|
Post by mrsonde on May 14, 2015 3:17:56 GMT 1
Okay, Alan - forget all that, and all our previous unsatisfactory disagreements. I am genuinely interested in your viewpoint on the forthcoming Referendum. Not Scotland, coming your way in the next five years, the EU.
I'll start another thread, and I'll hope you can bring your rational engineer/businessman expertise to bear on the question. I presume you'll want to defend your previous assertions that it'll start WWIII, for example - or, no let's make a new start, and assume instead that was just you being a bit of a lefty clown. Let's be reasonable. I guess you do business in the EU, and have some knowledge of what the issue means? I'd like to hear your views. I'd like to hear from Jonjel, too ( a very successful international engineering entrepreneur, if anyone wasn't aware.)
What are the implications here, really?
|
|
|
Post by alancalverd on Jun 7, 2015 1:52:57 GMT 1
I don't recall suggesting that the UK leaving the EU will cause a war of any sort. You may be confusing the issue with that of Scottish independence, which will almost certainly end up with a friendly takeover of North Britain by peaceloving fellow-socialists with red stars in their caps.
However, re Europe. I am an accredited expert to the European Union and have "enjoyed" its wonderful hospitality from time to time, at your expense. Indeed I was so impressed that I offered to pay my own fare home rather than spend another Saturday night in Luxembourg. But I digress.
I currently do business with British, American, Italian and Belarussian manufacturing companies, and I have clients in Ireland*. The wonderful European Free Trade Zone does not make it any easier to do business with the EU members and the Italian products are inferior. All the EU contributes is cost, delay and paperwork, plus a statutory reduction in the safety of the medical equipment we make in the UK. Selling product in the EU is more difficult than the rest of the world because (a) every EU purchase above some silly amount (I think it's around £150k) has to go to formal open tender and (b) whilst all goods offered for sale in the EU must meet a common minimum standard, anything not actually made in France must be "homologated" before it can be purchased, so you might as well forget it. The American products all meet FDA standards, which include safety and effectiveness, but they all had to be "CE marked" for sale in Europe, and CE marking imposes only a minimum standard of safety and does not cover effectiveness. But it adds cost - it's cheaper (by 30 to 50 %) to buy a Spanish-built x-ray machine from the USA than from Spain, and it's entirely legal to use it in the UK because CE marking is only required for "placing on the market", not for use.
I have an interest in aviation, principally as a means of getting to work. I had to surrender my pilot's licence and be issued with a European one in order to fly in the UK. It is exactly the same single sheet of paper except it says "EASA" instead of "JAA" on the front, and is folded differently - so you have to buy a new holder too. The cost of this nonsense was around £75. With the old JAA licence I could fly a UK registered aircraft anywhere in the world. With the new EASA licence, I can fly a UK-registered aircraft anywhere in the world - because the rules are not made in Europe! The sole function of the European Aviation Safety Authority is to add cost and delay to everything you want to do. If you don't believe me, ask Robinson Helicopters Inc, whose latest small chopper was accepted worldwide except in Europe, where EASA took 4 years and $10M to approve the design and maintenance manuals - without a single alteration. Why? The only benefit seems to have accrued to a European manufacturer of a competitive machine. Or it would have, if the wily customers hadn't simply ordered Robinsons and registered them in the USA.
Looking at the broader economic picture, the UK's trade gap with Europe has increased steadily since we joined the EEC. This came as no surprise since the balance was always negative. If you lose money every time you do business, then the more business you do, the more money you lose. Curiously, however the EU is good for business, though bad for Britain. If you run a business, you can employ cheaper labour at all skill levels because the carpenter whose family live in Poland, or the IT guy whose family live in Spain, can afford to work for less than the native Londoner. And whether you import or export, the supposed lack of a trade barrier means you can import or export more. So business may well be booming, but every year, the imports exceed the exports by a larger amount and the relative cost of labour decreases. So who loses? The taxpayer, of course.
Let's look at society and culture. In a civilised society, the state exists to serve the citizen. Parliament determines what is undesirable, and passes legislation to make murder, theft, etc., illegal. Statute law is a list of wrongs, and since the law applies to the state as well as every individual, you don't need rights. The UK used to be a civilised society. In a dictatorship, the citizen exists to serve the state - ever since the Romans, where SPQR significantly put the Senatus before the Populus, the rest of Europe has been governed by lists of duties and privileges, not wrongs, and the citizens have been granted rights b7y an occasionally-benevolent state. The adoption of EU legislation into UK law has been a confusing disaster. At the top, one man's right necessarily becomes another man's duty, so a murderer's rights to family life and worship mean that we can't deport him and have to provide whatever he considers to be a religious requirement, in prison. In my own sphere of business, the medical use of ionising radiation was previously restricted by a set of wrongs and a general law of competence that applied to "any person who...." but under EU law, your clinical judgement and expertise count for nothing: you have to follow set procedures, and only certain registered professionals are allowed to do certain things: worse, once you are on the register, you have a right to do those things regardless of your incompetence. Worse still, if I accept a request for an x-ray examination from someone who is not currently registered, I am committing an offence - but how do I know if the referrer is registered? Do I have to phone the General Medical Council twenty times a day? Will they answer the phone at 2 am? Who cares about the patient? Not the law! As with the helicopter business, there is a stench of corruption in this too: ask anyone who has had a disagreement with the General Chiropractic Council (now there's a body that adds cost and delay!)
I could go on, but what's the point? Fact is that the EU is corrupt, undemocratic, expensive, timewasting, and damaging to the UK's interests. It has no useful function for me (I used to travel everywhere in the world with a British passport: like the pilot licence, it's now a European passport but confers no additional privilges) but is costimg me time and money.
*Regarding the "free movement of labour": my professional credentials now have to be registered in each EU country where I practise. The initial qualification training and most of the continuing professional development courses and conferences are not usually delivered in Ireland, because it's only an hour's trip to London or Glasgow and we are a small profession. Before the EU, I used to practise in the Republic with no problem. But although they are valid both north and south of the border, I now have to submit all my papers every few years to both the UK and the Irish authorities, and pay two lots of fees. I can however still work in Belarus, the Far East and most of Africa without further certification, because the UK qualification simply reflects a knowledge of the laws of physics, principles of engineering, and international safety standards, all of which are believed to be universal outside of the EU. Common sense rules when there are no rules.
|
|
|
Post by fascinating on Jun 7, 2015 8:59:38 GMT 1
Good post Alan.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 22, 2015 1:16:47 GMT 1
I don't recall suggesting that the UK leaving the EU will cause a war of any sort. Yeah yo did, you fecking wriggling Sassanach bastard! Fuck em. There'll be adverts every ten minutes on Sky asking for food parcels. Help the Scots dig a well. Moragh has never been taught how to add two and two. She doesn;t know anything but concrete and her daddy supping whisky. Help us give Moragh a better future. Help us smuggle her across the border, before it's too late, and she breeds with Uncle Ned. Five pounds a day is all that's needed to ensure Moragh grows up amngst English people, (Your investments may go up or down: and you may lose your money altogether in our expenses and retriement funds for that matter, sucker.) Errr...wait a minute. That's an unusually long post for someone of your typiucal reticence, Alan. I may need to have another drinkee or two before I attempt to digest it, Gawd...it;s horribly long.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 22, 2015 1:18:09 GMT 1
That's really put it me off it.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jul 24, 2015 1:37:44 GMT 1
Oh. I see. I think. So, what you're saying is...you're agin it?
Fuck. Is there no one on this board stupid enough to believe in the madcap scheme who has the courage of their convictions?
|
|