"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

"Nonsense draws evil after it." - C.S. Lewis

The ever-"environmentalist" EU strikes again, a move whose bureaucratic insanity would be insane parody if it were not fact:

In 2000, at a cost of £65million, Scottish Water had built a plant at Daldowie, near Glasgow, to process half of Scotland's sewage into fuel pellets. These are used as a coal substitute by the giant Longannet power station in Fife to produce enough "carbon-neutral" electricity to power 30,000 homes.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) had approved this scheme as an ingenious and environmentally beneficial way to deal with the problem of Scotland's sewage. But this year, to general astonishment, Sepa decided that, as from December, it would become illegal under new EC rules. Sewage could no longer be recycled as fuel, but could only be disposed of as "waste".

This would naturally create huge problems, not least for Scottish Water. Its £65million Daldowie plant would have to close. And finding any other means to dispose of the sewage would now be extremely difficult, since, under a different set of EC rules, it can no longer be landfilled, used as fertiliser or dumped at sea, where it used to provide food for fish.

The requested judicial review of this decision just fell flat. Should they run out of appeals, their only recourse is to incinerate this waste! Yes, that's right: EU environmental regulations specify waste may not be burned to produce electricity, and must instead be burned in such a manner that produces no useful result.

Perhaps, in order to satisfy the EU regulations, they could just turn off the power generators and leave the plants working as they are. Then at least they wouldn't have to build new incinerators.

Hat tip to EU Referendum.