​EU ‘mother-sucker’: Nanny state decrees dirty homes?

A vacuum cleaner ban lays bare the vacuum of power at the heart of the EU.

Viewing the European Union as a curious construct of a digital Kafka meeting the modern Soviet is a consistently valid perspective. Eastern imperial expansion has tragically exploded in Ukraine while back home the eurozone remains an impasse of economic growth with increasing hopelessness amongst millions in Europe’s lost generation.

Nevertheless the core rhythm of Europhile DNA remains unperturbed: the only prescription to any problem, real or imaginary: is more Europe! Hence the socialist corporate construct delights in adding ever more nebulous layers of red tape as the European economy approaches bureaucratic strangulation.

Meanwhile the European Parliament remains a hot bed of dizzy ideas so ill-conceived they would be dismissed in a kindergarten. Europhile Euro-Parliamentarians harbor a pathological desire to add layers of unnecessary hassle to everyday life to help them justify their nebulous existence as they strain to retain “right on” credentials delivering economically incoherent socialist silliness. MEPs childish attention seeking strategy has been another big fat fail for Brussels: electoral turnout has declined in every consecutive EU election.

Damage from this attention seeking continues, as the Eurocracy allow a thousand rivers of red tape to bloom. The latest, ‘what on earth were they on?’ moment arrived on September 1, 2014. From this day henceforth, the construction or sale of “high powered” vacuum cleaners is strictly forbidden within the EU. Clearly this doesn’t help already troubled EU unemployment rates but that is a mere afterthought to economically illiterate MEPs whose fiscal skills are limited to tallying their own lavish taxpayer subsidized expenses.

Apparently withdrawing the right to freely clean your own home will aid the battle against global warming. Leaving aside the fundamentally flawed nature of the unproven medieval paranoia of climate change, it is only fair to note that even if curbing emissions were a beneficial priority then the EU’s, ahem, finest, appear to be fundamentally incapable of understanding basic physics. If higher powered vacuums clean significantly faster, then they are net more energy efficient than a slightly less powerful machine which may take a lot longer to achieve the same cleanliness. There is also the core contempt the EU holds for its citizens insofar as damning the already brutally overtaxed citizens of Europe have nothing better to do than clean house all day. (Perhaps EU models suggest all citizens will be unemployed by 2020 anyway thus leaving them with little better to do than sweep carpets, slowly).

Meanwhile, the idiocy of Brussels is now considering extending this prohibition to hairdryers and kettles. Er, it takes 4.186 Joules of energy to heat 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. Use a more powerful kettle and it happens faster, use a lower wattage kettle and it takes longer, using the same amount of energy (actually more, as some water evaporates during the longer boiling time).

Like most dictatorial regulations, these restrictions often have the opposite effect. Nowadays previously banned incandescent light bulbs are sold as industrial goods. That daft EU ban simply gifted China a lot of manufacturing jobs (which requires a lot of transport - presumably not carbon neutral!). Likewise, expect high powered vacuum cleaners manufactured in the east to be re-imported under a different guise. The more bureaucracy you add, the more ingenious citizens will be in circumventing dumb rules. There is even a possible fillip for Ukraine - rebuild the eastern industrial sector using now redundant EU high powered vacuum cleaner technology and ingenious Ukrainians can become the epicenter of vacuum cleaner smuggling to clean the messy rugs of the west. Not as romantic as the American moonshiners who became the prototypes for NASCAR racing but hey if it adds growth to Ukraine’s dismal economic prospects, will Ukraine care?

Brussels knows best is a worrying poverty inducing development in a Europe where nanny states have become the ultimate “mother-suckers” - hoovering up the creative power of the continent and leaving behind an increasingly dusty economically barren environment.

The EU consistently demonstrates that no matter how hyperactive its leech-like institutions of anti-growth become, there is a core folly at the heart of this pattern which makes for a neat metaphor: An EU without vacuums delivering efficient hygienic cleanliness perfectly embodies an impotent Europe precluded by a vacuum of power from improving living standards.

Welcome to the new dark age of dirt - courtesy of the increasingly unkempt Euroblob.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.