The UK has been found guilty by the European Court of Justice of “systematically and persistently” breaching air pollution limits.
The court ruled that, since the 2010, the UK had failed to tackle the problem of toxic NO2 gas emissions in the shortest possible time.
Er, we are no longer in the EU.
The EU court has continued to oversee the case because proceedings started before Brexit.
So what? We are no longer in the EU.
The government believes the judgement is unfair and is mulling its next move.
I could advise on this. I won’t even charge for my time.
The UK has been ordered to pay costs to the European Commission; the amount could run to millions of pounds.
Arkell v Pressdram (1971) applies.
“Arkell v Pressdram (1971) applies.”
I fully concur with my learned friend.
This is cause the EU look stupid for vaccines. It can’t tolerate competitors doing better.
For the sake of peace, they can have mine.
Let them come and try and collect it!
“How many divisions does the ECJ have?”
The worry is that our idiot government would happily pay it. We could always make up some imaginary crimes of our own and fine them. The EU are starting to show their true colours in quite a big way. Let’s hope that they carry on with their present course of making themselves look ridiculous.
A few years ago, before all this, I was complaining over my beer that the actions of politics/people/whatever seemed to be stupid and inexplicable. The conversation took odd turns, as pub conversations do.
Someone said “But suppose they aren’t the actions of the stupid and ignorant, suppose they are the actions of the clever and maliciously evil?”.
How we laughed.
Then thought on it. Drank a sip. Thought some more. Oh.
It fits the facts a great deal better than the ‘stupid & thick’ story.
Moreover, this hypothesis, although barmy, has spooky predictive power.
As an engineer, the first questions I ask are “How does that work?”, followed by “How can I break it?”….leading to “How can I stop it breaking/being broken like that?”
So next time, hearing about an issue, ask yourself this question: “How, if I was totally evil, could I deliberately make this situation even worse?”
Make a note of your prediction, then wait.
The accuracy of those predictions will scare you.
We must do as the French do and simply not pay any fine. How can these people enforce it?
More to the point, on what authority are they trying to impose fines on non member states?
What did we get for our share in all that Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxebourg and Strasbourg real estate?
Denmark, Holland, Norway, Sweden can burn their and our garbage – we pay them too, but we can’t
Germany can burn lignite, RoI can burn peat, we can’t burn coal
Yet our pollution is too high? I smell BS
Sadly jellyfish Boris will roll over and pay, same as he’ll stupidly reverse DfID cut