Thursday , March 28 2024

An Overview of the EU

Workers’ rights:
The UK does not depend on the EU for workers rights. Trade Unions became legal in the UK in 1871; Modern Pensions began in 1908; Holiday Pay was introduced in 1938; Equal pay was introduced in 1970; Race Discrimination Act was introduced in 1965; Sex Discrimination act was introduced in 1975. Maternity Rights in the UK are longer and better paid than in EU Law; and while EU Law provides 4 weeks holidays, the UK provides between 5 and 6 weeks. While it is true that some work benefits were introduced after the UK joined the EU’s Social Chapter in 1997 and UK law now emanates from the EU, it is equally true that many people today are working in the UK on low wages and on zero hours contracts. These contracts favour the employers over the employees and the number of workers on zero-hours contracts has increased by more than 100,000 over the past 12 months to well over 800,000 for the first time, official figures show. Employers are using cheap casual labour to cut costs and avoid commitments to their workforce. Roughly 50 per cent of large businesses (those with 250 + employees) have indicated that they use zero-hours contracts, compared with only 10 per cent of small businesses (fewer than 20 employees). There is no doubt that big businesses in the UK today, and indeed across the EU, have been benefiting from the insecurity and misery caused by ‘Zero hours contracts’ which are contracts of employment which do not specify any number of hours that the employee will be required to work and do not guarantee any work at all.
There undoubtedly has been a welter of EU legislation covering consumer protection, product safety, enhanced policing, food labeling, bans on growth hormones, trade ties, environmental legislation, price, transparency, work placements, some of it more helpful than others.
Free Movement of People:
With regard to the free movement of people and uncontrolled EU immigration, many UK residents are concerned that recent levels of EU immigration has been detrimental for the NHS, schools, housing and national security. If the UK does vote to leave the EU, then the government could immediately seek to introduce work permits for EU immigrants, and only accept workers with skills which are required in the UK. Net immigration to the UK rose to 333,000 in 2015, according to Office for National Statistics estimates – the second highest figure on record. The system currently used by the government was designed to count tourists and it has emerged that there is a difference of more than 1.2 million between the official figures for the number of EU nationals moving to Britain in the past five years, estimated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and the actual number of National Insurance numbers which have been issued to those from the EU during the same period. Recently a study by the Bank of England found that increasing immigration has indeed driven down wages; most especially in low wage sectors such as catering, hotels and social care. In May 2015 the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned that the current inflow of foreign workers was holding down wages. There is widespread anecdotal evidence that mass immigration is harming those who are on low pay and wage growth is being held back.
Healthcare:
Professor Angus Dalgleish, the principal of the Cancer Vaccine Institute, has stated that the NHS is being bled dry of resources by health tourists denied care at home. Cancer treatment can cost £200,000 and, under Brussels rules, Britain has to offer it to all EU nationals Professor Dalgleish says this partly explains the NHS’s £3 billion deficit. He also states that the Government has hindered progress of research into key disease areas ‘by blindly adhering to EU directives‘.
Professor Dalgleish, a melanoma expert of global renown has stated that: ‘Our membership of the EU is putting an intolerable strain on our NHS. The NHS is on its knees and could collapse completely. NHS Trusts were not prepared for the millions of EU migrants who have poured into Britain because the Government estimate was nowhere near the reality. GP services are collapsing under the huge number of people they are having to treat and this has led to less than 20 per cent of students wanting to become GPs. Britain is attracting thousands of health tourists from across the EU who cannot get certain drugs or treatments in their home country so come to Britain and demand them as EU citizens. Cancer treatment can cost £200,000 a year per patient and while we remain in the EU, Britain has to offer treatment for any EU citizen who comes here so as to not discriminate.’
Pensions:
Edi Truell, former chairman of the London Pension Fund Authority and founder of the Pension Insurance Corporation, has said that he is backing a Brexit to protect British pensions. His stark warning over the terrible cost of staying in the EU comes amid further revelations that Brussels wants to take control of the British tax system with a European tax code imposed across the 28 member states. Mr Truell, now chief executive of Disruptive Capital Finance but who was in charge of one of Britain’s biggest public sector pension pots covering 130,000 people and with £18 billion worth of assets, said that Brussels will demand “15 times the entire British defence budget” from the UK when it takes control. Mr Truell said: “I am extremely concerned about the impact the European Commission is going to have on Britain pension funds…… the European Commission is going to force us to spend 15 times our entire annual defence budget to satisfy the EU’s pension desires.”
The current budget for defending Britain is £35 billion.
Peace in Europe:
The EU was founded on deceit and lies. Jean Monnet one of the founding fathers of the EU stated that, “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.”
The EU’s founding fathers, distrusted democracy, which they believed had brought dictators and demagogues to power, and they were determined that their European Project would create a post-democratic new world order, imposed by stealth step by step on their blissfully ignorant populations. Instead of which the EU Commission has itself become the dictatorial power that is crippling the EU. It is not the EU which has kept the peace these last 60+ years – it is Nato which has kept and still keeps the peace, despite the EU Commission President, Jean Claude Junker’s burning desire for an EU Army. When the UK, acceded to the EEC , its post democratic authoritarian foundations, which we have all belatedly come to recognise, were already in place, and even from the outset there was no possibility of changing or influencing this undemocratic anti- democratic institution into anything remotely resembling Parliamentary democracy.
Forty years after our accession to the EEC we can now clearly see what has resulted from the profoundly undemocratic European Project. Right across Europe, the European project is disintegrating with remarkable speed. There is mass unemployment and social disorder, as a result of the utterly disastrous Euro experiment. Instead of Cameron’s fantasy of peace and order, brought about by the EU, we are now seeing the rise of extremist parties right across the EU in Greece, Sweden, France, Austria, and even in Germany, a right wing party called Alternative für Deutschland, AfD has gained strong support in reaction to Angela Merkel’s deliberate swamping of Germany with mass immigration.
Any alleged benefits of a European Union, ruled by the unaccountable unelected irremovable EU Commission, have faded, and across EU there are riots, marches, anarchy and social unrest.
Environmental Legislation:
It has long been suspected that the so called Global Warming Industry has been more about generating profit than it ever was about generating so-called ‘green energy’. Now in the UK we have in excess of 3500 wind turbines, ugly blots on the landscape, and which fail to produce very much power. These wind turbines are notoriously inefficient and often have to be switched off when the wind is too high. They create low level noise nuisance which can drive near neighbours to distraction and the environmental noise pollution adversely impacts on people’s health. They emit pulsating noise, intermittently, tonal qualities, amplitude modulation and low frequency noise which has produced unwanted impacts on health, according to the World Health Organizations’ guidelines. Not to mention many birds are killed by wind farms.
Recycling:
A research paper from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has revealed that most managers at plants that recycle rubbish for industrial use say that at best ‘some’ – and in other cases ‘hardly any’ – of the waste sent to them is usable.
Single market:
Membership of the single market has imposed far too many regulations on Britain, in exchange for too few opportunities within European markets, and Britain’s trade with countries outside Europe would be much higher if it left. Wolfgang Münchau of the Financial Times has argued that the single market has delivered little discernible macroeconomic benefit, and that the eurozone will overtake the single market as the organising force within the EU, and that therefore there is no good reason to remain in the EU.
Travel:
There will still be freedom to live, work and travel within EU, even if different conditions apply. We in the UK are able to travel freely around the world with no great hardship and even if visas are required this will be a price worth paying for a return of our freedoms as a sovereign nation.
Study and Travel:
Traditionally some students have always gone overseas to study and travel worldwide and such programmes will continue after Brexit. The International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE) is an independent, non-profit and non-political student exchange organisation. Since its inception, IAESTE has exchanged more than 350,000 students worldwide, playing a key role in the development of young engineers and scientists. WISE is also a non-profit organization providing international exchange opportunities to students, youth and adults. Student Exchange Australia New Zealand Ltd has long established relationships with international partners. There are myriad opportunities for students to travel and work internationally. At present higher education is in huge demand and so even if fewer EU students come here to study, then this presents greater opportunities for home students to study, and universities would not suffer financially. Universities may also be able to avoid EU regulations on clinical trials, which some argue has had a very damaging effect on research and innovation.
International security:
Rob Wainwright, chief of the EU’s police agency Europol, said the agency believed between 3,000 and 5,000 jihadists have been able to slip back into Europe after training with ISIS in the Middle East. Sir Richard Dearlove, former Head of MI6 said that leaving the EU would improve Britain’s security and said that Britain’s borders could be strengthened in the event of a Brexit and extremists could be more easily deported, moves which he said were “security gains” with little apparent downside.
According to a February 2016 report, “Brexit is not the doomsday scenario that some EU officials and Europhile commentators and analysts make it out to be. The EU’s deplorable condition is largely of its own making, most notably because of its many botched policies (ranging from the bungled euro project and its failure to secure the EU’s external borders, to its unresponsiveness to the rising tide of nationalist sentiments). Brexit should be considered the consequence of the EU’s many failed policies, rather than the cause of the EU’s problems. It is therefore important for responsible EU officials and European leaders not to paint the devil on the wall by suggesting that Brexit will only benefit Russia or bring the EU (and Europe in general) closer to war. Not only are these apocalyptic visions imaginary, but they are also irresponsible and counterproductive. If managed well, Brexit will not in any way undermine the EU’s security. …The best choice for both the EU and the UK, is offering opportunities to deepen security and defence integration within a solid EU context for committed member states, while keeping open the option of ad hoc cooperation with like-minded external partners such as the UK and the USA .” (clingendael.nl)
Democracy in the EU:
Democracy died long ago when traitors like Harold MacMillan and Edward Heath deliberately conned the UK public into joining the EEC Common Market. They knew then, and persuaded the Cabinet of the 1960s to keep secret from the UK public the fact that sovereignty would pass to Brussels. It was intended that we would never find out until it was too late. The EU only benefits political elites, (especially in Brussels), the Bilderberg group, the IMF, big businesses and big banks – all of whom are not only involved in stealthily building the EU Superstate, but also involved in building the New World Order. As stated before, the EU’s founding fathers, distrusted democracy, which they believed had brought dictators and demagogues to power, and they were determined that their European Project would create a post-democratic new world order, imposed by stealth step by step on their blissfully ignorant populations.
Westminster used to be a Parliament where we were governed for the people by the people. However, ever after we in the UK were misled into the EEC, which became the EC and then the EU; the process of ‘hollowing out ‘ our Westminster Parliament began. Westminster now is mainly an administrative centre for the EU. Around 60% of our laws in the UK now have their origins in the EU Commission. The unelected unaccountable irremovable EU Commission proposes and initiates all EU Laws, Directives and Regulations. Westminster nowadays mostly brings EU Laws, Regulations and Directives into force in the UK. ‘Hollowing out ‘ is being done in all other National Parliaments across the EU, as well; and power is passing continuously to Brussels. The ‘powers that be‘ never intended the UK populace to find out what successive traitorous governments had done. But we have found out….and now we MUST get out of EU ASAP.
Wolfgang Kowalsky states that “as long as the proponents of European integration do not come up with a clear vision or at least some ideas on how to achieve democratic progress, the legitimacy of EU institutions and processes will further decline and the usual remedy of more and better communication will not help in avoiding the abyss”.
Trade deals post Brexit:
There is a free-trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to, regardless of whether they are in our out of the euro or EU. The largest sources of imports into the EU are Russia, China and the USA. They are not members of the Single Market – they do not even have preferential trade deals. Yet they sell huge quantities of goods into the Single Market. Dozens of countries around the world trade successfully with Europe – and so will Britain after Brexit.
Roger Bootle, a former Group Chief Economist for HSBC bank, said that recent figures from the Treasury suggesting a new recession if Britain votes to leave the European Union (EU) should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism. He also rubbished the idea that Britain could not survive outside the EU, adding that if Britain could not arrange a trade deal with Brussels, UK manufacturers would have to pay a four per cent tariff to export to the single market, a figure which is “not a game changer”. He stated that “Already the pound has fallen by more than that this year.
Last month, a senior German economist also said that Brexit would not be an economic disaster, and could in fact lead to a “booming Britain”.
Martin Hüfner, a former Chief Economist at Germany’s second largest bank HVB, said “markets would adapt to new circumstances, and the City of London would still be Europe’s premier financial centre due to the good people who work there, the English language and the geographical proximity to New York.”
Professor Congdon in his publication ‘How much does membership of the European Union cost Britain?’ points out that the direct costs are bad enough, and forever rising, and that HM Treasury seems completely at sea in their inability to understand or forecast the actual amount of money we are committed to spending on membership. Indeed the whole subject is approached incompetently and dishonestly by the Government. Professor Congdon also points out that the Treasury underestimated our net contribution to the 2012/13 budget by 40%; and in February 2013 Prime Minister David Cameron crowed about another great ‘diplomatic triumph’ (in a long line of such ‘triumphs’) when he announced that for the first time a reduction had been negotiated in the EU budget. It later emerged that in fact EU finance ministers had agreed an increase of £6.2 billion in one year. If this is not bad enough, the indirect costs on the economy are much worse. These include the Common Agricultural Policy and over-regulation, to name just two.
Professor Congdon calculates the total direct and indirect costs on the economy at an incredible and scandalous 11½% of GDP, or a staggering £185 billion per annum.
Border Control post Brexit:
As an island nation, we can control our borders. But if we stay in, we can expect Germany to give EU passports to a million migrants, who are then free to come to the UK. In fact at present 508 million people have an absolute right to come and live, work, be housed, claim benefits, use the NHS and our educational system. The EU is keen to admit Turkey, which would be the biggest and poorest EU state, allowing 75 million Turks the right to come to the UK. We must control our borders and have the right to decide who we want here in our own country. It is alleged that after Brexit we will have no voice in the European Commission, the European Council, or the European Parliament where laws are made. The fact of the matter is that we have very little influence whatsoever in any of those Institutions, as evidenced by David Cameron’s pitiful so called renegotiation. He achieved almost nothing.
The unelected unaccountable irremovable EU Commission propose and initiate all EU Laws, Directives and Legislation. You may say we have an EU Commissioner – but a fact not widely understood is that our EU Commissioner is not there to represent the UK to the EU but rather to represent the EU to the UK ; an entirely different thing.
The European Parliament cannot propose legislation and in fact is no more than a facade of democracy. Their only ability is to make minor amendments to the diktats of the EU Commission. The UK has opposed 72 measures in the EU Council which have gone on to become law. Since David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, the UK has voted against 40 measures and lost all of them. This is 56% of all 72 measures that the UK has voted against since 1996. It is more losses than all the other Prime Ministers combined. Suffice to say that UK has negligible influence in the EU, and there will be even less as the EU continues to expand, and all the while being the second largest net contributor in the EU.
It is further alleged that we would lose agricultural and structural funding that has benefited areas of industrial decline throughout the UK regions. There is no such thing as European Money – not one penny belongs to the EU. We only receive less than 50% of our contributions back here in the UK. All EU Funding monies that are returned to the UK as grants, subsidies or structural funding have been paid for by UK Taxpayers – it is borrowed money at that, and adds to our grotesque National Debt now standing at in excess of 1.6 trillion pounds.
The EU was founded on deceit, lies and treachery, and David Cameron continues the EU tradition of lies………………… Jean Monnet – one of the founding fathers of the EU stated: “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose but which will irreversibly lead to federation.
Present President of the EU commission Jean Claude Juncker, stated that; “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”
Mr Juncker has never hidden his view that the compromises and deals being worked out in EU meetings of leaders or ministers need to be protected from public scrutiny, by lies if necessary. He also has stated that “There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties.”
It is alleged that we can we assist the union’s democratic renewal from within. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The EU is incapable of reform.
It is a juggernaut to destruction, of both itself and everything in its path. They have utterly lost touch with reality, not that they ever had much sense of reality. Have you ever seen the glass palaces the EU Commission and EU Parliament exist in? Do you know how much they spend on propaganda promoting EU? They spend more on propaganda than on fighting terrorism. The Belgian terrorists lived just a few kilometers from EU Institutions. Also do you realise that all 751 MEPs and their office staff & furniture, oscillate 12 times a year from Brussels to Strasbourg in France? Unimaginable costs, over & over & over again. 1st class travel, 1st class accommodation etc etc , month in month out, year in year out, decade in decade out. Did you know?
The Brussels HQ of the unelected Commission is absolutely massive! There is an enormous staff of so called civil servants, all on huge salaries, more or less tax free. They throw money at anything that they think will further their outward expansionist agenda & their inward further integrationist ambitions. The EU is a crazy insane money pit of corrupt dictatorship based upon the whims of the unelected, unaccountable, irremovable EU Commission. It is totally undemocratic, in every way. Monument to man’s capacity of self deception, and worse, deception of the masses.
The ‘powers that be’ never intended the UK populace to find out what successive traitorous governments had done. But we have found out….and now we MUST get out of EU ASAP. There is no doubt that it is in our interests to get out of the corrupt, deceitful, profligate, undemocratic, anti democratic, political monstrosity which is the EU. We MUST lead the way out of the EU, to a new dawn and a new day of restored sovereignty and democracy. Please encourage everyone you know to actually go out and Vote Leave on June 23rd. We will NEVER get another chance.

About Betsy MacKay

Betsy M MacKay MA MSc completed a Master of Arts Degree in 1978; brought up her family, and by the early 2000s was ready to return to University. She returned to University to complete a Second Masters Degree , graduating in 2005 this time with an MSc in European Policy, European Law and European Economic Analysis.

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6 comments

  1. Eileen

    LEAVE

  2. I need to to thank you for this good read!! I definitely loved every little bit of it.

    I’ve got you book-marked to look at new stuff
    you

  3. Excellent article. I absolutely appreciate this site.
    Keep it going!

  4. Chritopher J Merron

    A well argued article Mz Mackay. It is interesting that you suggest Monnet and Schuman conspired to dupe the politicians 67 years ago; starting with Schuman’s idea of the ECSC. though I did not see Robert mentioned but surely it did ensure that the industries which powered WW2 wete being so integrated that a similar European conflict.
    However, to suggest that the supposed deception persists into the 21st Century is a mite disengenuous do you not think?
    If the EU is s failed project why do 27 other nations want to be part of it? Is there something I am missing?
    By the by, I am currently reading “Fascism in Britain” Richard Thurlow. and I feel UKIP has some of the features described there. Have ypu any comment?

  5. Joe O'Rourke

    If everybody had read this before the referendum it would have been 80% leave at least.

  6. Sally Farrands

    Did Betsy pay a fake university for her degree because as a first class honours graduate of international relations and global politics myself I can that this is a gross distortion o the truth.