The European Union is an example of how a government run by unelected bureaucrats quickly gets out of control. Here is an interesting article about how a mindless bureaucracy operates (this is from the blog Blue Crab Boulevard):

You, There! Step Away From The Kiwis!Published by Gaius under World news


Well, it must be the night for British insanity. Close on the heels of the last post, comes this gem from Britain. Government inspectors in Britain have turned away a shipment of kiwi fruit - for being about one millimeter (or four grams) too small to meet European Union standards. The wholesaler who has the undersized fruits is not allowed by law to even donate the fruit - all he can do is send it to a landfill.

Tim Down, a market trader for 25 years, said he was not permitted even to give away the 5,000 Chilean fruits, each of which is about the size of a small hen's egg and weighs about 60g.

Mr Down said his family run firm would lose several hundred pounds in sales because of the ban.

"It is bureaucratic nonsense, they are perfectly fit to eat," Mr Down said at his stall at the Wholesale Fruit Centre in Bristol.

Inspectors from the Rural Payments Agency, an executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), made a random check on his stall, and found a number of his kiwis weighed 58g, four grams below the required minimum of 62g.

Mr Down said that 4g in weight was the equivalent of about one millimeter in diameter.

The inspectors also reject curved cucumbers, skinny carrots and straight bananas. Lord knows what a threat to "civilized" society all those are. I imagine the British people must feel safer all the time with the state in control.

Not.