I STILL like the story of the time when an old countryman met a bureaucrat down a country lane. After getting some directions from the old chap the bureaucrat said: "Why don't you hold your head up like me?" At this, the old fellow looked round and pointed to a field of wheat saying: "Now you see in that crop of grain, all the ripe valuable heads are hanging down while all the empty heads are standing straight up; good day to ye," he said as he continued on his way.

On August 4, the World Trade Organisation came down on the EU like a ton of bricks over a case brought before it about the illegal dumping of millions of tons of cut price sugar on the world market by the EU. It still carries on dumping up to five million tons a year in flagrant breach of its agreement under what is known as the "Uruguay round" which restricted imports to one million tons. How can they manage to do this? The reason is the subsidy paid to EU sugar growers.

I understand this dumped sugar from the EU has cut the world price of sugar by 23 per cent. This had a disastrous effect on the economies of Brazil, Thailand, India, South Africa and several others.

Why is the EU breaking the rules like this? Well guess which country is the biggest sugar exporter? You've guessed it - France, which, while producing five million tons a year from sugar beet, only consumes two million tons. This means that three million are over-produced and dumped on the world market.

France also imports 1.6 million tons of cane sugar mostly from its overseas territories in the West Indies which, because they are technically part of the EU (I'm sure I'm not the only one who did not know that), receive large EU subsidies.

In 2001, France's answer to cutting illegal exports was to call for a really savage reduction in quotas for countries like Britain so that good old France could export her surplus inside the EU instead.

But Britain actively helps Third World producers by importing half her three million ton sugar comsumption from the canefields of her former West Indian colonies, which is unsubsidised. The other half comes from home grown sugar beet and unlike France the UK does not exceed the limit of her EU quota.

To cut quotas here would have a devastating effect on the 7,000 UK farmers who grow sugar beet. And remember we play by the rules.

Because EU trade policy is dictated by France, Brussels isn't likely to be concerned if a few thousand growers had to give up sugar beet. For, as it is often said, the Common Agricultural Policy has only ever had one real purpose the protection of French Farmers.

Dialect word: Ask or Hask meaning a cold sharp wind.

Thought for the day: I can sympathise with people who have their holiday ruined at the airport for whatever reason. But I am not the one to offer an opinion. For while people are busy flying off in search of the sun, I just sit tight and let the sun come round to me.