Tuesday, November 16, 2004

You really, really could not make it up

Just as Gordon Brown has woken up to the fact that the Single Market is rigged, and the EU procurement rules are widely ignored by our EU "partners", the EU commission has announced that it is conducting an inquiry into the application of the procurement rules - over the award of the design contract for the controversial new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh.

According to The Scotsman, the commission has also announced that the commission had launched the first stages of infringement proceedings in a separate dispute over the UK government’s failure to implement the Public Procurement Remedies Directive, which gives companies access to legal and administrative redress if they have not been dealt with fairly in the handout of public works contracts.

Neither is the commission at all impressed by Brown's claims that the procurement process is rigged, a spokesman saying that, "It would have been helpful if the Commission had received a copy of this report, rather than the Westminster lobby correspondents."

He added, "We share Gordon Brown’s concern about companies which feel they have been unfairly excluded from contracts – but I find it hard to believe that British companies are being singled out for harsh treatment and that other EU countries are prepared to give contracts to companies from other member states but not to those from the UK."

You really do have to ask what we are doing being a member of this dire organisation. This is the politics of the madhouse, an Alice-in-Wonderland world where there is absolutely no sense in anything, and nothing makes any sense. And this, we are told – just in case you had forgotten – is what the "Vote No" campaign is in favour of.

And who the hell cares anyway? I give up.

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