2 November 2013The CBI, representing large companies, has always been pro-EU while organisations representing smaller businesses and the Institute of Directors have been Eurosceptic.
For the first time there has been a business poll taken on a scientific basis from representative samples across British businesses from micro to mega sized concerns.
The conclusion is that businesses want a trade area without all the baggage the EU entails,. They want a referendum on renegotiated terms and consider the costs of membership outweigh any advantages gained and that includes a majority of the CBI members who expressed an opinion....
Over regulation and protectionism are key problems identified.
The EU issue will not go away and the longer we have been members the more distrust and resentment builds up against it. This is the direct opposite of what the pro-EU lobby thought would happen early in our membership. The anti-democratic, anti-freedom, expensive, corrupt and incompetent EU is the author of its own eventual demise.
It is a little difficult to wrestle with the figures given, when it is unclear how to turn what is expressed into English.
What does all this 'By 46% – 37%', by 35% – 23%, and by 30% – 22%' actually mean?
What sort of good news is it to be told that their sampling is " judged to be a wide enough cross-section of the target population", when that sample is 153 sharks, 153 barracudas and 718-ish minnows?
In any case. The whole thing boils down to a desire for a renegotiation of the contract(s), freely entered into by successive UK Governments.
And who can blame them? Real things have really changed, and every Constitution should be open to amendment. The EU, as a body, is well aware of all of this.
The basic problem here is, as with corners/goal-kicks - throw-ins; this way or that, that everybody sticks their hand up and claims whatever advantage for themselves, and hopes that their resulting petulance is seen as righteous indignation, when things do not go all their own way.
BfB, says that it is absolutely not about leaving the EU, and that their push for renegotiation is a push for reform.
BUT!
Why is it for 'others' to reform solely to the benefit of these 1,204? Why does British Business not show the way?
What reform has there been here in the UK's business sphere?
And, where is the evidence of Britain being in, and truely a part of, the EU? What was not the entire EU-wide business community not canvassed?
Is it not simply that these people are just a bunch of petulant-prigs with yet another platform upon which to rant their incoherent ideology? All heat and no light.