Labour
PPC Dr Adrian Heald stated in your letters page that the ‘EU’ queue at Passport
Control in airports is usually faster - and held this up as a good reason for
the UK to stay part of that corrupt and undemocratic organisation. If he paid a
little more attention, he’d have noticed that the queue is actually labelled ‘EU, Switzerland and the European Economic
Area’ (which includes Iceland and Norway). None of these countries are
members of the EU, but trade freely within that block and enjoy unfettered
access to Dr. Heald’s queue, as would the UK in the event of leaving the EU.
I
suspect that Dr. Heald’s error was due not to poor eyesight, but to a desire to
wilfully mislead the public over the implications of the UK leaving the EU. This
comes as no surprise – we see this sort thing every day in from the pro-EU
lobby, whether it be the orchestrated smear campaign against UKIP on the left-wing
BBC and Channel4, or Dr. Heald’s other claim that UK Companies would suffer in
the event of a ‘Brexit’.
Such
misunderstanding should be expected from someone who has spent not one day of
their career working in private industry. The truth is that 95% of UK firms –
the small and medium companies which create the bulk of the employment in our
country - do no trade with the EU, but
are still forced to comply with all
its red tape and regulation at great cost.
For
those larger companies that do export; will a Jaguar become less fast, a JCB
less capable, or a Rolls-Royce Jet Engine less powerful to overseas buyers
because the UK is not in the EU? Of course not. Companies and individuals buy
things based on their value, not the political union of their country of
manufacture.
Furthermore,
free of the EU, the UK would be able to retake its seat at the WTO and establish
Free Trade deals with the parts of the world where economies are actually growing, and not in a tailspin of debt
and deflation like the beleaguered Eurozone to which we are currently chained. This
would providing a boost to UK exporters, as the EU has no Free Trade Deal with
the likes of China and India due to disputes over French Wine and German Solar Panels.
The
public must not be taken in by the scare tactics and misinformation employed by
the pro-EU lobby, but should seek to establish the facts for themselves.
Cllr. Stuart
Hutton CEng MIET (UKIP).
