Do the Leavers know what they are talking about? Penny Mordaunt doesn’t.

In an interview with Andrew Marr, Brexit campaigner Penny Mordaunt gave another example of the Brexiteers’ scare campaign.

The existing member states of the EU all have a veto on whether new members are allowed to join. This is a fact.

Penny Mordaunt says that she doesn’t think that the UK will be able to prevent Turkey joining the EU. “This referendum will be our last chance to have a say on that, we are not going to be consulted or asked to vote on whether we think those countries or others should join.”

She really should know the facts of the situation. If Brexiteers aren’t telling us the truth about this, how can we rely on them to tell us the truth about anything?

Posted in brexit, reflections | Tagged , ,

The way I feel when a UKIP MEP says the EU is undemocratic

batman slap robin - The way i feel when a ukip mep says the eu is undemocratic

If I recall you were ELECTED to the European Parliament.

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Brexit: The leavers Singapore model is no good says Singapore

The Leave campaign’s argument for a Singapore-style economic and political model has just been blown out of the water by the Straits Times: Brexit will not make the UK into the Singapore of Europe

Landfall Strategy Group, a Singapore-based economic research and advisory firm, has recently expressed the opinion that a Singaporean model would not work for the UK, and if anybody is an expert on the Singaporean model, it’s probably Singapore.

They discuss Singapore’s desire for closer integration into ASEAN ( Association of South East Asian Nations), and into Asia as a whole. They also cover the unavoidable geographical constraints of trade (i.e. mostly with your neighbours) and how the UK could apply these lessons to its current situation.

ASEAN’s members signed  a charter in November 2007 with the aim of moving closer to “an EU-style community”. Landfall, in view of Singapore’s experience, says that Brexit would make the UK into the New Zealand of Europe (with apologies to our New Zealand cousins: I’m serious because I’ve got some).

It would be a “peripheral economy” who, post-Brexit, may well be trading with the EU on worse terms than our friends in the antipodes.

They are quite certain it will not turn the UK into the powerhouse the leavers are hoping for.

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*The EU and UK employment rights

Originally posted by Marion Thornly in her blog Ceret Diaries: The EU and UK employment rights

 

The following is a brief summary of a paper entitled “UK Employment Rights and the EU” recently published by the TUC.

 

The Treaty of the European Union in 2008 confirmed that the EU is a community of values and one of its core objectives is to promote the well-being of its people.

EU laws extended many existing UK laws in the area of equal pay, maternity rights, disability and race discrimination, as well as Health and Safety. The UK resisted many of these changes, notably equal treatment for agency workers, working time limits, and the requirement for workers to be consulted on changes in the workplace that could affect them.

UK employees now have the rights to:

  • Written statements of terms and conditions
  • Working Time Directive (including the maximum 48-hour week unless they opt out; paid annual leave)
  • Protection for new and expectant mothers
  • Equal Pay (although this became law in the UK in 1970 it had the glaring omission of equal pay for work of equal value)
  • Anti-discrimination (the EU Framework Equal Treatment Directive of 2000 extended legislation against discrimination on the basis of age, religion and sexual orientation)
  • Collective Bargaining (By remaining in the EU, UK unions retain the ability to participate in and shape negotiations at EU level)
  • Health and Safety (although legislation in the UK established the basis of H&S law, later EU directives required the UK government to amend existing laws. Specific workplace risks were identified and covered by law: musculoskeletal disorders, noise, working at height, protection for new and expectant mothers, young people and temporary workers. 41 of 65 new regulations introduced between 1997 and 2009 originated in the EU)

The report concludes:

Given these benefits, we conclude that EU membership continues to deliver wide-ranging protections to UK workers….remaining in the EU may provide significant opportunities to extend employment protection for working people.

Should Britain exit the European Union, the right-wing politicians who are supporting this strategy would have no compunction in tearing up these hard-won rights and move Britain towards a U.S.-style hire-and-fire employment culture. In an article in The Guardian on 20/2/13, James Walsh wrote of the

cultural differences between French and American working practices, highlighting the very different attitudes to workers’ rights between the two countries. Only 11.3% of American workers belong to a union, a 97 year low, in a country that has seen a gradual erosion of workers’ rights over the past few decades, as the economy has shifted toward part-time and temporary – and frequently low-wage – jobs.

In addition, the US is the only industrialised country in the world that does not have statutory requirements on employers to provide paid holiday, with the average American enjoying a mere two weeks off a year. A quarter of the population have no paid holiday at all. France, in line with many European countries, stipulates a statutory holiday entitlement of 25 days per year.

Posted in brexit, consequences, employment, EUrights, UK citizens | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The EU, a dictatorship? Are you sure?

I have heard many people say that the EU is essentially a dictatorship, when I first heard this my response was:

Futurama Fry - Not sure if sarcastic  or serious

The people who say this obviously don’t understand dictatorships.

In dictatorships you don’t usually get to vote, on anything.

In dictatorships, most negotiations are done with firearms.

In dictatorships civil liberties and workers rights figure very low on the list of priorities.

And finally in dictatorships when somebody suggests leaving they typically get a visit at 2 a.m. by the secret police.

Posted in EU, myths | Tagged ,

Lawyers take EU Referendum franchise challenge to the Supreme Court

20 May 2016 from Leigh Day lawyers acting for 2 British citizens challenging the EU Referendum franchise.

Lawyers for two British Citizens banned from voting in the EU referendum as they have lived outside the UK, but within the EU, for over 15 years will take their fight to the Supreme Court next Tuesday (24 May 2016) after the Court of Appeal upheld a High Court ruling rejecting their legal challenge to the ’15 year rule’.

Last Month the High Court rejected the legal challenge by 94-year-old Harry Shindler, a Second World War veteran who lives in Italy, and lawyer and Belgian resident Jacquelyn MacLennan against the UK Government’s decision to exclude British people who have lived elsewhere in the European Union for more than 15 years, from voting in June.

Today the Court of Appeal upheld that ruling following a hearing which took place on 9 May 2016.

However, lawyers from law firm Leigh Day, representing the two claimants, have secured a date for the UK’s highest Court, The Supreme Court, to consider their arguments that under the EU Referendum Act 2015 up to 2 million British citizens are being unlawfully denied the right to vote on the UK’s continued membership of the EU.

The Supreme Court Justices will be asked to consider whether the ’15 year rule’ unlawfully acts as a penalty against British citizens for having exercised their free movement rights.

The rule prevents them from participating in a democratic process, the result of which might bring to an end the very EU law rights on which they rely and base their working and private lives every day.

Despite the Conservative 2015 manifesto and the 2015 and 2016 Queen’s Speeches including the pledge to introduce votes for life, scrapping the rule that bars British citizens who have lived abroad for more than 15 years from voting, the UK government have not proposed any legislation to reverse this rule ahead of this Summer’s crucial vote on whether the United Kingdom remains in the EU.

Responding to the judgment, Harry Shindler said: “I am still waiting for the Government to tell us why British citizens in Europe can’t vote in this Referendum. The Government had agreed to scrap the 15 year rule before the Referendum bill was passed agreeing it was arbitrary and undemocratic.”

Posted in expatriates, referendum, VotesforLife | Tagged , ,

Why do EUphobes resort to insulting people rather than setting out a post-Brexit alternative.

Today another group of people have come out in favour of the UK Remaining in the EU.

This time it is 250 actors, artists, musicians and writers who set out the benefits to their industry of the funding and collaboration available through the UK membership of the EU.

Predictably the EUphobes accuse them of bias/vested interest or simply insult them

When a person, group, profession, sector come out in favour of the UK Remaining in the EU, there are only 3 reasonable responses from those that oppose them:

1) here is how and why you will still be able to receive the support, finance etc after the UK leaves the EU;

2) that’s a pity for your group/sector/business but we believe the overall benefits for the UK outweigh the losses some might suffer;

3) hard luck, you’ve done well enough for long enough. You’ll just have to find some other way of generating income or do something else.

The EUphobes seem to have no interest in setting out the consequences of a Brexit and exactly what they will put in place instead of the arrangements we have with a through the UK’s EU membership.

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Are there any parallels to draw between the aims of Adolf Hitler and those of the EU?

Are there any parallels to draw between the aims of Adolf Hitler and those of the EU?:

Andrew J Chandler, a member of one of the SY2E – Remain in the EU groups analyses the parallels drawn by Boris Johnson between Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the European Union in his blog quoting history and historians.

Andrew concludes by saying:

There is therefore no analogy to be drawn between the Nazi conquest of Europe and anything that happened before or since, and certainly not the development of free trade areas, democratic institutions and diplomatic initiatives across a broadening European Union. However, the warnings from history of inter-war Europe are clear, and ones which we fail to heed at our peril. They tell us that we must keep building new economic, social, political and diplomatic frameworks across the continent which can withstand future aggression and lead to permanent peace between the diverse nations which compose it.

Source: Quoting history and historians

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