Thought I would post my opinion regarding the EU.
My perspective is one of seeking facts, rather than one based on political ideology.
My personal experience has been that EU law was beneficial to the companies I have worked for. My first job was as a design engineer for a global electronic equipment design, development and manufacturing company. I use those three terms, because I think the single term 'manufacturing' doesn't express reality. Before you can make anything you need educated people to design and develop it.
The company in question indeed had market share outside the EU, but that wasn't where it's main competition was. Also the global market was for lower grade equipment whilst the EU was a market for higher grade and hence higher value equipment along with higher volumes of such equipment.
So what was it like within Europe before the EU, dealing with individual national laws and regulations?
The company spent a lot of money and time developing special versions of their product to satisfy an individual European nations rules and regulations. Germany in particular regularly changed the goal posts and made sure their own industry were well informed of any change a long time before the British company I worked for. The end result was that although our technology was superior (yes it really was better than the German equivalent), the German company always got a bigger market share within their native country. There were armies of civil servants across Europe checking that imported equipment satisfied the nations regulations, this of course was very expensive for the individual nations.
What was it like after EU law and regulation?
The change had a MASSIVE positive impact
, it really can not be underestimated.
The British company designed and developed products in which a single version could be sold all over Europe. There was less bureaucracy to deal with in each nation. The company was so successful that it bought that German competitor
. It also took over a number of other EU companies. Company costs were reduced.
The fact is we shouldn't be having a referendum. If we come out we will have just as many 'problems' as we allegedly have staying in. Plus of course if we have a referendum now, we will have to have another one in 5 or 10 years time because we will want to be back in.
I was listening to an individual calling into a radio talk show about the referendum, the caller said they were fed up with EU laws. The presenter then asked for a specific example of a EU law.
After a lot of thinking, the caller could only come up with one alleged law.
Apparently the EU insists all our cucumbers are straight!
What are the facts?
The mythical bent banana rule never banned bent bananas. The EU rules graded bananas into classes, any banning was done by supermarkets who refused to sell lower class fruit and veg. The fact is that if we were outside the EU, the big corporate supermarkets would still be banning mis-shaped fruit, plus there have been many TV campaigns and programmes that clearly show that it is these corporate companies (Supermarkets being in the news recently about rejecting food and failing to pay their suppliers) that ban food not the EU.
Finally the EU regulation that graded bananas was replaced in 2012.
The developers original plan for the ex BAE site at Waterlooville resulted in numerous trees being retained. In fact contractors spent a lot of time making sure some trees were retained. But the company that make a lot of claims about their new found environmental husbandary after years of environmental abuse (remember the McLibel case?) has now walked onto the site and appear to have demanded the saved trees be felled so that we can all see their new drive in diabetes and obesity outlet. All the claims made by McDonalds appear to be hypocritical when they are happy to chop down a few trees and encourage people to drive (adding to carbon emissions) for a meal that is only worth a pound or two.
