Greenies

Just come across this article about using waste as fuel (or the failure in this country to do so)
and have been very entertained by the slew of comments afterwards. I am not someone who religiously follows politics (or even current affairs really) - it only serves to depress and annoy me. But I feel guilty about ignoring it and fear this is rather a head in the sand approach. But then you look at the obvious wrath of some of the commenters to that article and I realise that these avoidance tactics could be worthwhile for maintaining my blood pressure.

I started reading Boris Johnson's book Lend Me Your Ears, where the mop-topped one starts by writing about his time as a reporter based in Brussels. At one point, apparently, there was a discussion about the classification of snails, and the upshot was that snails were considered not meat, but fish. Now, no matter what steps of logic you think you're going through within a classification process, when the outcome is something so clearly barking, why would you stick to it? And don't get my father started about some of the rules and regulations associated with farming these days. Apparently they are even coming around and checking you have a tidy farmyard, and fining you if not, and the amount of paperwork he has to do means that he has to spend half the day in the office and not actually looking after the animals on the farm.

If anyone out there can point me to some good clear summaries on the following I would be grateful:

1. The goals of the EU (which I thought was to facilitate trade amongst member countries, not piss all the citizens off)

2. The reasons we (the UK) went into it (other than the above) and the ongoing benefits we reap from it (if any)

3. The reasons why they are legislating now about how high we have to position light switches on the walls of private houses in the UK (which I'm sure has nothing to do with trade, or is it to prevent discimination against short electricians?).