When I wrote my article on immigration and the European Union I recognised that my history of erratic posting schedules and my months of inactivity would significantly reduce the the potential viewership of the blog and harm my attempts to restart it, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that my article on the EU had gained a considerable amount of views and greatly contributed towards articles being created on a semi-regular basis (something that I seek to improve in the future), the combination of unexpected success and several heated arguments i've had with another group of eurosceptics has led me to write once more about EU myths.
1. The European Union is spending £300 million to spy on us with drones.
Whilst it is correct that the EU is funding the development of drones they are not being researched to spy on individual citizens instead the focus of the project is strengthening current border security projects and saving the lives of migrants by creating a stable long-ranged unmanned vehicle that can patrol large areas of the coast and contact the appropriate authorities if they spot a vessel in trouble, something that should greatly reduce the tragic deaths of migrants attempting to flee violence, persecution and poverty at home. On top of these facts current legislative hurdles prevent them from being used to spy on EU citizens and any attempt to switch the focus of an EU drone project should be relatively easy to spot and campaign against.
2. The EU won't let us nationalise our railways!
A lie i've seen recently spread by eurosceptics is that EU Directive 91/440 makes it impossible for member states like the UK to nationalise its railway networks, a claim easily disproven by the existence of nationalised railway networks in France, Germany and other EU member States. The EU Directive in question just requires infrastructure and railway companies to be separate, a requirement that would be met by the UK retaining a nationalised network rail for infrastructure and a British Rail for commercial rail operations.
3. The EUSSR is just a communist/socialist plot to takeover the UK!
I'm still rather shocked that people seriously hold this position on the European Union but to those folks detached from reality I ask you to look at both the definition of communism and socialism and then try to make a connection to the European Union. You won't.
Communism - a stateless, moneyless society with no class system in which the means of production belong to the workers.
Socialism - democratic ownership of the means of production by the proletariat.
4. EU regulation damages our economy!
UKIP and eurosceptic Conservatives love to repeatedly claim that regulation enforced by the European Union is not only harmful to the economy but also to the population and while they can tout a report by the Chamber of Commerce and other organisations that states regulation costs the UK economy several billion pounds a year they fail to take into consideration data that promotes the resulting trade and direct investment that comes with EU membership, the validity of these sources and the timeline it covers.
British companies also benefit from the establishment of a single-regulatory system across the EU as they know with confidence that services and goods produced across the continent don't need to be adapted to suit dozens of localised regulations that would usually hamper the effectiveness of commerce. Individuals also see positive results from regulation passed in Brussels with EU wide legislation regarding tariffs and equality in the workplace making it easier for Brits to both visit and work abroad.
5. We're being dictated to by Brussels!
Another tidbit of misinformation being widely spread is that a majority of our laws (70% according to some) are designed in Brussels and not in Westminster and that in order to save democracy as we know it and British sovereignty we must leave the EU at once. It is rather shameful and indicative of our mainstream media that such a bald faced lie is not immediately jumped upon with the news presenter providing the viewer with the real figure and asking the person making the claim what fantasy world they pulled the 70% figure from, sadly instead of doing this the misinformation cycle continues and skews opinion polls with only dedicated political channels attempting to counter it. We need a mainstream media that is not afraid to tackle misinformation from guests and attacks politics from all sides with data relevant to the discussion. Only then can we have a truly informed electorate.
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