For those tiring of the squabbling over the European Union’s AIFM directive, at least the rhetoric continues to impress.

The EU threat has certainly made pension funds more bullish, and this week they were threatening to gang up on “arrogant” hedgies to force through far stricter terms on performance fees. “Institutional investors are totally disillusioned with funds not delivering what was on the tin,” Philip Read, chairman of the British Coal scheme, told chastened managers at the Hedge 2009 conference.

And what’s this? Even the Welsh have waded in with an attack on what they see as needless bureaucracy from the directive.

But my favourite comments come from Anthony Hilton’s column in yesterday’s Evening Standard. He asks a “French mole” to explain the EU’s onslaught on the hedge fund industry when there is broad agreement that the hedgies were not to blame for the financial crisis. The mole does not disappoint.

“It’s like when there is someone in a pub that you have never liked. When a fight breaks out, you hit him anyway, not because he caused the fight, but because you have always wanted to.”