"Leg quarters are our big items of export," said Richard Lobb, the council spokesman.
Apart from the two big items of farm subsidies and cohesion funds, the remainder of the budget goes on development aid (the EU is the world's biggest donor), on immigration and security, on the eurocrats and administration, and on the EU's foreign policy and its fledgling global diplomatic service headed by Britain's Lady Ashton.
It's up to us to change that dysfunctional political climate, and we know what we need to do to make that change: elect representatives who believe that our government can and must address the people's big items of unfinished business.
It is to do, in other words, with the forms and all the rest of planning, the problems that arise in specific areas, not the problems that arise in these big items of labor legislation.
But when much the biggest item of spending is staff wages, this poses an ethical dilemma.
Unemployment is at a 12-year high of almost 10%, recession is looming, the triple A credit rating has been downgraded and the country owes so much that interest repayments are the second biggest item of state expenditure after education.
All parties are alert to rising living costs, but it is rarely pointed out that for a working family, the total tax bill is the single biggest item of household expenditure – bigger than the mortgage or rent, the car or the household bills.
Take the biggest item of extra spending, the £3.7bn for giving borrowing powers to the Green Investment Bank.
The biggest item of AME is social security, but it also covers things like debt interest and public sector pensions.
