EU referendum

oh-glasgow:

We go to the polls tomorrow to decide whether the UK should remain part of the EU. Maybe it was a little bit difficult to get excited about this one because it felt more like England’s referendum and it’s been driven by Nigel Farage. Perhaps you’ve seen him on the TV once or twice over the last few years. He’s the one frothing at the mouth, spouting his xenophobia at us all, belittling the Romanians, Bulgarians, Muslims, and Turks. A thoroughly unpleasant little man.

So what of this referendum? How important is it? Well, quite important actually.

The Leave campaign has had every one of their arguments debunked, leaving us with a discourse reminiscent of the Monty Python ‘what did the Romans do for us?’ sketch. You’ll know the one, where they’re berating the Romans, talking about how they’ve been bleeding them dry for generations, until someone points out what the Romans have actually done for them. “all right, but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?”

And that’s what this feels like. People don’t know enough about the good and positive things that the EU does for us. Like, you know,

1) Protection at work.

2) Ensuring you get paid leave from work.

3) Working time directive, ensuring you aren’t made to work more than 13 hours a day.

4) Rights at work, irrespective of being full-time, part-time, temporary or permanent, in-house or agency.

5) Sickness benefits

6) Equal pay for women and men doing the same job.

7) Maternity leave

8) Parental leave

9) Discrimination protection

10) A cap on mobile phone charges

11) Compensation when flights are delayed or cancelled

12) The right to state healthcare

13) Shoppers rights to compensation and refunds

14) Able to trade across borders

15) The right to vote and work across the EU

And yet somehow… somehow people are taking this stuff for granted. Because they’re only told about how “oh, we have to bin all our bananas if they aren’t bend enough”, which reminds me of the Stewart Lee sketch where he a taxi driver says “these days, you can get thrown in jail just for saying you’re English.” Such drivel. Or the other one, “oh, our fishermen can’t fish so much here because of quotas.” Does it ever occur to anyone why there quotas exist in the first place? Because if fishing is allowed to go unregulated, there is a chance where there is no more fish! That’s it! Imagine in a few decades where the same people say “blimey, you mean we’ve caught the last fish? Guess we should have had some kind of plan to ensure sensible fishing for future generations… a quota of some kind.” Well they’ll have had their chips. Not with fish, obviously, because there would be none.

Instead, the Leave campaign have said the same three words over and over and over. Like a shitty broken record. “Take back control”. When I hear this phrase, I imagine that they don’t exactly have our best interests at heart, and wish to increase worker protection, or ensure benefits are protected, or do any of the things that the EU does at the moment for us. No, I imagine a UK where they scrap every single one of these rights. And when the economy goes to shit and money has to be raised, you can bet your last pound (whatever it’ll be worth then due to devaluation!) that the first thing to go will be the NHS. Goodbye, free healthcare! Still, we had a good run at trying to ensure that people were well looked after by the state.

And lastly, the Leave campaign, in their xenophobic best, continue to point the finger at immigrants. The rich and the powerful, telling middle and working class people that the ills of the UK are all caused by compassionate EU countries allowing immigrants to flee war zones.

Have you seen where these immigrants have come from? The ones from Iraq, Afghanistan et al. You know, where we decided to invade them and gave rise to the Islamic State.

The UK helped to do this.

And now the UK wants to absolve itself of all blame of it? The equivalent of sticking fingers in our ears, closing our eyes, and going “LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU” as we pull up the drawbridge from Europe, shirking from our responsibilities. The UK attitude in this refugee crisis has been nothing but shameful. Don’t give me the “we’re only a small island” bullshit that you see perpetuated in the Mail and Express. Rant for another time but perhaps if Thatcher didn’t encourage the selling off all our housing stock then we’d actually a place to live for everyone. If we can find money to bomb the fuck out of people, then we can find money to help people too. Simple as that.

I’ll be voting to remain as part of the EU tomorrow because of all the good things that the EU does, not just for me, but for everyone here.