Absolute rubbish (Vic Thomas)

Apart from the comment that Greece will drop out of the Euro, which is probably correct,  I couldn’t disagree more with the main view expressed in last week’s The Old Rock.

Membership of the EU has been a financial disaster for the UK with billions of pounds wasted, no doubt likewise for the other countries that have been net contributors since the beginning. On this one issue alone, paying in billions of pounds more than we have ever received back should have been enough for our withdrawal years ago. Nobody with even a basic understanding of home economy would year on year continue to pay into something that gave little return for their hard earned cash. Commentators more understanding of the figures involved suggest that the UK would have no or almost no debt if we had kept our contributions from the time we joined the EEC and spent it on UK interests alone.

To suggest that there is a minor defect in the system which is provoking the Tories to demand a referendum on our continued membership is total and absolute rubbish. The whole rotten system is so wasteful and corrupt and only of any use to those on the gravy train payroll. There is no reform to either the CAP or CFP that could make fishing or farming in and around the UK fair because it’s all based, like all EU outpourings, on a one-size-fits-all mentality that doesn’t suit anyone particularly well but is often very destructive and costly for small communities on the periphery such as the Scottish islands.

I have no objection to people being able to freely travel or work in other countries if that is what they want but why do we have to have a United States of Europe, such a massive political and regulatory system of governance which is not a democracy but an elected dictatorship, so corrupt and costly when we used to be quite able to govern ourselves with regulations or not as the case may be, that suit us in the UK or Scotland for that?

Over the years there have been thousands of regulations and laws that, apart from adding costs, might have had minimal effect on businesses, households and life in Birmingham, Berlin or Barcelona but have caused major barriers to or seriously compromised economic survival in places like Burra, Barra or Birsay.

Some people argue it’s not so much the EU churning out endless streams of stupid regulations on a daily basis, that often create more problems than they are trying to solve, or do not work in remote, island or rural areas but more a problem of the Westminster government rubber stamping everything with added draconian enforcement. While this is certainly true, and bring on an independent Scotland that can then sit at the EU top table and perhaps do as France does now and again and say “No”, the fact remains that every man, woman and child in the UK pays into this rotten system, to pay the millions of pounds of salaries needed by the thousands of useless civil servants who churn out all the rubbish. There is a department in Brussels that has about the same number of people employed as the SIC, just translating all the guff into all the various languages within the EU!

Put plainly and simply we do not need the EU in its present form, we can no longer afford to be in this club and for places like Shetland, we will not be able sustain a reasonable social economic environment if the status quo within the EU remains. Further membership of the new empire will only make things worse and cost more.

Vic Thomas
Clousta.