Posted 11 July 2018 - 01:34 PM
Regardless of whether the EU itself is a failing or failed institution (and I fully appreciate and even share some of those sentiments), the stated reasons and supporting 'evidence' for leaving the EU have mostly nothing to do with its intrinsic weaknesses. A lot of the items that were put forward as reasons for leaving the Union (£350m weekly contributions anyone?) were all items that could already be solved on a domestic level. Many existing problems with migration, national budgets and trade are actually caused by UK government legislature and decisions, where the EU was used mainly as a scapegoat. So the whole rationale for exiting the Union was based on false or at the very least misleading information. This is also the main reason why the UK government cannot seem to find any consensus on what they actually want to achieve by leaving, because most of the issues that were raised as reasons for leaving were only marginally linked to the EU and its policies. So now they are faced with trying to fix problems that are not caused by the very thing they are trying to get away from.
A prime example is the leave claim that due to the EU free movement of people, the UK was flooded with Eastern European migrants seeking quick welfare boosts and free housing and social/medical care. This is a complete fallacy. There is nothing in EU guidelines that prevents member states from monitoring and restricting access to EU migrants based on selection criteria. In actual fact, when Poland and later on Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, most countries that expected an influx put measures in place to manage this. Germany did. The Netherlands did. France did. Belgium did. The UK government never bothered to do so because they thought it wouldn't be that bad.
Case in point: when I moved over to the UK in 2006 from the Netherlands, I was absolutely astounded that I could just come and settle down without any real paperwork involvement. In the Netherlands I was used to have to register myself at my local council and when moving from city to city I had to sign myself out with the old council and sign up with the new one. Government institution data was all linked up (student allowances, healthcare, jobsekker allowance, taxes, etc). I had an ID card that I needed to keep on me to ensure that police or government services could easily check identification when queried. When I came to the UK, there was nothing of the sort in place. If I hadn't bothered registering myself and actively seek to obtain local voting rights and employment status etc, I could have just vanished from the public radar. There is a structural lack of checks and controls in UK public services. sure, there is tons of paperwork to fill out, but it doesn't actually seem to be recorded logically or linked up in a sensible fashion. That is not an EU issue, that is a UK issue.
On the budget front, the majority of the money that the UK contributes to the EU is returned in some form or other, so it is a total fallacy to claim that there is this huge pot of money that is being thrown away and could be used instead for the NHS or other emotive areas. Sure, the UK is a net contributor, as is the Netherlands, but the UK also benefits in other ways through rejuvination of the work force and sharing technological and trade deal advantages that it would not be able to obtain on its own.
So yeah, the EU may not be ideal, but if you decide to leave it should be based on truthful arguments and factual information, coupled with a clear plan as to why and what you want to gain from having an independent UK. Sadly, none of these basic conditions were met. This was just a childish and short-sighted political game that completely derailed and backfired, not a deliberate and thought-out process aimed to improve the lives of UK citizens. And that is a fact.
Yesterday, upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
Help
Luv2B_Sassy, on 03 July 2018 - 08:08 PM, said:
