4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[AJuff]

I've just done a phone survey on the EU for Warwick university and realised i don't know much about the EU. Feel motivated to find out now. Am I the only numpy out there?

[Space Chick]

I know next to nothing, apart from I can't afford to go to Spain because of the Euro exchange rate

[Chickvic]

Errr...no

[Tessa the Duchess]

I know very little about the EU and what I do know I don't like. They make 75% of our laws most of which are along the 'what shape should a banana be' lines. The European parliament have expenses which make ours look positively benign. Apart from trade I would like us to leave the EU.

 

Tessa

[Looney]

I know a fair bit about the EU. My last job was working with the European countries that joined the EU a few years ago and now my job deals with European funding.

[Willow]

I spent many years working on European Telecoms standards. The process of setting rules is open and democratic. Which also means sometimes mistakes are made One of the reasons for the EU to sponsor the telecoms work was to ensure European countries (including the UK) were not disadvantaged by the size and strength of America and its major corporations. GSM was perhaps the most well known piece of work outside of the industry that has had benefits for all of us in Europe.

 

They make 75% of our laws most of which are along the 'what shape should a banana be' lines.

 

All of these laws are determined by a group of experts from across EU member countries including England. The banana regulation (EC Commission Regulation No 2257/94), actually stated bananas must be "free of abnormal curvature" and it was in a list of requirements including that the bananas should be free from pests and not rotten. The intention was to ensure we didn't allow boxes of rotten fruit with poisonous pests such as spiders that could get established in Europe. There will have been delegates from the UK involved in the process who would have agreed that wording. (This particular regulation has since been reformed.). The word abnormal will have been chosen rather than specifiying a degree of bend that would be allowable as being more flexible and allowing more common sense.

 

So although some of the EU regulations may be absurd that is because it is an open process and run with good intentions. In the UK we tend to see the EU as something we are not part of but have to abide by. I notice other countries often take the view that it is something they are part of but can chose to ignore if they disagree.

 

I think we as a nation should perhaps change our approach to the EU more than the EU and get more vocal about what we want. Including saying loudly that the expenses are absurd and wrong.

 

Edited to say - Sorry on my soapbox there but my experience left me with pride to be part of Europe and turned around many of my prior assumptions

Edited June 6, 2009 by Guest

[Scramble]

I know a fair bit we studied it in Geography

[JM]

I've spent many years dealing with EU directives in the engineering industry and agree with everything that Patricia said. The regulations that I've had to deal with are there to help the consumer - and yes, as an engineer they are sometimes a pain in the proverbial to deal with, but the fundamental reason for them being there is sound.

 

The press and media in the UK tend to pick bits from regulations at random to quote to make good copy! - without stating the context or really understanding what they are talking about. A lot of what is quoted in the media are urban myths - or start with a true statement which is gradually changed as it is misquoted many times!

[bronze]

I know that dh changed £20 into E23 for me yesterday

and that theyre idiots who past stupid laws

and we're numpties cos we're the only ones who follow said laws and pay billions for the pleasure

[Tessa the Duchess]

I know that dh changed £20 into E23 for me yesterday

and that theyre idiots who past stupid laws

and we're numpties cos we're the only ones who follow said laws and pay billions for the pleasure

 

Good point Bron, it costs £40billion a day to belong to the EU The laws maybe

for the good of the consumer, but quite honestly I cannot see what good it was for

the consumer to make a law saying the measuring of goods in anything but metric

was a criminal offence this law has now been revoked, not before quite a

few people were taken to court.

 

Tessa

[milli]

Never being very strong on history I was interested to read a blog post by Bishop Alan today about the EU and how it has broken a sequence of very bloody European wars that ran for 300 years almost lke clockwork. We are living among the first generations for over 300 years who have not had to go to war with Europe, war with Europe is now pretty unthinkable.

 

When you put it that way the EU seems like a very very good thing to me, even if we dont appreciate the way we are involved in the politics.

[Willow]

DSL (Broadband) and Pay-As-You-Go mobile both came out of EU work on Telecoms.

 

DSL uses a really clever maths algorithm on the properties of copper to put a lot of data down a telephone wire. I didn't work in this area (Access networks) but I remember one of my colleagues coming back from an EU Telecoms meeting really excited about this (we're a sad bunch . The international/American telecoms industry were not interested because the US was mostly cable by then. Without the EU work it would have never happened and we wouldn't have such widespread cheap internet access.

 

Pay-As-You-Go came out of the work that followed on from GSM. Myself and 4 other European delegates recognised there would be a need to use a mobile phone that wasn't necessarily your designated phone and started looking at how you'd provide the information on calls for billing. Given the way the technology works PAYG was not an obvious application and we didn't get as far as the PAYG concept whilst I was involved but again that came out of Europe not the US.

 

There are numerous other examples of work that came out of Europe because of EU sponsorship all of which are unknown except by those who were involved.

 

Can you tell I'm passionate about this

Edited June 9, 2009 by Guest

[laurmurf]

I'm with Patricia and JM, I work in HR (personnel wot was) and the EU has made a huge difference to the fair treatment of workers in the UK.

 

Because many of us expect to get fair annual leave from work, many won't realise that until the EU made it compulsory there was no right/entitlement to get holidays from your employer - many people didn't get it, and these tended to be in the lowest paid and most exploited areas of employment! The EU has just increased the number of days leave too.

 

The EU has also made it compulsory on the UK recently to meet the requirements of ensuring that employees are given fair working hours. I used to work in a hospital responsible for junior doctors hours and it wasn't unusual for them to work ridiculous and unsafe numbers of hours in a row with NO BREAK! There are now compulsory rest hours.

 

Those are just a couple of areas - I could go on and on about fair treatment for women on maternity leave, equality of opportunity for employment, fairer adoption regulations, minimum pay, fair treatment for workers whose companies are being bought up and transferred.... many people in 'safe' employment won't ever notice the difference, but those most vulnerable workers will feel a real benefit: what they won't realise and the press won't tell them (cause it doesn't make a sexy headline) is that it's down to the EU!

[Marvelous Margot]

I too work with the EU on European Regional Development Fund projects so may be able to help if you have some specific questions.

I'd suggest you look at: http://europa.eu/index_en.htm its a good site for info.

Most peoples prejudices are because they are not well informed, so research, ask us questions and then form your own opinions.