Yeah, but apart from the peace and security, single market, the high food and environmental standards, consumer benefits, human rights, global power, mobile roaming, travelling rights protection, business training and support, worker protection and small business support......What the EU does for its citizens
Since 1957, the European Union has benefited its citizens by working for peace and prosperity. It helps protect our basic political, social and economic rights. Although we may take them for granted, these benefits improve our daily lives.
Peace & Security
Central and western Europe has never known so long a period without war. The EU is the most successful peace project in human history and has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Europeans are closely linked economically and culturally, and through the democratic values we share.
Single Market
The single market is the world's most highly developed and open marketplace. It is based on the EU’s 4 key freedoms, which enable you and other citizens to:
High food & environmental standards
- live or work in any EU country
- move your money
- sell goods without restrictions
- provide services on the same basis.
Because EU countries cooperate so closely, our food and our environment meet some of the world's highest quality standards. Unscrupulous companies can't get away with selling contaminated food or polluting our rivers and countryside.
Consumer benefits
Shoppers can now feel safe in the knowledge that they will get their money back if they return products. Travellers can buy train or plane tickets, knowing they can get a refund if their journey is delayed or cancelled. And the standards which goods in EU shops are required to meet are among the world's most stringent, in terms of both quality and safety.
Human Rights
The EU protects all minorities and vulnerable groups, and stands up for the oppressed. Regardless of a person's nationality, gender, language group, culture, profession, disability or sexuality, the EU insists on equal treatment for all.
Global Power
EU countries acting in unison have much more of a voice on the world stage than 28 small and medium-sized nations acting separately. We have political clout. As regards trade, our regulatory and product standards are adopted worldwide as the global norm.
Other benefits the EU brings its citizens are:
- You can use your phone and online services at no extra cost wherever you are in the EU. You can also access your online video and music streaming services across the EU, safe in the knowledge that your personal data is protected under EU law.
- Your rights are protected while you're travelling: EU rules protect your rights in the event of delays or cancellations. Whether travelling by plane, train, boat or bus, you are entitled to fair treatment.
- You can benefit from training and support for your business: EU programmes like Erasmus+ help you get training to make the most of your career. The EU also helps you get the most out of your business – from finance to coaching, and from business networks to exchange schemes.
- As a worker, you're protected from unfair treatment in the workplace under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This bans discrimination, including in the areas of pay and dismissals.
- As an EU citizen, you're protected against the downsides of globalisation by EU support for small businesses and rules to make sure that big companies pay their fair share of tax.
exactly my point mate.Yeah, but apart from the peace and security, single market, the high food and environmental standards, consumer benefits, human rights, global power, mobile roaming, travelling rights protection, business training and support, worker protection and small business support......
What have the EU ever done for us?
Well obviously the increase in GDP, but what else?exactly my point mate.
membership also increases GDP by between 4% and 5% per annum but fuck that for a game of soldiers. We will have our freedom, its the will of the people!
The aqueducts?Yeah, but apart from the peace and security, single market, the high food and environmental standards, consumer benefits, human rights, global power, mobile roaming, travelling rights protection, business training and support, worker protection and small business support......
What have the EU ever done for us?
Seriously mate, I have just returned from a driving holiday of Ireland. I spent a lot of time on motorways, A, B and single tracks with grass growing up the middle!Well obviously the increase in GDP, but what else?
The roads?
Think that was the Romans - but Italy is a EU state!The aqueducts?
Trade deals.Yeah it’s pure shite to be honest. The only one that is a potential is fishing and even that isn’t clear cut if it will benefit as an industry or not. For the record it’s 0.12% of GDP, our fishing industry so if we’re doing all of this to potentially benefit this one industry, it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
“£8million contributions we’ll save” - and as a net benefit of our membership we annually make +4% of GDP, as an average. It’s paying to be a member of a trading club where you constantly win more than it costs to be a member. Ridiculous point.
“Setting up our own trade deals” - trade will be diminished significantly and we trade freely with major markets all around the world through the EU, who act on our behalf and to our benefit in this area. We’re about to see how much we’ve fucked up in this area.
“The restoration of parliament sovereignty” - we have that now and always have done, well for hundreds of years. Parliament has always been able to trigger A50 and leave the EU, that is the essence of sovereignty. The reason it’s taken us 3 years and we haven’t done is because leaving the most lucrative club on the planet is a bad idea. We can always leave without a deal though which is the way it’s going, and you’ll see how shit that is.
“The ability to control who and how many come and go..” - we have immigration controls now and don’t use them. Immigration will go down from the EU but up from elsewhere when we’re desperate for trade deals, countries will ask for visas.
The argument on future federalism is just a “what if” argument and it doesn’t make sense to absolutely ruin ourselves because of what might happen in the future. I don’t think federalism is a bad thing anyway, globalisation and fluidity between nations is the future and inevitable generally speaking around the world.
The aqueduct?Yeah, but apart from the peace and security, single market, the high food and environmental standards, consumer benefits, human rights, global power, mobile roaming, travelling rights protection, business training and support, worker protection and small business support......
What have the EU ever done for us?
We had no roads before the EU money came in.Seriously mate, I have just returned from a driving holiday of Ireland. I spent a lot of time on motorways, A, B and single tracks with grass growing up the middle!
In general, the roads were fantastic and well maintained compared to ours. Roads in Scotland are a national disgrace. I blame the EU for that too.
The aqueduct?
Trade deals.
The rest of the world will be queuing up.
Of course they will.
We'll be so desperate and weak any other country will be looking to include any demand and we'll agree.
Donald, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada must be rubbing their hands with glee.
Is there anything we can offer in exchange for their goods that they can't get from EU instead that is cheaper and/or better?
Stilton cheese.
Scotch whisky.
...
I sure did. Honestly, some of the B roads in Scotland look like they have been bombed the craters are so large and numerous.We had no roads before the EU money came in.
Roads with grass down the middle? Luxury.
Seriously. The maintenance from corporations and county councils is the issue now.
Go back 20 years and you wouldn't have got around the southwest/ west as easy as you did. A lot of EU money gone into infrastructure over here.
Anyway glad you enjoyed your holiday here.
You should put some EU money towards them ;)I sure did. Honestly, some of the B roads in Scotland look like they have been bombed the craters are so large and numerous.
Did you know the UK government forgot/were too late to claim their full regional subsidy this year because we would be 'out'.You should put some EU money towards them ;)
Shit now the rest of the World knows how weak and desperate we are we could end up with trade deals in which we lose money trading with them every year have a massive imbalance in trade, have to except any standards they impose. Still we'd never be that desperate that we could be forced into paying billions for the privilege of constantly losing out would we?Trade deals.
The rest of the world will be queuing up.
Of course they will.
We'll be so desperate and weak any other country will be looking to include any demand and we'll agree.
Donald, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada must be rubbing their hands with glee.
Is there anything we can offer in exchange for their goods that they can't get from EU instead that is cheaper and/or better?
Stilton cheese.
Scotch whisky.
...
We could mend a lot of roads with £8.9 billion I suppose.You should put some EU money towards them ;)
And once we are out of the EU, we can look forward to a completely unfettered continuation of Tory policies that will deliver more of this:
(Source last years report by the UN special envoy on poverty in the UK) The commentary on the findings of the report are from him.
Government-led misery
The UK Government’s policies have led to the systematic immiseration of millions across Great Britain.
Child poverty
Close to 40 per cent of children are predicted to be living in poverty by 2021.
Following drastic changes in government economic policy beginning in 2010, the two preceding decades of progress in tackling child and pensioner poverty have begun to unravel and poverty is again on the rise.
Relative child poverty rates are expected to increase by 7 per cent between 2015 and 2021 and overall child poverty rates to reach close to 40 per cent. For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain would not just be a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster rolled into one.
Inequality
Although the United Kingdom is the world’s fifth largest economy, one fifth of its population (14 million people) live in poverty, four million of those are more than 50 per cent below the poverty line, and 1.5 million of them experienced destitution in 2017, unable to afford basic essentials. And 2.5 million people survive with incomes no more than 10 per cent above the poverty line – just one crisis away from falling into poverty.
Given the significant resources available in the country, the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have caused so much pain and misery, amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the United Kingdom’s human rights obligations.
Policies of austerity introduced in 2010 continue largely unabated, despite the tragic social consequences.
For all the talk that austerity is over, massive disinvestment in the social safety net continues unabated.
…it has resulted in:
• 14 million people living in poverty,
• Record levels of hunger and homelessness,
• Falling life expectancy for some groups,
• Ever fewer community services,
• Greatly reduced policing,
• Access to the courts for lower-income groups has been dramatically rolled back by cuts to legal aid.
The imposition of austerity was an ideological project designed to radically reshape the relationship between the Government and the citizenry. UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available.
A booming economy, high employment and a budget surplus have not reversed austerity, a policy pursued more as an ideological than an economic agenda.
Far-reaching changes to the role of Government in supporting people in distress are almost always “sold” as part of an unavoidable fiscal “austerity” programme needed to save the country from bankruptcy. In fact, the reforms have almost certainly cost far more than their proponents will admit. The many billions extracted from the benefits system since 2010 have been offset by additional resources required, by local government, by doctors and hospital accident and emergency centres, and even by the ever-shrinking, overworked and underfunded police force to fund the increasing need for emergency services. The Government’s ‘work not welfare’ mantra conveys the message that individuals and families can seek charity but that the State will no longer provide the basic social safety net to which all political parties had been committed since 1945.
The bottom line is that much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.
It might seem to some observers that the Department of Work and Pensions has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitized version of the nineteenth century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens, rather than seeking to respond creatively and compassionately to the real needs of those facing widespread economic insecurity in an age of deep and rapid transformation brought about by automation, zero-hour contracts and rapidly growing inequality.
As Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well off to lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. As the British social contract slowly evaporates, Hobbes’ prediction risks becoming the new reality.
I welcome the moves to adopt a uniform poverty measure, to systematically survey food insecurity, and to further delay the rollout of Universal Credit. That programme will be improved by plans to provide more time to repay advances, to reduce debt payment limits, and to reduce extreme penalties. But, for all the talk that austerity is over, massive disinvestment in the social safety net continues unabated.
It is difficult to see recent changes as more than window dressing to minimise political fallout. The situation demands a new vision that embodies British compassion and places social rights and economic security front and centre.
Austerity policies have deliberately gutted local authorities and thereby effectively eliminated many social services, reduced policing services to skeletal proportions, closed libraries in record numbers, shrunk community and youth centres, and sold off public spaces and buildings including parks and recreation centres. It is hardly surprising that civil society has reported unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation, prompting the Government to appoint a Minister for Suicide Prevention.
The Government should restore local government funding to ensure crucial social protection can help people escape poverty, reverse particularly regressive measures such as the benefits cap and two-child limit, and audit the impact of tax and spending decisions on different groups.
***
The Department for Work & Pensions’ response is predictable. The secretary of state Amber Rudd is trying to curry some PR by lodging a formal complaint with the UN about it. And a spokesperson points out that the UN’s own data shows that the UK is “one of the happiest places in the world to live” (it came 15th actually), and that Alston’s report “paints a completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty” and is a “barely believable documentation of Britain, based on a tiny period of time spent here.
True, Alston only conducted his investigation from 5 to 16 November 2018. But as his report says itself, even if you put statistics aside, the extent of poverty in Britain “is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes”. And that’s why government responses will never ring true until it actually engages with the problem and starts afresh.
Tell it to the U.N. they were formed to tell lies about developed countries. Check out ‘fact check’ as well.I stopped reading after the 40% of children living in poverty lie. What an absolutely load of crap.
Anyone would think we're living in Sierra Leone, reading that tripe.