No you cannot go to the fair

So though nobody has had the courtesy to respond to Farage's letter of last week - with the honourable exception of the Ombudsman's office,(A ceremonial tip of the hat to you Sir). Of course not. That would only encourage the rabiod sceptic and we cannot have that. This was in reference to inducements being offered to Brussels based figures to go and campaign in Ireland for a Yes vote, picked up by the Telegraph today.

However I understand that a response to the letter has been drawn up by the Commission, ad here it is,

"The Commission has no role in the making of this spontaneous and unsolicited offer. The Commission staff is subject to high ethical standards and clear legal obligations and would not be allowed to accept such an offer without prior agreement (cf. Art. 11 of the Staff Regulations).

I should ruddy well hope not.

No Commission official has requested an authorization under Art. 11 of the Staff Regulations to acept the said offer. To our knowledge, no official has accepted the offer

Well of course they haven't. Most of them do understand what the staff regulations say about accepting inducements. So it ios always better to apologise than to ask permission.

"Oh sorry boss, I thought that Article 11 said that I had to act in the interests of the European Communities, campaigning in Dublin must count. Nice pint of Guiness too,"

The Commission has a consistent policy of raising staff awareness about their rights and obligations so that there is no specific alert needed on this matter (as suggested by Mr Farage MEP).

So by not flagging it up, as requested by Farage, then people can go and nobody would be the wiser, the Commission can play dumb, saying, "But we thought everybody understood".

The fact that it would bethe work of say, 5 seconds to send a round robin message of this kind is obviously too much. Particularly if it is at the prompting of UKIP.