The above image has been doing the rounds and it has been drawn to my attention, so I thought I’d give it some attention…
While I don’t want to poison the well, I did note that the person who put this list together writes for the Guardian, so I did expect it to be poorly researched claptrap and I was not disappointed.
On the face of it, it’s a nice cuddly list of feel good stuff that the EU is responsible for. However, take a closer look and all is not as it seems.
Let’s start with all that stuff about funding shall we? The EU does not fund anything. This is because the EU doesn’t have two cents to rub together. What it actually does is take money from people who have no say in the matter and spend it on their pet projects. Any funding is done by us and we don’t even have the luxury of voting for – or against – the people with the power in this organisation.
And all that peace in our time bullshit – has this cretin never heard of NATO?
Much of this list would have happened anyway, the EU is mere coincidence. But lets look at a couple of the claims being made. What about paid holiday? Oh, right, but what about the Holiday Pay Act 1938. Yes, 1938. Where was the EU then?
Then there’s that cross border cooperation stuff that the EU is so essential for. Er, but, Concorde took its maiden flight in 1969, when we were not members of the Common Market. Oh, so we don’t need the EU for cross border cooperation, then.
Anyone who thinks that the European Arrest Warrant is a good idea is a nasty totalitarian prick. Seriously, this means that Britons are vulnerable to the vagaries of Napoleonic law and a loss of habeas corpus. Fuck me!
And copyright protection. Has this cretin not been paying attention? Article 13 is a dreadful piece of legislation that will effectively push small content creators off platforms such as You Tube because You Tube will not be able to take the risk that something being used under fair use rules isn’t in breach of copyright. It is a dreadful sledgehammer piece of legislation that only an authoritarian could dream up. This is not a benefit.
Freedom to travel live and work across Europe – we’ve been doing that for centuries.
And finally – the EU has prevented a European war. Well, that’s just an assertion. It’s a regular refrain that somehow it will stop Germany invading France again, but assertion isn’t the same thing as fact, so it’s not a valid claim.
And finally – feel free to go through it spotting the spelling errors. I particularly like the landfill dumplings. With gravy please.
Why are restrictions on landfill dumplings a good thing? If you have a hole in the ground that was left by quarrying why not use it to dispose of some of your rubbish? When it’s full you cover it with a layer of topsoil and use the space for something else.
Many of the restrictions that are imposed by the EU are one size fits all “Solutions” to non problems. People with local knowledge who actually know what really works are overruled by unelected ignorant morons. The disasterous results of their stupidity are then blamed on climate change.
Indeed. But people fall for this stuff.
The Netherlands can’t dig deep enough to dispose of their dumplins because of their high water table. If one member can’t then nobody can.
It’s all bollocks. So the EU has prevented war in Europe has it? Really? Funny I always thought it was NATO. But even then their claim is wrong. So what happened in the Balkans from 1991 onwards then? Tiddlywinks?
Did anybody seriously think Germany and France were going to go to war with each other? How terminally fucking stupid do you need to be to think that was ever going to happen. Of all the countries in Europe, Germany is the least militaristic.
EAW – allows you to be extradited to some hellhole abroad for something that isn’t a crime in the UK, so stuff that.
bloc EEA negotiation at WTO level = we decide who you can trade with and who you can’t, and on what terms, so suck it up
We can do all of this without being in the EU, and be a damn sight freer for it.
I think it depends on what is meant by “us”
But I thought it was now terribly polluted with diesel exhaust – that’s what we are constantly being told. The EU have been behind the “CO2 is evil” bollocks right from the start, which lead to motorists being encouraged to switch from petrol to diesel. Of course (and entirely predictably), they are now switching back, and CO2 emissions are rising as a result!
FFS – the Yanks were using that for years before we (or the EU) thought about it. Needed to run the fuel wasting catalytic converters fitted to petrol engines, in order to convert various “nasties” to Carbon Dioxide, otherwise know as CO2…
Yup, I just dipped my toe in this excrescence. Feel free to indulge in anything I’ve not picked up on.
+1 in spades, iirc ~10% more fuel used by car/bike/…
Basically, in relation to EU membership, the claims that are true aren’t advantages, and the claims that are advantages aren’t true (that is, aren’t due to the EU).
Oh, dear. Where to start with this lot. First and foremost, the point is (deliberately) missed that, even had we not been in the EU, there’s every chance that many, if not all, of these measures might well have been adopted by our own Government under our own processes anyway. Without turning the clock back 40+ years and doing a comparison, there’s no way of knowing which they would and which they wouldn’t have implemented, but one thing’s for sure – whichever the UK Government might have decided to implement (which they would have been perfectly able to do – it is, after all, what Parliaments do. They make laws!), they would have done because that very UK Government felt that it was the right thing to do for the UK. The British Parliament has been passing laws for centuries – they didn’t wait until the 1970s and only then discover laws, rules and regulations. If that was the case, we’d have no laws before then, and a look at the legislation.gov website shows that this isn’t the case. So there’s every chance that they would have continued to make laws, just as they had been doing for centuries, and I have no that doubt many would mirror some of those mentioned in this list. They might even have implemented all of them! Who knows?
But it’s also typical of a Guardian writer that he blithely assumes that just because he likes a certain measure, then everybody likes it, natch. Smoke-free workplaces, to put it mildly, haven’t been as hugely popular as this writer likes to think, and not just amongst smokers, either. The European Arrest Warrant is viewed with huge suspicion by pretty much everyone I know, with the exception of the naïve “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” lot. Bloc negotiation at the WTO? Really? Wasn’t one of the main reasons for many people voting Leave to escape slow, clunky EU processes and replace them with a faster, more flexible ability to forge trade agreements with whoever we wished? “Improved animal welfare in food production?” Yeah, right. Ask anyone who works in the slaughterhouse industry how the huge number of rules and regulations put all the small (generally kinder, if you can use that word in this context) slaughterhouses out of business so that animals now have to be driven halfway across the country and wait for hours in a cramped lorry in a huge queue before being shoved into a mass-production slaughtering-factory warehouse to meet their maker. And – err – foie gras, anyone? I don’t think geese would think there’s been much improvement! Oh I, like many others in here, could go on and on and on ….. but I won’t.
But “peace”? Presented like some kind of trump card. God, how “in love” with the EU is this person?? Quite apart from NATO, as mentioned above, the biggest factor ensuring peace in Europe for the past 70 years were the two ghastly wars which the whole of Europe was embroiled in during the first half of the 20th century!
I’m the Emperor and I want dumplings! (Ferdinand of Austria)
I thought the main reason for peace since 1945 was that Germany didn’t have an effective army they could use on their next quest to rule the continent.
Not as that has stopped them.
Indeed. This time they used economic might. Not that I blame them for that.
Shurely you’re not suggesting that the EU would stoop to propaganda. Perish the thought…
Yes they would – and stop calling me Shirley!
Just spotted ‘support for democracy’ in the list. Shouldn’t that read ‘systematic erosion of democracy’ ?
One of the most stupid and partisan EU Laws; all because Holland has no deep holes. A law favouring 1 of 28.
What idiocy did Holland support to have this passed? Sweden’s DLR lights?
Hmm, Simon Sweeney? Related to BBC’s Pandorama Sweeney?
I did wonder if it was any relation.