EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

The Euro
Our Fishing Rights

 

Continental Europe Is Different, And Why The Euro Would Be Bad For Us.

 

The European Countries on the Continent are quite different to us, by comparison, we have little or nothing in common with them. They have a different culture, they speak very different languages, and their political systems are often born out of socialism, or in extreme cases out of communism.

Economically, they often have little or no desire to create profit. Their financial institutions are small in comparison to our own, and shares in their companies generally do not pay dividends to their shareholders. Therefore their public do not generally invest in their own businesses through share-ownership.  

More so than in our own economy, the national pastime is to work the “black economy” without paying tax, rather than working legally, paying the due tax, and creating wealth through investment.

Continental European Countries themselves often have an infuriating habit of ignoring treaties and the rules contained within them, when it suits their purposes to do so. A classic example of this, involving one of the more cultured European nations, was just a few years ago when France completely failed to adhere to the agreed economic rules for financial convergence.

These rules had been agreed by all EEC states, including the UK, in order to make it easier for countries to converge their financial systems and eventually become part of a single European currency, if they wanted to do so, at some time in the future.

It was particularly important that France adhered to those rules, as they were one of the most powerful advocates of, and are now a principle member of, the single currency system (Euro), along with Germany. Indeed, economic convergence was so important to the future stability of the Euro that the financial penalties for failing to adhere to the agreed rules were quite draconian.

France failed in three successive years to meet the rules of economic convergence and yet at no time have they been obliged to pay the prescribed penalty. In fact, as far as I am aware, they have not paid a single Euro in financial penalty. More to the point their totally dismissive attitude is such that they obviously have absolutely no intention of doing so.

The Germans support France in its’ refusal to pay, simply because if they don’t, and France was obliged to meet its’ dues, the French economy would be severely affected, and the Euro would probably collapse.

Political development in continental Europe has been largely developed through Socialism and Communism, in fact like France, many are in fact Democratic Republics. Whether it is for this, or some other reason, is probably an arguable point, however, what is incontestable is the fact that their social security systems are massively generous to the point of being foolhardy, with the result that their social security systems are fundamentally bankrupt, and represent an enormous drain on their economies, through extraordinarily high taxation.

The result is that there are often dual economies in Continental Europe – the real one in which people pay very high levels of personal taxation, and the other one in which they are paid cash, far more so than in the UK.

A good example of their profligate social security systems is that the German, French, Italian and Spanish state pensions are several times larger than our own. These European state pensions are so generous that they are probably unsustainable and, at some point in the future, they may well result in substantial increases in their domestic inflation, and subsequently, interest rates.

Their preferred way of softening the blow to their own economies, and their already overburdened taxpayers, is to mix in another economy, far stronger than their own, and preferably get all of them to adopt a single currency. In this way, their own massive generosity to themselves, in state pension benefits etc, is ultimately paid for in part by other much stronger economies through inflation and interest rates. I do not believe that we should be that saviour economy.

However, it is also very true to say that, at home, we desperately need to increase our own state pension benefits, but it must be done to a degree and in a way that is totally sustainable, and does not result in an impossible liability for future generations. We can afford it, if we are careful and prioritise our national expenditure.

However, we simply cannot afford to bail out the European state pension systems at the same time, by joining their single currency (Euro), even if we wanted to.

Once again they need us more than we need them…. by a very wide margin indeed.

 

 

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Our Fishing Rights.

 

In the early 1970s the Conservative Government, under Sir Edward Heath, gave away our fishing rights to the Continental Europeans in exchange for EEC Membership.

He did this without telling the general public for fear of losing the referendum at that time. So, Sir Edward achieved his place in history, and in so doing, he committed the UK to an international trading partnership in Europe.

I have no issues with a trading partnership, if only that was all that it was. After all, another trading partnership could be a very good thing.  However, along the way, and without telling the public of this Country, they gave away £ billions and £ billions of pounds of our fishing rights, a national asset that was probably the most prolific and profitable fishery in the World.

Furthermore, we were obliged to sever many of our very valuable business relationships with Commonwealth countries. Just try talking to New Zealand about the damage that we did to their sheep and lamb farming by joining the EEC in the 1970s.

We knighted Sir Edward for losing at least one entire industry (fishing) and giving away a supremely important asset (our fishing grounds), something that even two World Wars had failed to achieve.

After the catastrophic Heath Government of the 1970s, the European Community insisted that we reduce our fishing fleet to its’ current lamentable levels, a shadow of its’ former self, and at the same time, with their own fishing fleets, they have plundered and decimated our fish stocks, all within just 30 years.

I believe that there are clauses within the Treaty, which charge the European Community with managing the fish stocks to all our benefits.

They have patently obviously failed, and therefore the treaty is broken, or certainly that part of it is. We must move very rapidly indeed in order to save something out of this ecological disaster. Our fishing grounds must be repossessed, under international law, and then allowed to recover.

Once our fisheries have recovered, they can then be successfully harvested once more, and it won’t be harvested by anyone other than our own fishermen.