Only for anybody stupid enough to believe the media and marketing puff. I lived in a pre EEC England and voted to stay in the EEC in 1974/74 whenever. What was never made clear was that we were heading to a USE and I find that totally unacceptable.
Exactly so. It was called the Common Market, and was sold to the peasants as a trading organisation.
But there were many who knew that it was a political organisation with the intention of becoming a sovereign state, and they kept quiet about that. Even Tony Benn obviously didn't know that, or he would certainly have made it public.
Our own Prime Minister even lied about it to Parliament and to the country: 'no essential loss of sovereignty'.
Nor was it made clear by the remainers what were the future aspirations of the EU. It wasn't going to be the status quo that some remainers foolish believed.
But that's all that has been available, touted as what sensible middle-of-the-road people were thinking. Anything else has been systematically demonised. It's the same trick that the LibDems use to make themselves appear normal and rational, instead of the swivel-eyed extremists that they are.
Apparently it was made clear in the original treaties, y'know, those documents that were constant bedtime reading for us all.
Do you mean those documents on their web site where on reading you are directed to the appendix where you will find a helpful list of another thousand documents to read.
Or as Douglas Adams once wrote
“But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
But not in the 1960's. Europe was still in post WW2 rebuilding mode.
NZ lamb and butter came half way around the world, without obvious subsidies and was cheaper than locally produced equivalents. And transported much more hygienically until it arrived at a UK Port.
Yes, what was not to like?
100, 000 people were getting food poisoning in the UK because the big shift to supermarket shopping and food manufacturing had got ahead of sound microbiological practise until M&S started printing 'sell by' dates on their perishable foods.
The other supermarkets were forced to follow suit and the EU then improved the situation by replacing 'sell by' with 'best before' or 'use by' dates
We were utterly broke after WW2, and the 70's meltdown would have been far worse if we had stayed out of the common market and north sea gas and oil had never existed.
Where does this 'prosperous' bit fit in ?.
And it employed 120,000 people and was a black hole where taxpayer subsidies were concerned. Ditto everything with a name preceded by 'British'
In the 60s when I was at Uni things were pretty good - as good as they have been, in fact. Unemployment was lowish, borrowing rates were reasonable, and by and large, even on a student grant, life was very good. Interest rates went high in the early seventies, but we were still quite well off - even when comrade Wilson and his drunken sidekick started the rot in his second spell in the seventies. From joining the EU until now it has got worse and worse. It will not recover for a while
- it will take some time to get rid of the effects of years of corruption, waste and Big Brother type control freaks.
Tonight's headline.
really ?. The welsh blood transfusion was still using reusable glass bottles for about 10% of its collections right up to 1972.
50,000 people were dying every year from the effects of smoking, burning coal, asbestos, lead paint, and all manner of toxic chemicals. Surgery was invasive and needed long stays in hospital. If you had anything serious like any type of cancer, it had no treatment other than gung ho surgery and brutal radiotherapy. If you had a stroke, that's it, you either died or were bed or wheelchair bound.
In what way ?. Farmers must have thought christmas was coming every time the milk cheque arrived.
Only 5% went to Uni with tuition fees paid and a decent grant for living too. This group then went on to ride the incremental salary scales (pay rise every year in addition to normal pay rises), were the biggest beneficiaries of Tony and Gords spending on public services from 2000 onwards which together with a final salary pension which only cost them 6%, 3% or 0% meant they retired with pensions that would need fund of a million+ pounds to match in the private sector.
Of course you are prosperous, because current taxpayers are feather bedding you.
Ask the 95% who didn't go to Uni how things were for them
Not us, with 2 trillion of debt and energy bills far higher than across the channel and interest rates shooting up.
And they are so far ahead of us in the GDP and wealth stakes that a small period of flatlining is neither here nor there. They are still more prosperous. Try googling european GDP tables.
Wait until the inevitable high interest rate recession really starts to bite here. There are hundreds of thousands of homeowners who took advantage of the almost zero rates we had until 2022. These people are the next repossession wave.
None of that happened to me, sadly. I went along fairly well self employed and paying for my own pension until the NHS nearly bankrupted me and cost me nearly all my savings and retirement money.
Most of them did better than I did. Whilst I was learning my profession they were making a mint in the building and similar trades
So nothing to do with the local family butcher having no refrigerated display shelves in his window or the market stall wooden bench being piled high with chicken pieces during the whole of a hot summer's day?
40 years ago I saw both.Best before dates or an improvement in hygiene standards and more care taken with temperature control.
Who wants to go into a recession if it curbs inflation?
As it happens I've just been looking at a planning application on my local council. Because it has been refused my nearest pub will shut. And it's a damn good one.
I found the application, and saw that there were 45 documents associated with it.
The web site would not let me see what they were. After half an hour of waiting for their database to serve me the data I've given up.
Andy
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.