Blue Skies Founder Anthony Pile explains why he believes the UK should remain in the European Union.
Next month those of us in the UK will be voting to remain or leave the European Union. Many of us have not thought much about the issues or indeed whether it really matters whether we stay or quit. Some who have given it a little thought will be influenced by the immigration crisis facing Europe and Britain itself and others may have pondered the consequences on security, agriculture, the economy, trade and other subjects.
My mind turns to the impact on Blue Skies. Our brave little factories in Kent are populated by Europeans who travel freely to these shores under the EU principle of free movement between member states for employment purposes. Would we find ethnically British people who would be prepared to work so efficiently and loyally?
Then there is the matter of quotas and tariffs. Again we live in a free trade zone of 28 countries; we supply five of them and our energetic sales team in Europe is determined to supply still more in the coming years. We just don’t know whether we would negotiate during a prolonged exit exercise a tariff free deal with these and other states; we might. But we might not!
I am not going to list more areas that might affect our decision except to say we should not ignore the response of nations irritated by what they might perceive as British perfidy and the possibility of taking disproportionate action against us which could leave its mark for a number of years.
It is going to be a tight contest. They say the older people are going to want to “Brexit” and the young will want to stay in the club. In spite of my age, I know which way I shall vote and I hope you do too!
By Chairman and Founder, Anthony Pile
The UK’s forthcoming referendum on whether or not to stay in the European Union has stirred the imaginations of many with both sides of the debate banding about fantastically misleading figures and using every opportunity to accuse the other side of deception, ignorance or doom mongering. So with the Pro European’s extolling the benefits that the EU brings its members such as trade, security and the free movement of people, what is the Anti-European lobby saying? Below Stephan Morris outlines his views on the EU…
Anthony has written in this edition of Pelican News about the benefits to Blue Skies of the UK remaining in the European Union. On rare occasions, Anthony is wrong, however on this occasion I think that he is right that Blue Skies benefits from British EU membership. However I believe that the UK as a country would be better outside the European Union. I have several reasons for this belief and I will set them out briefly here.
1. The European Union has an institution called the European Commission that is responsible for initiating legislation. The European Commission is made up of people who are appointed not elected. The European Parliament who debate the legislation is made up of elected people, but it has less power than the Commission. For these reasons Democracy is weak within the European Union. Three million people signed a petition against a trade agreement with North America which the Commission refused to consider.
2. The European Union is wasteful of money, and British membership costs too much. The administration of the EU costs £10 billion every year, and the bureaucracy achieves very little that is worthwhile. The UK pays £13 billion each year to the EU and £4 billion is received from the EU. It costs the UK £9 billion every year to remain in the EU.
3. The European Union creates too many regulations and creates many regulations that are wrong. The EU bureaucracy must make regulations otherwise it does not need to exist, and it is now making regulations that citizens do not want. An example of a regulation that is wrong is that the EU says that the UK is violating the rights of prisoners by not letting them vote in parliamentary elections.
4. The European Union does not allow the UK to make some decisions about the people who live there. Foreign people living in the UK who have committed very serious crimes cannot be sent back to their own country if they have members of family in the UK because they have a right to family life.
5. The European Union is committed to ever-closer union, with the goal of a federation of states similar to the USA. This commitment has not been agreed with EU citizens, and it is probable that most EU citizens would oppose this policy.
By Stephan Morris, Group Technical Manager
The EU referendum takes place on the 23rd of June and we’ll be reporting the full results in the next edition of Pelican News.
