By Martin Deighton, Woodbridge
Many people in the UK, France and across Europe are rightfully unhappy, even angry, with the situation they are in and they are finding it hard to get by.
Clever self-serving men with their own vendettas and agendas have persuaded them that the EU is to blame.
This is not true. Indeed we can use our membership and citizenship of the EU to make radical changes to our unequal and unfair society.
The EU is not the problem – it could be the solution.
Let us demand the right to think again. Then, let us vote to stay – let’s not walk away.
Let us unite with our neighbours and save a threatened United Europe.
Let us identify and expose the reasons and the causes of anger and despair.
Let us join our neighbours in demanding change and reform that will benefit all European Citizens and protect our National Interests.
Let’s write a manifesto for Europe!
Let us start by insisting that the havens of tax evasion, used by the rich, within Europe and under the jurisdiction of European Nations are shut down.
The UK sustains and protects the majority of these tax havens. The ordinary UK tax payer pays for that sustenance and protection.
(Is it right for Bet365 to be registered in the tax haven of Gibraltar and pay its CEO £265 Million in one year?)
(Is it right for the highest paid racing driver in the world, a UK citizen, to avoid tax by living in the heart of Europe in Monaco?)
(Is it right for the richest people in the UK to park their incomes, their hedge funds and trust funds in British tax havens of the West Indies, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man?)
They are not alone – there are hundreds of the richest people in our world using these tax havens.
We can, if we have the will, isolate and shut down these blights upon our world. It is only greed that makes them necessary to people with no social conscience.
Next, let us insist that VAT is standardised across the EU and thereby stop the losses of billions of Pounds and Euros through VAT rolling retrievals and frauds.
Let us standardise corporation tax – and stop the endless reductive competition between our European nations.
Then let’s insist that this tax is paid equally by ALL companies trading in the EU and all companies outside the EU who are permitted access to EU Markets.
These three actions if demanded by the Citizens of Europe could wipe out all of our National Debts within ten years.
This is not radical socialism or communism or envy – it is fairness, shared responsibility, decency and democracy.
It is also good economics. Wealth is like seeds – in a heap they will rot, spread evenly they will grow.
Let us reform the Common Agricultural Policy. It was designed to create secure food supplies in the 1970’s. It is no longer fit for purpose.
Now it encourages and rewards big arable farmers to turn our land into nitrogen soaked deserts. It encourages sheep farmers to over-graze our hills.
We need a CAP that addresses the needs of our Nations today and environmental threats of the 21st century.
Let us keep the Common Fisheries Policy. It has re-established cod stocks in the North Sea and saved many threatened species from extinction.
The fishing industry must move from “mining” and consuming all that is there, to practising care, good husbandry and sustenance of all life within the oceans.
Let us insist that the CFP prohibits the degradation of the sea and ocean beds by the brutal raking and ploughing of this fragile environment by greedy careless fishermen.
(A few big commercial British fishing boats using a technique of this type have wrecked the scallop beds in Cornwall and are now doing untold damage to the Scallop beds in shallow Bay of Seine.)
Let us reform and simplify the bureaucratic processes within the EU.
Let us reform and demonstrate the democracy of the EU to more effectively involve and to suit the needs of the Citizens of Europe.
Let us encourage more joint research and development projects where the work and cost is shared and the success is shared by the people of our 28 Nations.
This cooperation amongst our European Nations,often funded by the EU, has resulted in hundreds of successes that vary from the mapping of the human genome, to the building of the Eurofighter.
Let us add to the 78 trade agreements we already have but continue to ensure that our industries, our manufacturers and prime producers are protected from “free trade” dumping.
Let us link together with other groups of Nations who have also created, or are creating, a Unity of Independent Nations within their region.
The EU now has a trade and cooperation agreement with ASEAN – others will emerge, others will follow. The EU can lead the way.
Unity linking with unity across the world. Stepping stones towards global unity and cooperation.
Let us demand and fund a powerful strategic defence, military and security alliance for a United Europe without a dependency upon a radically changing, often incursive USA.
Having established such a strategy we would be able to negotiate and cooperate from strength with the Russian Federation.
The Russian people also wish for change, peace, freedom and cooperation. They want to be part of this global “revolution”.
Let us establish safe havens for refugees and work together to bring peace and rebuild their war torn homelands.
The vast majority do not want to be scattered across foreign lands – they want to go back and rebuild their country, their homes and their lives in peace and security.
We must invest in rebuilding their troubled homelands – it is less costly than bombs.
There are many other good things we can do for our Nations and for the World by working together that we could never do in isolation.
Let us keep and protect all the freedoms, rights and benefits we have, and take for granted, as European Citizens within a Union of Independent Nations.
We must not allow the populists, the nationalists,the racists, the neo-Fascists, the separatists and the extremists to destroy our unity and drag us back into the past.
Please my fellow subjects of this United Kingdom– let’s tell our MP’s we demand the right to think again and let’s vote to stay.
Then, let’s start a gentle revolution that effectively changes, and saves, the Europe we are part of and we live in, to become a Europe that is a ” beacon of hope for the World we live in”.*
Let’s stay – let’s not walk away.
Martin Deighton
Woodbridge
* Churchill 1950