This could lead to all sorts of bizarre changes. Buying health insurance as a man is likely to increase to cover the cost of pregnancy and childbirth. Women will have to pay more to be covered for prostate cancer.

There is a big difference between sexism and actual real life experience and facts. No doubt the EU has good intentions with this legal ruling and in theory you can see how they would think so but it is quite mad .

In case the EU or anybody else hasn’t noticed there are some fundamental differences between men and women. Just as some people are tall and others short so men and women are different.

Making it illegal to discriminate purely on the grounds of gender is good but it should never be the case that you cannot make choices based on evidence and if that proves that women are more likely to have babies it doesn’t matter how many laws you bring out. The facts are the  facts and suggesting otherwise is just silly.

If you haven’t seen the tv programmes let me briefly explain.

There are quotas given to every fishing boat as to how much of certain species they are allowed to land. The theory is that by restricting the numbers of these species that are caught the overall stocks can be maintained and perhaps increased.

It is fine in theory but the reality is totally different. Trawlers fishing for haddock or plaice will also catch assorted cod and other species that they are not allowed to bring ashore and sell. So around 50% of the fish caught in the nets end up bing thrown back overboard as dead fish.

It was shocking to see this on TV. These fish have been killed in the process of being caught up in the nets and they are thrown away as rubbish even though having died they are not going to help replenish the fish stocks.

There are people starving all over the world and every day, because of the quota system, we are throwing away hundreds of tons of good fish.

These animals are dying so that we can have food and they are not even being used for food. They are known as ‘discards’ and they died for no reason.

It is shocking that we have a system in place that is not protecting fish from being caught and nor is it helping to supply is with food. It is simply causing incredible waste.

I urge you to follow the link below and read more about this. You can also watch the TV programmes through Channel4′s 4OD online TV viewing site.

Once you have seen the programmes you will be as shocked as I was. Trawlermen are risking their lives every day to catch fish for us and to see how they have to throw away good fish to avoid prosecution for going over their quotas is depressing but even more upsetting is seeing the fish dying for no purpose. The quota system is clearly not the solution I thought it was and I doubt you will think so either.

Hugh’s Fish Fight – About Hugh’s Fish Fight.

The Icelandic ash cloud led to a complete shutdown of UK airspace on Thursday lunchtime and it has been closed ever since. It wasn’t as though nobody knew about it or noticed the result of this action since it was all over the news and there were interviews and yet more interviews with UK citizens who were stuck in airports hoping to get home as soon as possible.

I accept that there was not a lot the government could do to make the cloud go away and for flights to begin again but all those Britons scattered around the world were steadily becoming more desperate as they ran out of money after spending days living at airports around the world.

Finally we are now seeing some government action. The British government’s emergency planning committee, Cobra has finally met after 5 days. It’s a good job the fire brigade and police don’t wait for 5 days to decide if something is an emergency.

As a result of meetings the Navy is to send ships to unspecified French ports and one ship is en-route to Spain to collect army personnel stuck on their way home from Afghanistan. Spain to help find a way to get some of these people home.  I’m just puzzled that it has taken so long for this to happen.

Weather forecasters have been suggesting the weather conditions were such that the current situation could last for some time over the last few days and so it has proved to be. It could be that the weather will change and the cloud of ash will be blown away sooner rather than later but it would have done no harm for Cobra to have met last week instead of this and to make some contingency plans for dealing with the trapped passengers at the airports.

There is little doubt it is causing chaos in all the countries affected and that is not just the ones where the cloud hovers menacingly in the air. There are travellers trapped air-side in airports all over the world who are on route to Europe but having been forced to land short of their destination do not have the correct papers to leave the airport of the country they arrived in. It must be a pretty miserable experience and presumably there are people who are due to return home but can’t and they are having to somehow survive in foreign countries having run out of money. My thoughts go out to them but it will be something to tell their grandchildren one day. These are historic events.

I suspect a lot of schools will restart after the Easter break and find they are short of both teachers and pupils who have been marooned in the places they took a short vacation. Apparently the cabinet are meeting this afternoon to discus matters relating to the ash cloud and I am sure there must be a lot of people spread all over Europe and the world who could do with some physical and financial support. Hopefully ministers can stop electioneering long enough to make sure there is support available for those who need it.

Finally, on the subject of the ash cloud. What if this were to reoccur in 2012 around the time the Olympics were to due to take place in London? It could mean half empty stadiums and a lot of absent athletes. I wonder if there is a contingency plan to postpone the event if some natural disaster was to occur or would it just mean that Britain would win a whole heap of gold medals because nobody else could make it? Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say.

It may be that the Labour party are saving it for later in the hope that it will cause problems for the Tories because it does usually cause problems for them. On the other hand, the failure of Labour to give us the referendum they promised us may mean Labour don’t want it mentioned either. The Conservatives, like many of us, value our Britishness and worry about losing authority and power to Europe and we all remain unconvinced about the value or disadvantages of being in Europe.

I am broadly in favour of us being in Europe. It makes a lot of sense for us to be in a group with our nearest neighbours but there are worries about the growth of power and perhaps ultimately a superstate. It may be that would actually be a good thing but if it is we need to be convinced and all changes need to be gradual taking the public with them rather than having change forced down our throats. That has been the Labour way of doing things whilst in power and we don’t take kindly to that. Governments should make the case and convince us so we support things. If they can’t make the case then they should question what they are trying to achieve.

Europe has brought a lot of good as well as some annoying and rather interfeering things. Some, like the requirement of lawnmower silencers are actually very sensible and it also makes sense to have the same standard across Europe so we get the best lawnmowers wherever we buy them.

So many stories about what Europe is doing have proved to be malicious rumours and we really don’t know what is good and bad. The truth is we don’t know what is happening in europe and what they are really doing and our own government is partly at fault here. If we were kept informed and the government were more honest about what laws are brought in because europe requires them we would have a much better idea of what Europe is doing for us.

This is a sad day for our democracy. Their views are directly opposite to the greater majority of the electorate and I don’t believe that the majority of those who voted for them truly understand or agree with their policies. That can be said for all parties of course. Few people read the party manifestos before they vote and even when they do, our current Labour government demonstrates that they don’t seem to count for anything anyway.

The Labour party had shown that they only care about being elected so they can swan about playing at being important on the world stage. Sorry, that is Gordon Brown. I am sure a lot of Labour MP’s are embarrassed at what Labour has become. They don’t follow through with what they promised in their election manifesto and they don’t care much about democracy, freedom of the individual or the views of the electorate. One obvious example is the Privatization of the Post Office. Who wants that to happen? Nobody except Gordon Brown and Peter Mandleson, it seems. Oh and the Tories who will probably be the ones who help GB push it through against public sentiment. This could be a significant reason why the Tories haven’t done better in the European elections. They can’t be trusted with representing the public either.

We have a clear example of modern politics happening right now. Every sign the electorate can give to the Labour government is that they don’t want them and especially don’t want Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown’s response is to tell the public, in not so many words.  You can get stuffed, I got the job I always wanted and I don’t care how much it damages the country, I am staying here as long as I can.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that the BNP managed to get elected. The Tories hung on until they were so unpopular they were unelectable for 12 years and now the same thing is happening with Labour. With the current Labour government forcing their policies down our throats no matter how much we reject them.

We have a country where we are all made to feel like criminals and potential terrorists. Why else would the government insist on having the DNA of innocent people kept on record? You are a potential rapist, murderer or terrorist because you live in England but not, apparently if you live in Scotland. Whatever colour skin you have,  whatever religion you choose, you are made to feel like a second class citizen and the truth is that you are. Unless you are a bank executive in which case you get given millions of pounds for doing your job well, or badly, or if you are an MP and then you can claim for 1001 different things that ordinary people have to pay for out of their own, taxed, income.

We have all suffered from policies that only the labour government seems to want so it is no surprise that people vote for something they see as offering a different path. They saw the BNP in that role it seems and you can understand how people might well think that after such a dreadful Labour government they could hardly do any worse with the BNP.

We can only hope that after the expenses scandal and this electoral disaster for the Labour party which may well lead to Labour being out of office for the next decade if not destroyed forever, politicians of all parties will start to respond and give the public what they want instead of trying to force their own ideas onto the electorate supported by the party faithful. If not we could be seeing the start of a very dark period for this country.

Can we trust our leaders to be doing the right thing for us? Of course we can’t. Governments have failed to get things right for centuries. They constantly, mistakenly take actions which they may genuinly believe are beneficial but time proves them wrong. How would having 27 different governments, each with their own special interests, be any better. Nobody knws what the consequenses of this treaty will be in the future.

There are some who look forward to the day when the EU is a country. There are others who  think it should be nothing more than a trading bloc.

After two world wars and hundreds of years of almost constant inter-european wars there can be no doubt that the EU has huge benefits for Europe and perhaps the world. Better communication and understanding between countries and more trade is good for us all but that doesn’t mean we and the EU need to get married.

The UK governments case for the treaty and for the denial of a referendum is that it isn’t needed. Given that we have no reason whatsoever to trust our government or believe a word they say, how can we rely on that? They have made very little attempt to explain what the treaty involves, how it is good for us or why it does not merit a referendum. Gordon Brown appears to be saying, “Trust Me, I know best”

It would be ironic if a Scottish Prime Minister who has never been elected by the English, the Welsh or The Northern Irish. A man who was selected by a small group of Labour Party MPs to become prime minister of Great Britain with the people of Great Britain having no say in it.  It would be ironic if he were to be seen by history as the man who gave away Great Britain to Europe and finally saw Britain defeated not by war and killing but by paper pushers, accountants and lawyers.

Gordon Brown seems to be claiming that he knows more than everybody else and all those who might critisise the treaty are wrong. History will decide whether he is a giant of international politics or another confused and mistaken politician. He may feel very smug now, he certainly looks it when you see him in Parliament. He looks as though he thinks all this politics stuf is a playground game but history is less concerned with soundbites, less impressed by careful answers in interviews. History will decide and let us hope that history takes the view that he was right. It will be too late by then if he was wrong.