EU membership - Is it good for Britain?

[freezin]

The results of polls from the EU suggest that there are "very high levels of public support for the economic and social benefits of membership" and that people in the UK agree that membership has:

• Increased opportunities for business (78%)
• Benefitted exporters (68%)
Last year British exports of goods and services to the other EU members were £166bn (about 13pc of GDP), while British imports from them stood at £204bn. Before membership we actually had a small trade surplus. Membership has not benefitted the other 87% of the economy, whilst EU red tape has affected the whole of it.

• Benefitted consumers (63%)
When the Common Agricultural Policy adds hundreds of pounds to family's food bills and "Community Preference" meant the end of cheap food from Commonwealth countries, does anyone know what these benefits are?

• Improved working conditions (51%)
Improved working conditions do not depend on membership, and have been seen in all developed non-EU countries.

• Increased opportunities to live, work and study in another country (79%)
This is true.

Advantages of membership should be considered, as should the very considerable disadvantages. For example:

• When EU supporters say we must learn to co-operate with our European partners, this co-operation is based on Qualified Majority Voting and means that we have just 29 votes (the same as France, Germany and Italy) out of 321 and covers many areas of policy, and will cover almost everything when the Constitution becomes effective. Co-operation is a very intricate form of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
• All public service contracts over a certain amount must be put out to tender across the EU, and no contract should be awarded on the basis of nationality, though they often are. These tenders are collectively worth billions of pounds, and British tenders are often found to be not quite suitable for other states. Countries like France are very protective of their own national interests in defiance of community law.
• English Common Law, which gives the people much greater protection from abuses of power by the state, is being phased out in favour of the European system, Corpus Juris.
• Taxes being pushed up to EU averages.

One of the surverys concerned is here
http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/pr.../pr0640_en.htm

[basa]

My gut reaction is a resounding NO !!

There is no way to gauge what our trading and social conditions might have been had we stayed out of the EU, we may have fared even better than the figures quoted suggest.

I always thought the UKs EU membership was promised to be the subject of a referendum ??

[Pø†øƒGøL�]

I think there are more long-term benefits of being EC rather than EU - the more involved we get, the more Brussels interferes.

These figures are all very well, but how "pro-Europe" was the body that organised them and to what objective are they working? Statistics can show whatever you want them to - it's how the questions are worded that will guarantee your result!!

Do we have proof that these "improvements" to the UK would not have happened anyway as trade opportunities across the world have moved with the times??

[Chrysalis]

if they want taxation to near EU averages then the top rate of income tax would have to shoot up, I cant see any government doing that here.

[TigaSefi]

No, Europe membership is very bad. Extremely bad. UKIP FTW

[Matth]

Relations with EU countries improved (but not neccessarily to our advantage). Relations with non EU countries often worse due to EU meddling.

We were "sold" the idea on false pretences, and stay only through fear.

[Anonymouse]

The EU will likely collapse in a couple of decades or so anyway; it's too large and unwieldly, and is being strangled by its own red tape. It's not really a "union" of any sort so long as, e.g., France can throw a spanner in the works by going on strike. There's too much self-interest and not enough unity.

And as for the Euro - what a colossal disaster. The very EU members that pushed for it, especially Germany, now want their own currencies back. Same with the ERM - remember that? I don't recall anyone asking me if I wanted the Chancellor to waste ten billion pounds of public money - OUR money - in a doomed attempt to keep Sterling in the ERM. How much would be wasted if we ditched the pound? How much would UK industry suffer (as if it isn't suffering enough already!) as a result, as Germany's has?

What about decimalisation? Allegedly there was a referendum about that - but my parents have stated categorically that no bugger asked them about it. No-one we know was asked. No-one they know was asked. So exactly where, when and for whom was this putative referendum held? Just in Parliament? Excuse me, that's not what I call a referendum.

We haven't had a referendum about anything currently relating to Europe, especially not the pound - and we're not going to get one. Why? Because Blair et al know damn well what we'll say, that's why, and it's not the answer they want to hear!

[freezin]

There was a referendum under Harold Wilson's government in the 1970s. The "yes" camp, which included a then naive Margaret Thatcher as a prominent member, outspent the "no" camp by about 14:1, basing its arguments on how we would be "left out in the cold" if we stayed out. Papers released under the 30 year rule show that politicians of both parties were very well aware that the long term plan of the community was to be the eventual complete political and economic union of Europe. The USA had also encouraged the plan making the receipt of money from the Marshall Aid plan after the WW2 as the carrot.

"It is as well to state this at the outset - no government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked, in advance of having received any of the benefits which will accrue to them from the plan, to make changes of which they may not at first recognize the advantage to themselves as well as to the rest of the world. No satisfactory economic plan for Europe can be devised without sacrifice of sovereignty by the nations concerned." In 1947 from a committee chaired by Peter Thorneycroft, MP, who later became Chairman of the Conservative Party!

I wish our politicians would explain what these benefits are instead of pretending that "Europe" doesn't matter. We now have a situation in which, as Mark Leonard of the pro EU Centre for European Reform puts it, "national governments are the agents of European power". The British people didn't vote for that.

Taxes are already going up and tax freedom day is now later ever and there was very little difference in Labour and Tory spending plans at the last election. Taxes are going up to European averages.

[Paul]

Joining the EU has been a complete disaster, if we were in mainland Europe then things may have been different but as it is all we get is cr*p, we can't even send people to jail without being told to let them out and our borders are now wide open to abuse by other EU member countries looking to get rid of their own problems.

[Damien]

Originally Posted by Paul

Joining the EU has been a complete disaster, if we were in mainland Europe then things may have been different but as it is all we get is cr*p, we can't even send people to jail without being told to let them out and our borders are now wide open to abuse by other EU member countries looking to get rid of their own problems.

There is a topic on here somewhere where someone listed all the benefits the EU has brought us. Especially in terms of business

[Anonymouse]

Originally Posted by freezin

There was a referendum under Harold Wilson's government in the 1970s.

Yes, about the Common Market (I'd forgotten about that referendum) - not about decimalisation. Yet, I repeat, allegedly there was one.

Originally Posted by freezin

"No satisfactory economic plan for Europe can be devised without sacrifice of sovereignty by the nations concerned."

In other words, they sold us down the river. Yes, I thought so. That's not what I call democracy. Treachery would be more accurate.

Originally Posted by freezin

I wish our politicians would explain what these benefits are instead of pretending that "Europe" doesn't matter. We now have a situation in which, as Mark Leonard of the pro EU Centre for European Reform puts it, "national governments are the agents of European power". The British people didn't vote for that.

No, we bloody well didn't. If there are any benefits, most likely they accrue to governments and/or big business, which is why they don't want to explain. The 30-year rule is intended solely to protect governments from the consequences of actions they know that they should not be taking. If everything they're doing is above board, then why should us mugs have to wait 30 years to hear about it? That completely destroys any notion of accountability, because by the time we find out, they're comfortably out of office...and, more often than not, out of reach. Accountability is a fundamental precept of democracy - without that, we're not in a democracy.

As usual, they're all feathering their own nests and covering their tracks, which - in theory - is not why we pay them. More and more in this country, governments are being dictated to by business concerns, as in the States - thus big business is becoming government. It's not too much of a leap from that to the world of, say, Soylent Green or Rollerball...

[Chris]

Let's not confuse different issues. Decimalisation was a Commonwealth matter so far as the UK is concerned and has nothing to do with Europe. The consequences we see today (bloody-minded market traders who won't sell in kg despite the fact an entire generation now has no idea what a lb is) are the final chapter in a policy set in motion a very long time ago. TBH I wish we had had the balls of the Aussies and some others, and done it quickly, instead of dragging it out.

The EU is responsible for more than enough, we don't need to attribute other stuff to it that it has nothing to do with.

As for the EU - I am all for a common trading bloc that extends freedoms to individuals and makes movement of people and goods simpler. I am not in favour of a political, deeply integrated federation of states with no true sovreignty. That is what some in Europe want, even now, but thankfully those who wanted deep union have more or less lost out to those who wanted broad union. The EU of 25 that we now have will ensure that future attempts to deepen political interference from Brussels will be doomed to failure. The enlarged EU is now simply too big. Thank goodness.

[homealone]

and then there was Avoirdupois

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Damien

There is a topic on here somewhere where someone listed all the benefits the EU has brought us. Especially in terms of business

Take that on the chin, the disadvantages wipe out half of those gains for example we do export more but we also import a lot more meaning a increased trade deficit, this is not a advantage.

Since the losses werent listed I cant take that list seriously, and dont think for a moment we have only got positives from the EU and no losses.

Its a simple answer for me and i dont see it changing anytime soon. NO, NON, , NEIN