CAN WE HAVE A 'DON'T CARE' BOX?

Let me start by saying that this is not about whether we should stay or leave the EU.  I’m still on the fence and probably will be until the day.  Why? Well, so far, no-one has come up with a strong enough reason for me to decide either way and, to be honest, I don’t think they will.  I really don’t think that it matters one way or the other for people like me, but then that’s because, to most people, I’m probably thick.

Let me explain.

When I was 17 I had left school, albeit with 5, now archaic, O levels and had had two jobs and was heading to college.  Now, thinking about it, that is pretty impressive.  One of those jobs, admittedly, was working in a café; one was working with the Ministry of Defence.  I left the first job and went straight to the other and when I left that one (and in both cases I left, I was not dismissed) I pretty much took the summer off and then went into college to do my typing and shorthand (typing I still use regularly, shorthand I have now completely forgotten). 

My point is that my son, who has reached 17 today, is not in a world where that would happen.  Jobs aren’t there and no-one appears to want to employ a 16 – 18 year olds unless it’s on zero hours and pittance money, ie, they can only work if they allow the bosses to screw them over and woe betide they choose to leave a job; if they did they’d be tarred for life.  Even if they do manage to find a job that they want to apply for, why is it that nowadays they expect you to have a degree in rocket science just to work in McDonalds!  Two jobs that I left went on to employ people with degrees and yet they had employed me with my scrappy English Lit, English Lang, Maths and Combined Science O levels (Grade C in all but Maths which was a B).  How can employers justify this; I didn’t even have an A level let alone a degree and I did the job just fine.

Needless to say that I find the worker’s rights (ahem, we used to have unions for that until the Gov closed the majority of them down) and free movement of employment a bit of a pointless argument.  If my son can’t get a job here, then what makes you think he’d find one abroad.

And whilst on the subject of free movement of employment in Europe; are we saying that before the EU no-one worked abroad?  I’m pretty sure people still did go abroad and work; take a look at the Victorians, they were bloody everywhere (ok, some of you might be screaming ‘EMPIRE’ at me now).  And I know one of my friend’s dads used to work in Bahrain.

Plus……we also work, emigrate and travel to countries that aren’t in the EU; we have done so in the past and we still do.  I know of a family that, a few years ago, emigrated to Canada. Someone else spent almost a year working in Australia.  Neither are part of the EU, but do have the advantage of no language barrier.  Personally if I was going to up sticks and move, it would be to somewhere where I could understand what was going on around me and that would mean applying, filling in paperwork and all that other stuff you have to do to get into one of those English speaking countries, but, do you know what, I’d prefer to do that (not because I'm racist, but because I can't be bothered to learn a new language).

This brings me to the argument of free travel, as in freely without passports, visas, etc, not FREE travel. This has been another argument to stay.  Really?  Are we really that lazy that we can’t be bothered to fill in some forms?  Of course we’re not otherwise thousands wouldn’t holiday in Florida or New York or Brazil or Australia or China.  If we want to visit a place and spend time there, we’ll make the effort.  We might have to be a bit more organised and it might take a bit longer but we’d do it.  I visited Russia before Glasnost, it was a pain in the arse and some of the inflight aeroplanes looked like they were held together with safety pins, but I went!  I went because it was a beautiful country, even with the armed police on every street corner. It had some amazing people.  One in particular that will always stay in my mind is the lady that looked after our carriage on the overnight train we took. She couldn’t speak a word of English but allowed us to sit in her little cabin and shared her ‘lunch’ with us while we shared what we had, which was basically wine and chocolate; she was awesome!

So, so far the arguments for employment and travel haven’t swayed me to stay.  Neither have they swayed me to leave.

What else?  Oh yes, the EU can keep an eye on our Government!  As in it can protect us from stupid decisions!  Really?  Erm, I site Bedroom Tax, refused PIP for the most vulnerable of our society, lack of pensions and the fact that our Gov has temporary (as in permanently because we, the public, will more than likely forget and it’ll stay in place) lifted the ban on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides (which some say is killing our bees).  Has the EU stepped in? No!  The UN did, briefly, over the treatment of the disabled, but that seems to have died a death (as have many disabled people who have been refused PIP and decided that committing suicide was more preferably than slowly starving to death).  So, to me, on the things that truly matter to me, the ‘man’ on the street, they have done bugger all to keep our Gov in check.

People have mentioned trade to me and if we leave we’d probably lose our car production factories as they belong to China and they won’t want to pay the taxes.  This would also mean we would have to pay more for our tech.  Well, I don’t drive, so I’m not bothered about getting a car and I’m sorry, but paying a bit more for tech wouldn’t be a bad thing.  It might stop the throwaway society that we currently have.  You know the one where everything is still working perfectly, but we chuck it away just because there is a new one in a different colour. FFS!  So, nope, trade isn’t doing it for me either.

On reflection, since 1973 when I was just 10 and couldn’t vote and wouldn’t have understood the impact that joining would have as I was outside climbing trees, pretending my bicycle was a horse (including tying a rope to the handlebars and riding it like that – health and safety anyone?) and scrumping apples from the farm down the road (that, by the way, isn’t there anymore and is a housing estate instead), I haven’t actually seen an improvement in this country.  Like I’ve already said, I could walk from one job to another and continued to do that even after college had finished and there always seemed to be a choice of jobs I could apply for unlike today. People still travel to places with or without the need for paperwork.  The NHS is still there, although you might have to wait six months to a year for an operation in which time you could have died. We don’t have a state pension to look forward to or, if we do, it will mean we have to choose between heating and food.  We have foodbanks everywhere which we never had before.  We used to have university grants, now they are thinking of stopping them; bad enough that we are currently supposed to pay them back!  What happened to education being free? The list goes on, but so am I so I want to wind this down.

I’m not saying that leaving with make things better and I’m not saying that staying will either (as it appears that it hasn’t done much being in so far) and I’m not sure if the downturn in our predicament isn’t just the fallout from Maggie’s money obsessed government (that’s another story) rather than the fact we joined the EU.  To be honest, I’m currently more interested in having a government of our own that I trust and respect rather than belonging to someone else’s over-lording one.  I personally couldn’t give a flying fig about Brussels and what they are up to when our own Gov is driving people into an early grave.  But, I suppose I have to as it’s my son’s future, not mine, that I need to be worried about.

Perhaps, as in general elections there should be a box with ‘none of the above’ next to it, there should be a box with ‘don’t care as it makes diddly squat difference to me’ next to it for the EU referendum.  I can see me, unless someone comes up with a corking argument, going eeny, meeny, miney, mo on the 23^rd.