EU GOES NUTS – AT 10:36 A.M. ET:  Well, to say that the European Union goes nuts isn't really a news story, but a continuation of an existing situation.  This, though, takes the prize.  From London's Telegraph:

The European Commission on Monday unveiled a "single European transport area" aimed at enforcing "a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers" by 2050.

The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.

Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities.

Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport.

"That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."

The Brits give a proper response:

The Association of British Drivers rejected the proposal to ban cars as economically disastrous and as a "crazy" restriction on mobility.

"I suggest that he goes and finds himself a space in the local mental asylum," said Hugh Bladon, a spokesman for the BDA.

"If he wants to bring everywhere to a grinding halt and to plunge us into a new dark age, he is on the right track. We have to keep things moving. The man is off his rocker."

COMMENT:  Why is it that some people have this obsessive need to run everyone else's life?  Is it their sense of their own superiority?  Their fear of modern times?  Their deep distrust of anything that resembles "the American way"?  I'd love to see a good psychiatric analysis of the European Union's growing bureaucracy, and its mentality.

March 29, 2011