European Court of Auditors tuts about an obtuse point of detail, completely misses the bigger picture

Reported by out-law.com on 27Oct2016, the European Court of Auditors has pointed to a weakness of a control within the Common Agricultural Policy (“CAP”).  It seems that the bureaucrats who run the CAP have decided that aerial/satellite images are a means by which to identify land subject to subsidy under the CAP.  Moreover, it seems that the same bureaucrats have chosen to believe that simply seeing a picture is apparently proof (beyond reasonable doubt) about the identity of the owner, and therefore the identity of the subsidy’s claimant.

The European Court of Auditors have correctly pointed to the Single European Amateurism and Half-Measures that characterise the implementation of policy throughout Europe (and not just at the level of the European Union; member states have more than just a hand in this systematic botch, too).

But the European Court of Auditors has chosen not to comment the blindingly obvious fact about the CAP: it’s a scam.  Amongst its many problems, it is deliberately designed to be economically dysfunctional.  It results in a market price so high that it effectively launders excess cash from consumers to landowners.  Where the consumer is also a taxpayer, then the same individual has paid for the same food product at least twice: once via his income taxes, twice via a supermarket till..  There are more efficient, and less prone-to-fraud, subsidy systems available.

The CAP is something else a Brexited Britain could scrap, especially if it has the confidence to beat up its own landowners, kicking them back into line with the people.

After all, revolutions - in Europe, of all places - have started on far less.