And the headlong dive into the Nanny-States of Europe continues at transwarp speeds...

[url]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$SU0PMMKFCUQNPQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/06/25/wpage25.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/25/ixnewstop.html[/url]

Page Three girls face veto from Brussels feminists

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels and Tom Leonard
(Filed: 25/06/2003)

Advertisements that affront "human dignity" by demeaning women would be prohibited under proposals being drafted by the European Commission.

Television programmes would also be censored to ensure there was no promotion of gender stereotypes.

The plans, still in their infancy, are already provoking bitter dispute in Brussels and were described by one commission official yesterday as "lunatic".

The proposals, which need the approval of the college of 20 commissioners before being put forward as a draft law, would force insurance companies to offer the same rates for pension annuities and car insurance regardless of gender, overriding the actuarial data used to calculate risk.

Tabloid newspaper "Page Three" pictures would also be threatened. Most forms of gender discrimination - either for or against women - would become illegal, affecting welfare benefits, education and health insurance. But plans to ban London gentlemen's clubs have been abandoned as a step too far.

The proposals were drafted by the European Union's employment and social affairs directorate, known in Brussels as one of the last outposts of "unreconstructed" 1970s Leftists.

It is headed by Anna Diamantopoulou, Greece's socialist commissioner and an ardent feminist. But EU diplomats say she is a model of moderation compared to her top civil servant, Odile Quintin, viewed as a champion of France's militant trade unions.

The driving force behind the proposal is Barbara Helfferich, a German feminist who was head of the European Women's Forum before joining Mrs Diamantopoulou's cabinet in charge of "gender equality".

Fierce resistance is already building in the free-market wing of the European Commission, led by Italy's Mario Monti and Holland's Frits Bolkestein, who are in charge of competition policy and the single market.

One official said: "This goes to the heart of insurance company business, which is to discriminate on the basis of actuarial data. It is a huge interference in the markets."

Media regulators in Britain claimed yesterday that "human dignity" was already accorded sufficient respect in the existing rules for advertising and programmes.

The Independent Television Commission, which polices standards of both programmes and commercials, said its own codes appeared to cover the same ground as the planned European Union legislation.

It insisted that advertisers and programme makers had to be allowed creative freedom and to be able to use humour, even if it meant creating stereotypes that some found offensive.

Mrs Diamantopoulou has so far succeeded in pushing through legislation such as a "Vibrations Directive" limiting the time farmers can spend on tractors and a "Noise Directive" restricting decibel levels in the workplace.

If the new proposals are endorsed by the commission they will still need the assent of the European Parliament and EU governments under majority voting. Britain does not have a veto.

John Mildenhall, managing director of the advertising agency TBWA, said any such regulation would meet with "massive resistance from advertisers and advertising agencies".

He predicted that it would lead to greater "sterilisation" of the portrayal of women in advertising. "Advertising is unrealistic enough as it is in reflecting what women really talk about," he said.

Recent research by TBWA found that the American series Sex and the City, in which women talk explicitly about sex, was the closest approximation on television of the conversations young women have together.

When it comes to the EU, CA, or NJ nothing surprises me.

[img]http://www.eatonlink.com/main/uploaded/FreakOnALeash/bigbro2.jpg[/img]

WORKS FOR ME!!

Screw the EU!

CRC

Not Page 3. That is the only decent thing to come out of England.

Lets not forget about Led Zeppelin

Call to arms. We are MOBILIZING.

Need qualified operators for:

Maria Whittaker division

Samantha Fox division

Jordan/Katie Price Division

These cheesedicks just stepped over the last line.

First they came for the communists, but since I was not a communist, so I said nothing.

Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I said nothing.

Then they came for the gun owners, but I was not a gun owner, so I said nothing.

But when they came for the porno, I cried out, but no one was left to stand up for me. [:(]

Or Black Sabbath [headbang]

Or Pink Floyd ...

What's this about a Vibration Directive?  The farmers in my family do whatever the heck it takes to get the crops in, tractor seat vibrations be darned!

I'm sorry, what am I missing here? When was the last time an American newspaper had a BOTD on page 3?
And "Anna Diamantopoulou"? Is she related to the Greek civil rights activist Shmuel Gruensteinopolus?

We just feel sorry for the Brits.

They once had guns, they once had boobies, now they are becoming a country of emasculated socialists and it is sad.

Screw the Brits. They've always been the forerunners for everything nasty and evil in Europe.

Check /her/ out: [url]http://www.bild.t-online.de/BTO/erotik/fotogalerie/40SandraShine/40SandraShine,templateId=renderKomplett.html[/url]

("Vor" means "next")

And this baby will either be a still-born, or an un-dead demon child. I find the latter hard to belive in.


ALL international 'unions' blow monkey balls. Theyre there for nothing but human rights and peace negotiations- Neither of which do they have any real capacity or capability of doing.

All English are exactly the same?

Does that hold true for Germans as well?

We were once Brits.

I wasn't.

I meant most Americans who turned out ok.

Thats because we (eerr, americans back then) fought(IE: as standing armies) for their rights to be who they were. Something few groups in the USA have the balls for today.