Godfrey Bloom

The EU is regularly abused by its many detractors in speech and in print. One of my favourite expressions is "the lunatics have taken over the asylum", and it can only get more popular. It is difficult to distinguish the asylum keepers from the inmates once the process has gone as far as it has with women's car insurance premiums, which are due to rise in the UK on 21 December this year, by about £360 per annum. The Daily Express, 7 Feb 2012, reports the progress of EU gender equality proposals though the EU Commission and the Council, to the European Parliament, and thence to the European Court of Justice, or as some would say, "injustice".

Women and the politicians who want to get their votes have become used to passing laws which re-address the balance in favour of women, all in the name of equality. But as I like to point out, 'equality' on its own is meaningless, it has to be equality of something - height, weight, shoe size, mathematical ability, anything, not nothing. Equality is just an adjective looking for a noun to latch onto. But the principle is running wild and has latched onto insurance premiums for women, which are lower in the real world, because women drivers are less risky in the real world. But the EU has its principles and they must be allowed to wreak whatever havoc they may in the name of logic. As women's premiums must be equal to men's, they must go up. Naturally the women were not consulted in this decision, nor were the insurance industry. Oddly, it means that women will be entitled to drive more dangerously, to live up to their higher insurance premiums. But I am certain that they will not be taking advantage of this dubious opportunity. Dare I say, this is because it is not in their nature?

Last year lobbyists of the specialist insurers 'Sheila's Wheels' have been to see me in my offices in Brussels to complain. I agree that the EU is loosing its marbles, its marbles are spilling out of the bag as I write. But what can I do, other than I have already done, to vote against the mad Directive from Brussels? Please, ladies, men, everybody, vote against the EU by voting for UKIP, it is a vote for sanity.