Europe

I should start by stating my politics, except that it is likely to be more confusing than illuminating. I can best describe my position as Confused Liberal. I am not a Conservative and very uncomfortable if my views are described as coming from that side of the political divide but, on the other hand, I view with some scepticism some of the Labour or New Labour attitudes and political ambitions. Sometimes I am to the left of the Labour Party but never to the right or right wing of the Conservatives. In some parts of the world I would be seen as a capitalist, in others a socialist. I am not sure if that helps but it is how I see myself. I believe in democracy and the democratic process its just that sometimes the popular desire worries me.

So why am I getting on my soapbox today, well it is Europe. I am a European, I have some Welsh ancestry but mostly English, I probably am mainly Angle in terms of my genetic coding but I am from the great big melting pot that is Europe and all its peoples. Now I know that this is hardly what the Euro sceptics are on about or want to hear about, but it is the basis for the existence of the cultures and peoples of these islands. Short of someone finding a way of cutting these islands off from the continental shelf and towing them to some remote as yet unclaimed location, we are part of Europe, so get used to it. We have, after all, been a part of Europe for rather a long time, and certainly from before politicians started on about it or knew that was what this part of the world would be called.

I watched horrified at the way the little Englanders of the Tory right tore the party apart in the 90's and am appalled at the prospect of them doing again, not because I am worried for the Tories, they deserve all they get, but because it damages the interests of the rest of us and seems to turn normally straight thinking people into new little Englanders. As for UKIP, contempt is the feeling that most sums up my reaction.

Sure there are some aspects of the European experiment that I do not like and wish they/we would not do or expect us to do, but so what. You hardly end a relationship, friendship or even a conversation with a passing acquaintance merely on the basis that they don't see things the same way you do. You would end up a very sad and lonely person if you did. We are not talking big dramatic stuff here, just the day to day ways of enabling us all to live in a better world and have a better life.

I feel that yet again I am witnessing an attack on rational thought where dogma is used as a hammer to bang on about whatever prejudices are irritating those with an ideology they wish to foist on the rest of us whether it is acceptable to the rest of us or fitting with our needs. This morning there was a noted right wing Tory politician blaming the European parliament for green energy, immigration problems, the financial crisis and anything else he could ram into the sound bite. Green energy? How is green energy the fault, if that is what it is, of Europe, or is it that his 'heartland' Tories do not like wind turbines in their country vistas. Maybe I am not so keen either but it is better then sending men down the mines and polluting the air that we breath. Does he not want to stop the polluting effects of coal, the dangers from the extraction and use of all fossil fuels. The financial crisis could be said to be the result of the financial free for all encouraged when he was a member of the cabinet, and yet that financial initiative sparked and allowed the banks to come up with all sorts of doggy and disastrous ideas and bring about the downfall of not just our banks but those spread around the world. That was home grown stupidity, Europe's mistake was following it. Immigration, this island has been built on the benefits of immigration goes back centuries and millennia. Again get used to it.

So please, please, please, engage your brain before listening to all these siren calls to leave Europe, to be our own independent selves, to ignore the realities of the real social, economic, and political benefits we have enjoyed since joining the EU.