Moaning Leavers, an explanation

Joelsnan, in regards to Britain implementing higher standards in regards to industrial safety than other leading European Union countries, please provide incidents and evidence of that happening and where.

Otherwise, I believe it is just further right-wing Media agenda against the European Union.

Joelsnan, I do not believe that the European Union has any "third world type States that need the expertise of British industrial safety consultants.

I believe you may be confusing a situation where multinational companies hold seminars of their professionals such as in industrial safety to discuss and implement "best practice", in regards to safety procedures across all sites in the European Union or even worldwide.

Those seminars I have attended but at such meetings I have never encountered anyone from Britain lecturing independently to Commercial organisations within the EU even when they hold the highest IOSH fellowship accreditation.

Commercial organisations have their own safety management representatives or contract independent safety consultants for their own specific organisational purposes.

crystaltips
Re contracts of rmployment. Your earlier post insinuated that EU legislation was protecting workers rights. My response demonstrated it does not.
Re H&S legislation, you say why shouldnt we be proud to share it.
My response was..we are, and globally. And whilst the UK generally applies this legislation in excess of EU directives. Many in the EU fails to apply to the same standard resulting in an uneven trading field.
Your insinuation about sharing and being fair should ideally be directed at our EU trading partners.

Surely if our H and S legislation is so marvellous we should be proud to share it with others shouldn’t we? Not resent the fact that others have adopted it. We can all learn from each other not selfishly say “that’s mine, I’m not sharing anything with you”.

The gig economy and zero hours contracts not forced on the U.K. by the EU, just an an example of how the U.K. actually have freedom to run their own affairs whilst still being in the EU. Only 5% of our laws are EU regulations, we are perfectly capable of making a mess of quite a few things on our own. Leavers seem to have the impression that the EU runs everything in the U.K. when, guess what , it doesn’t.

Grandad1943
Maybe you should re-read my post.

Basically your last post confirms that it was the EU that adopted UK H&S legislation, basically they just called it EU legislation. However the UK still exceeds most of the EU in its level of application and innovation which may of course render its products more expensive but garners respect worldwide.

Why would we need to be dependant on EU legislation when it is actually UK legislation rebranded?

Didnt you know that there are quite a number of UK H&S Consultants who travel worldwide delivering training an implementing H&S policy, procedures and practice globally. Maybe you have missed a trick

By the way, the Drivers Hours Regulations are VERY STRICTLY ENFORCED throughout Europe, before anyone states that "some countries do not" and Britain is the only country that does.

crystaltips
We will still be following the strict EU regulations in many areas and a good thing too. The only people who will benefit from deregulation are wealthy speculators and rogue employers

Are they not doung this now? Zero hour and gig employment contracts. PFI contracts to name just a few enabled under the auspices of EU membership.
The UK is a rwasonably well educated country and despite the demise of the unions since the 1980's will only tolerate so much.

Whilst some may superficially appreciate the zero hour or gig contract few realise the impact on their pension, sick/maternity etc. benefits these contracts provide them.

Joelsnan, with every respect I do not understand what you are talking about in your above post @ 11:35 today.

The European Union adopted outright the British 1974 Health & Safety at work act in 1984 for implementation across all member states. The EU also adopted overall the British Passenger and LGV drivers hours regulations for consolidation across all member states in the 1990s.

I work in industrial safety and very few if any professionals in that industry are required to go lecturing or teaching workplace safety outside the UK if they are based here.

The member states of the European have enough industrial safety personnel of their own without requiring help from an "Imperial Britain".

By the way, the British Drivers hours regs adopted by the EU are the same that Boris Johnson was quoting as an example of "over-regulation" by the EU only a few weeks ago. That very legislation was introduced by the Thatcher Government in the 1980s and then adopted by the EU soon after.

Talk about confusion in the ranks, it would seem that those leading the leave campaign do not even know what the UK has insisted on the European Union adopting.

From experience Joelsnsn we are often called upon to put things right that have supposedly been built or designed in mainland Europe following strict EU standards . My DH often says that there is no way he would CE mark them without marked changes . It always tends to be cutting corners in H&S too .

Doctors have said leaving the EU is “bad for Britain’s health” as they endorsed a public vote on the final Brexit deal.

A motion opposing Brexit, supporting membership of the European single market and calling for the public to have a final say on the terms of the deal was passed at the British Medical Association (BMA) annual meeting in Brighton. The motion said the deal should be put to the public “now that more is known regarding the potential impact of Brexit on the NHS and the nation’s health”.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/27/brexit-is-bad-for-britain-health-doctors-say-nhs

We will still be following the strict EU regulations in many areas and a good thing too. The only people who will benefit from deregulation are wealthy speculators and rogue employers.

Where did I say I thought cheap wine and holidays more important than the NHS?
(Answer: nowhere). I’ll be more worried if the USA gets hold of supplying us with pharmaceuticals which is what could happen.

gillybob
Having said that it’s a pity some of our European counterparts didn’t follow them quite so strictly

My point exactly.

Nonnie
Do you think that when we leave the EU we will take back ownership of all the companies now owned by EU businesses? I don't think that is at all likely

No potentially not, but at least the UK would be able to purchase and tender on the basis of what is best for individual organisation, whether this should occur globally or locally and not have to conform to a one fit all Directive applicable to the whole of the EU which, despite all of these years has not achieved equanimity.

Having said that it’s a pity some of our European counterparts didn’t follow them quite so strictly .

In engineering we follow very strict EU standards and regulations . These are set by Brussels .

Grandad1943
There is no standard playing field in the EU this may be the vision and probably the mission statement on their office walls but it is far from reality.

Are you insinuating that UK was uncompetitive because of its H&S legislation? (Consultants of the same travel worldwide to train and implement UK derived standards). Should we reduce our standards to those prescribed but weakly adopted throughout Europe?

It is simply impossible for us as a nation to think about the long-term future in a calm and considered way under the remorseless pressure of having everything sorted by 11 pm on March 29th 2019. Everybody knows the Government jumped the gun by triggering the Article 50 timetable when it wasn’t ready to do so. There would be no shame in Ministers now admitting that. It is infinitely better to get this right – and explore all our options – than to continue headlong towards the negotiating buffers.

The Brexiters will, of course, scream blue murder if there was a move in Parliament to introduce a significant delay of, say, a year or more to the Article 50 timetable. But they have now forfeited their right to be heard on the process: they advocated Brexit during the referendum without the faintest idea what it means in practice; they still can’t agree amongst themselves how it should work; and they have no remote chance of crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s before the deadline which they themselves established.

They’ve had ample time to sort this mess out. And they’ve failed. So now they must give way to MPs to do what they believe to be right for the country and for their constituents. Granting the country more time to straighten ourselves out seems a wholly uncontroversial minimum first step. And all my conversations across Europe suggest to me that, notwithstanding a little huffing and puffing in places, the overwhelming sentiment will be to grant Britain that extra time if we were to ask for it.

- extract from Nick Clegg's Speaker's Lecture 21st May 2018

openreason.uk/speakers-lecture-brexit-and-beyond-britains-place-in-the-world-in-the-2020s/

Joelsnan Do you think that when we leave the EU we will take back ownership of all the companies now owned by EU businesses? I don't think that is at all likely.

Having only just read this thread I have a few comments; Someone said that TM triggered Article 50 too soon to allow for all the negotiations but I think that the negotiations couldn't start until Article 50 was triggered and that then there was a time limit so her hands are tied.

I think a lot of the fuss would have been avoided if we had had a cross party group negotiating Brexit instead of the adversarial situation we are in. Whatever the result of the negotiations TM will have got it wrong because you can't please everyone. I suspect JC is worried silly that there will be a general election in the autumn and he will be left to deal with it all. She cannot win no matter what she does.

I am surprised that anyone ever thought the EU would be keen to give us a good deal, why should they. There are 27 of them and 1 of us so they hold all the power. How is it in their interest to give us a 'good' deal?

Each side of the argument can throw in various statistics and details on any element of our relationship with the EU or the rest of the world but it comes down to self interest in the end and it is not in the self interest of the EU to make it easy and pleasant for us. What would we do if we were in their position?

Never mind, Grandad, we're still being told that "they need us more than we need them"

I believe there are those who fail to understand the principles and structures of the European Union and why they were created.

Prior to the creation of the EU individual States across Europe, each had there own standards in such things as workplace safety, employee holiday rights and pay, maturity leave entitlement and much more.

Those states that maintained lower standards obviously held a commercial advantage over states such as Britain who held conditions much more beneficial to employees. However, that placed those same commercial interests based in the UK at a competitive disadvantage to those based in the European states that did not have such high standards.

At the time of the Common Market, some may well remember Maggie Thatcher haranguing other market member states by saying that there was not a "level playing field" of legislation within that market for all to operate under equally. Those words began the consolidation of legislation across Europe which eventually brought forward the European Union as we know it today.

The leaders of the leave campaign along with the right-wing press would have us all believe that such legislation is all bureaucracy and unnecessary. However, in truth that legislation has been brought forward to enable commercial competition to operate on equal standards as well as for the benefit of all those who are employed in those commercial interests, and us as consumers.

And until we get an agreement with the EU, we can't even start on the rest, so seven months has to pass before we even start. I do hope that pre-negotiations are already under way to clarify what all the trade agreements could look like when we eventually get them going and shorten the time it will take to finalise them..

Since we joined, our trading and social legislation all refers to EU standards and international links, we have traded outside the EU all that time under the umbrella of the EU. Look at the wrappings of almost any item you buy. That CE on it means that it conforms to EU standards, it is our passport to selling abroad and our guarantee to safely buying imports.

Of course we can do it ourselves - but we have all those years of agreeing and passing legislation and forging trade agreements with countries all round the globe to redo and seven months to do it in.

That is just the framework within which individual sellers export to us and we export to overseas buyers. Once the scaffolding is up, we still have to establish a relationship with each market and each exporter as a entity tseparate from the broad EU that dealt with them before. That won't happen overnight, and inevitably the cost of all the work and hassle of establishing a separate trading personality, untying the red tape of each bureaucracy and paying each customs bill will be passed on the final consumer - Joe Bloggs .

Crystaltips
The majority of those who voted Leave do recognise that the EU has indeed brought some benefit however the contra benefit outweighs these.
So you consider cheap booze and holidays of greater benefit than our NHS?
Was there not peace in Europe before the EU which was facilitated by UK, US and Russia? and now monitored by NATO not the EU.
I am sad that you dont recognise the work that UK unions did in gaining most of the employment laws adopted by the EU and indeed as a worldwide standard. EU maternity/paternity law dictates 14 weeks of leave, two to be taken before birth. Should the UK adopt this standard...i doubt it because we exceed it.
The clean beaches is a global initiative with 60 member countries who strive to achieve blue flag status for their beaches.
I really do not think there are EU bashers in the format you percieve...hate everything EU. There are just some folk who for various reasons feel that out better destiny lies outside the constraints of the EU.