Just noticed this piece on LabourList by Labour Parliamentary candidate for South-East Cambridgeshire John Cowan.
He tries to argue that working long hours and the EU Working Time Directive limiting the working week to 48 hours is a health and safety issue, based on the fact that:
"The other night on my way back from yet another Labour Party meeting, I made a number of silly errors on the road - nothing major, but enough to ensure the local police stopped me on suspicion of drunk driving."
He then goes on to say, "It's amazing that despite all this evidence the Tories are opposed to the Working Time Directive opt-out being abolished."
Come again? What's amazing is that a Labour candidate doesn't seem to realise that the Government is also committed - at least in rhetoric - to keeeping the opt-out, for reasons we have outlined before. Both the Conservatives and Labour (bar the MEPs, over which Gordon Brown and co appear to have no control whatsoever) recognise that we can ill afford to lose the opt-out at a time of economic recession.
If Mr Cowan did a little research on the subject, (beginning with reading Open Europe's report), he'd see the that the loss of the opt-out threatens patient care in hospitals, as well as fire service coverage in many rural areas. Aren't these health and safety issues too?
I’ve recently noticed that political parties are a huge reason why the European Union hasn’t been more integrated. For example John Cowan was stating that the police shouldn’t of pulled him over when they were simply doing their jobs. He wants to cut hours because it’s a safety issue when the jobs he’d cut are the one saving lives. Also in an advertising I saw the green party of Ireland stated “I stand for thousands of new green jobs for Dublin”. This term could be taken many different ways because the word thousand has different meanings. Also I found several blogs and websites that were bashing practically every party. I understand this is a norm but I think that politicians aren’t pleasing their citizens and in the process not helping integrate Europe. If politicians would just listen to people instead of what is in their best interest citizens would be a lot happier and Europe would be more integrated.
ReplyDelete