron ponticum and Japanese knotweed - there MAY be evidence
for the others, but most claims of their threat don't supply any.

This could well be another of the rules against meat products that
Whitehall introduced following Germany's banning of British beef
until we got our BSE act together. Private import was restricted
in ridiculous ways (e.g. 100 grams in sealed plastic was OK, but
the same meat in larger quantities or unsealed wasn't) - but there
were NO restrictions on the commercial import (because that would
have breached EU rules). And, at the time, the ONLY viable theory
that involved import involved commercial import. The foot and
mouth lunacies are even worse.

Whitehall doesn't close the stable door after the horse has bolted;
it typically responds by nailing up the cat flap and leaving the
stable door ajar.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.