Ian, let me go through you comment point by point.
Laws made in Brussels is one of those wonderful bits of political machinery to drive in any direction one wants. The UK media have done so and now Farage and UK have used it to advantage. Actually it has been misused. They have all been saying that 70% of the UK's laws are made in Brussels and quoting somebody who expressed that wrongly, Viviane Reding, bearing in mind her English is not always perfect and she does get things wrong fairly often. What is correct is that 70% of EU laws apply to the UK. That does not mean that they are all adopted by the UK. In fact, those that are incorporated into English and Welsh law make up about 17% and Scots law 19%. They are hardly big issues either, such key laws as the regulation of commercially grown raspberry canes not exceeding 1.65m hardly affects everyday lives. However, play around with this type of detail and up pops a political plaything.
Unelected bureaucrats making laws. The do not at all. Again, a wonderful propaganda tool to play with. However, the laws are all drawn up by bureaucrats on request of committees made up of representatives of member nations who we elect. The bureaucrats are EU civil servants, employed as the UK, France or elsewhere employs them and of course they are not elected, who ever heard of civil servants being elected? When a draft law is ready it goes to the commission the committee is working under. Commissions are the equivalent of ministries, so that should be fine in anybody's mind. The commissions put them into the proper language and translate into all official languages used within the 28 member EU, plus Rumantsch, Icelandic and Norwegian for the non-EU members who are closely tied to the union. The draft laws go to the member countries for their officials to examine then on to the European Parliament to be scrutinised, voted on and amended as required unless they go straight through which few do or are rejected outright. Then when all of that is done then all final translations and instruments for the adoption into the laws of member states are prepared and then the finished laws passed on to the responsible commissioner. The commissioner, who is not part of any lawmaking process in that he or she does not make laws or have any say in making them, presents them formally to the EU. Commissioners are appointees, their candidature is made by member states, their appointment by majority voting and their actual role is as a figurehead and spokesman/woman for particular branches of the EU. Whatever people say, José Barroso does not make laws, has little influence in general but is responsible for allocating portfolios to members of the commission and can reshuffle or dismiss commissioners if becomes necessary. The commissioners determine the policy agenda and examine all legislative proposals it produces following the procedure through committee stage and so on already described. Thus, given the EU's structure the commission is the only body that can propose EU laws very much like any member state's ministry is the only body that can do so. It is not so different to domestic legislation except that in that case member states usually get to pick and choose which laws to accede to to some extent.
£50 million a day. That was a figure bandied about. £18 billion a year. That is a tiny little bit of the annual UK government budget of £117 billion a year. £3.8 was rebated almost immediately in 2012. France, where we are living, actually makes up the largest part of the funding for the UK rebate. The UK has a quite small farming sector producing its proportion of GDP. Payments to the EU are mainly funded by VAT returns and more or less proportionate to the size of the economy. The rebate was originally approved because when it joined, the UK was the second poorest member of the the 10 EEC member states. It certainly needs to be revised, no question at all, in fact some countries are calling for its abolition and replacement with a more equitable scheme. Above and beyond rebate there are the grants the UK receives for EU projects and programmes that vary from years to year but can bring the UK back in up to £12 billion a year, normally more like £7 or £8 million. However looked at, of £50m going out each day, well over 20% returns anyway plus roughly speaking a further 40%. So, yes £50m does go out every day but do these political manipulators bother to tell anybody that around £30m a day goes back to the UK. The £7.3 billion spent each year is already offset by equitable trade agreements within the EU and put in perspective, as a couple of economists did recently but the media mainly kept quiet, it is less than the budget spent on replacing civil service and government department hardware, software and networking each year, also taking into account several billions of pounds of totally wasted development and delivery of systems that have not worked and had to be dropped immediately at the cost to the taxpayer.
The EU gives a very big budget for joint medical research but health services, as too pensions, schools and other budget items are generally national matters the EU has no say in. The expenditure of the computer systems mentioned, plus money invested in replacing nuclear weapons, the means of delivering them like Trident and new military aircraft has seen over expenditure of many billions for items that have been rejected after extensive research and development when prototypes were found to have been faulty. Further to that, the money being spent on HS2, fracking, the new airport east of London and additional LHR runway are only ‘exploratory’ at this point in time. The estimate for the 12 mile tunnel, diversion of rivers, a canal, electricity trunk routes, gas pipelines, water mains and rehousing several hundred people (over 90% of whom are home owners) for the LHR third runway is hair raising and the government spokesman releasing the review even said that that would most certainly need to be adjusted in line with inflation and the errors that are inevitable! Each of these things has greater public opinion against than for. Is that democracy and reasonable use of taxpayers’ money?
There is hay made of the EU audit, it needs to be dealt with very quickly and consequently for sure. However, what about national budget audits? The UK has an embargo of 100 years before the books can be examined by the public. It all smells very wrong to many of us. The scandals arising over expenses and wastage are only the tip of a huge iceberg. The entire political system in Europe is corrupt and needs to be entirely overhauled. Unfortunately there is no party that would ever have the clout to even propose that in its parliament let alone legislate to achieve it.
European Free Trade Association is a free trade organisation between four European countries that operates parallel with and linked to the EU. The EFTA members are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. It is used as a ‘fringe’ group to the EU but its regulations are mainly made in Brussels. All of its trading terms are within the EEC terms which are now incorporated into the EU. The clock cannot be turned back on that association and become a larger group of countries.
As for blaming Edward Heath, Harold Wilson or whoever else for the way the people were ‘lied to’, that is again political haymaking. In 1975 the UK had a referendum on the state joining the EEC, the so-called Common Market. There was a manifesto produced by the then commission along with the UK government. It was sold by HM Bookshop on the Kingsway for 2/6d. I have recently blown the dust off my copy and had a very close look. The future programme of the EEC was to develop economically, socially and politically. In broad terms what we have now is what was foreseen in that bulky bit of technical jargon. I read it, cast my vote for the membership and was part of a large majority. Even accounting for the relatively small number of people who did not vote, the choice was made by a sizeable majority in any terms. If each new generation decides it does not like what it sees and demands a new referendum then that could apply to every treaty a country enters into. If thus the next generation wants back in because leaving was wrong then that mistake may be irreversible.
Now there is a fuss being made about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to boot. The USA has seen the writing on the wall and knows that they cannot compete economically with several nations already and should any of those form blocs comparable with the EU then they will go down like a proverbial stone. The EU is in a comparable position. The USA and EU are negotiating the TTIP to stay ahead of the game. The critics are forgetting TAFTA. The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the US and EU has been proposed with the aim of ‘protecting’ investment and removing ‘unnecessary regulatory barriers’. The negotiations could very easily result in the opening of the floodgates for GMOs and shale gas (fracking) in Europe, also threatening of digital and labour rights and empowering the large multinational corporations to legally challenge a wide range of regulations if they do not like or want them. The EU would generally have to accept US standards in many areas, particularly food and agriculture, which are lower than those of the EU. The largest food corporations (Unilever, Kraft, Nestlé, etc.) and the multinational chemical, agricultural biotechnology and pharmaceutical giants (Monsanto, Bayer, etc.) have welcomed the negotiations, with a key demand being the facilitation of the low level presence of unapproved GM crops. The two treaties would have devastating social and environmental consequences within the EU, so the opposition is not without good reasons. However, the chances of entirely blocking them is very low. Any country that is then outside the EU will still be subject to the rules the treaties will make but at greater cost. No single European country could sustain what would come to bear on them. Those treaties were not part of the 1975 deal and they require a referendum that clearly we will not get.
Finally, Switzerland. A wonderful myth. All of my family are Swiss. I have very few ties with the UK any longer really. Although the Swiss have recently had a referendum to introduce quotas for all immigrants seeking work there which may place restraints on their Schengen membership, in practice once the federal government has put the legislation in shape and place it may simply put a brake on people going there to live without means of financially sustaining and supporting themselves. EU citizens already supply large parts of the medical, banking and technical sectors which the country cannot afford to lose. Nothing is going to change there. Superficially, they will demand people wishing to teach must have qualifications acceptable in their country which means, for instance, German and UK teaching qualifications that are accredited will be OK but not French, Italian, Polish, Spanish and a few others. If the UK left the EU and was admitted to EFTA, which none of the countries would want because two already depend on a financial sector the City would then impose itself into, it would still be bound by EU laws and regulations.
The only option would be for the UK to go it alone. Entirely alone. Looking at the changing world competing with China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico and even little Singapore now with other countries coming on fast would make that very difficult. Leave the EU because a minority of political voices wish to consign the UK back to the 1950s without the last bits of empire to cling to, bearing in mind that the 1975 decision to join the EEC was because the UK was going rapidly down the drain as well, would be folly. So leave or not? I know what I think and I take all of the above into account, much of which I do not like, but prefer in to out.